The fifth, but not my final stage of this iteration of the Tour of Watopia 2023. I’m aiming to do the Longer ride on Saturday, but that’s not to say this one wasn’t a fair old length, particularly for a lunch time.
For the final stage of this Tour of Watopia, we are hitting the new roads. Or new road, I think may be more accurate. It seems to be one new road, as such, with several routes taking in various parts of it. I might be wrong there.
This one was the Coast Crusher route. Starting at the same spot you might do if tackling the Jungle Circuit, or the Alpe du Zwift as a standalone segment, we began at the Windmill pens. And by ‘we’ I actually mean, well, just me.
That’s because I spent 10 minutes talking when I should have been getting ready, and when I finally looked down at the clock it was 12:00. Thankfully my ride began at 12:01, so I hadn’t missed it entirely, but all the same I was late and not even yet in game.
By the time I did get in game, I could see most people were at least 30 seconds up the road.
Whoops.
Given this one was a chunky ~43km, I had very much been anticipating sitting in with a fast-ish pack and getting a decent boost from the pack dynamics.
Instead, I was left to work hard.
On the plus side, the first 6km, the ‘reverse’ Jungle Circuit descent, is all down hill, so it served as my warm up and a fast descent to eat up the first ~15% or so.
I mentioned recently that I swapped over from a Google phone to iPhone. Well, as part of that I’ve been having some really weird WiFi issues. This is often prevalent in Zwift, where I cannot get the app to connect to the game. I didn’t have that today.
But I did have a WiFi issue all the same.
A while ago I worked out what the issue was. In my house I use ethernet over powerline adapters to get a decent connection here in the office, and elsewhere.
Even longer ago I had moaned to Sky broadband about how dire my WiFi is. They sent out a new router (not free, grumble), and in doing so I ended up with my powerline adapter WiFi and my main house WiFi no longer in sync. That was the root causes of my woes.
Yesterday evening I fixed that.
But I neglected to swap the Tapo plug over to the new WiFi.
Long story short, I couldn’t remotely turn on the fan.
So during that decent I had to delay myself even further by getting off and mucking around with the fan plug. Turns out it came on very easily by just pressing the power button the side. Thank goodness. There was no way I could have completed the ride without a fan, and I was very grateful for how easy it was to operate even without the app.
It sounds like a long one at 43km, and it is. But in reality the true new road is about 20km of that. For this route you traverse the full new road in both directions. It starts at a turn off in the Jungle Circuit caves, and it ends at the Fuego Flats UFO roundabout.
Along the way there are three main areas to the route.
There’s the Aztec temple area, nearest to the Jungle Circuit. I think that makes a really nice transition out. The roads around there are majority tarmac with a section around the temples that are cobbled in effect, like the surface found on Richmond. If you have a trainer with road feel, that’s what it’s like.
You transition from the Aztec zone (a bit like the Crystal Maze, for those of us who are old and grey) into a more Spanish themed section. It’s pleasant enough but not visually spectacular.
And then a final tunnel, one reminiscent of the Epic KOM or Alpe du Zwift partially open tunnels, that lead you out into a misty forest. Spooky. Quite a good fit for a Halloween ride.
I must say though that whilst the fog and mist looked very atmospheric, my PC struggled around there. I run at 4K with a fairly crappy old CPU (not sure of the model), and 970 GTX graphics card, so really old tech now, but it was jerky around there. That sometimes happens on Zwift when the mud kicks up on dirt routes, but around there it was very noticable.
As I say though, that hardware is probably 8 or more years old now, so I don’t expect miracles.
Of the three sections, the forest / countryside, to me, felt the most enjoyable. I’m not saying that part of the route was most enjoyable for riding, as largely it was all very similar. Mostly flat, some sections going up to 3%, but largely in the 0-2% range. But visually, it felt like the sort of outdoor rides I find myself on, especially with the bits of tree all over the roads.
And then it’s past a shipwreck, over an unusual bit of sand, briefly by some odd geodesic house domes and houses on stilts, and then into a multicoloured tunnel up to the UFO.
After the whip around the roundabout, it’s back the way you came. Do it all again, but in reverse.
Well, almost all again. This route finishes just before the Jungle Circuit entrance. So once you see the Aztec temples you know it’s time to wrap it up.
Interestingly I can’t think how this route would continue on. You would possibly be able to do a Jungle Circuit as a big roundabout, and then head back… but it’s a long old trek that, and at 40km I feel most Zwifters would be calling it a day at that point, as I was.
So the Longer variant of this is just one way around, as far as I am aware. It’s called the Big Ring, and should be mostly flat. It’s near 50km, and so not that much longer all in that this Standard route.
It will be nice to do that but in between I need a rest… oh and a race on this route come Thursday.
Marvellous.
