A new week, a new stage on the second of this year’s Tour of Watopia series.
As a midweek ride I opted for the Standard version, so I can fit this one into my lunch break. The Longer variant will be tackled this Saturday.
I had another few issues with the Zwift Companion App today, so screenshots are missing in some parts. I know why this is – it’s to do with me having my powerline adaptors still set to the old WiFi network name, and the Zwift Companion App has to be on the same network as the PC / thing running Zwift in order to sync up. I’ll resolve that … sooner or later.
Anyway, I very, very nearly missed this one. It’s a lucky thing that the Standard event starts at 1 minute past the hour, and not bang on. I also very nearly clicked the Longer ride in my haste… so two disasters averted. As it was, I got on with 3 seconds to spare. So, no warm up then.
Being a lunch time ride I have to go hard as I need to get the event done in the 1 hour time limit I have for myself, and also get in a shower and, ideally, some food.
Knowing the route involved basically two climbs, I opted for pushing hard on both, and then aiming for a sort of SST-esque pace for the rest of it.
The two climbs are not ‘named’ KOMs.
In fact today’s route only had ~275m of elevation in total over the 30km distance.
Feeling late though, I gunned it to the first of the two climbs. The first one being what I thought was tagged as the Dirty Sopressa climb on Strava, but looking at the segments for this one it’s not showing, so I must have been wrong on that.
Basically the first climb is that lift up from sea level up to the bridge, heading to the bottom of the Epic KOM. That’s the one to wake the legs.
I pushed harder than usual on that climb and then eased off a bit as I crossed the bridge.
Now, interestingly, that short but sharp climb is actually pretty much exactly the same amount of climbing that you do from the bottom to the top of the Jungle Circuit, and then out to the Windmill.
That’s the second of the day’s climbs.
I say that’s “interesting” because, to me, that Jungle Circuit climb feels like it goes on for ages.
I’d noticed the heart rate monitor wasn’t displaying in Zwift, though it was displaying on the Garmin. Being somewhat anal about things like that, I had it in my head I’d fix it on the descent into the Jungle Circuit, that way I could coast and fix it.
But no.
When you go to the Connections menu in Zwift it brings you to a screeching halt.
Fortunately connecting the Polar H10 was simple, and I had my metrics. But being on the descent meant everyone was caning it past me and I had to go super hard to catch up. In hindsight it would have been far better to stop on the steeper bit… unintuitive, but true also in real life.
Anyway being a big group ride I was soon back with a bunch.
What I did today was push to 95rpm / 265w for the whole of the first part of the Jungle Circuit climb. That’s the bit from the cavern up to the bridge. By the time I hit the bridge I was absolutely goosed.
From there it became something of a slog to get the legs back into some kind of working order, and to make them carry on to the sweet tarmac back up to the windmills.
Fortunately after that it’s largely down hill for a good while.
The rest of the route wasn’t that involved really. Just stick with the pack, blast it at the Volcano climb to stay with the pack, and then push hard again up to the corner that ticks back down and around to the finish line in Downtown Watopia.
Another one in the books, and, possibly, an easier ride on the cards tomorrow. Have to see how I feel, though right now I feel tired.
