I’m pretty sure I’ve done my left knee some damage, but this one was as good a ride as any to see out the Tour of Watopia Fall 2023.
Ahead of this one I’d read that the name of the route, The Big Ring, implies that this one can be taken on, in full, using the big ring. It’s mostly flat, they said.
Mostly.
Only the climb out of the Jungle up to the Windmill isn’t. That’s a 5km climb for a total of approximately 100m, which doesn’t sound like much, but after taking the first 30km at a good clip it was enough to absolutely smash me today.
I went out of the gate at a fairly relaxed pace as I’d not done any real warm up. But within a kilometre I’d amped that up to a threshold effort which I held for about 45 minutes / the first 30km. Obviously I was with a fast pack of largely flat roads, and that’s Zwift inflated speeds, but even so it was a fast affair.
However I pushed too hard on the Jungle climb today. Not really hard for the segment, but hard when considering already being ~45 minutes into a ride, at the end of what has definitely been five harder weeks than usual for me. That kind of hard.
After coming over the top of the Jungle I knew I’d messed up.
I remember looking up and seeing 12km left and thinking, man, my knee hurts.
But I didn’t let up. Well, anymore than I already had. After the Jungle I’d lost my rhythm big time and was finding it a challenge to get back out of tempo. My legs felt like they were full of sand. Fortunately I had a small group around me working to keep up the pace and I tried to do my bit wherever I could.
I’d say it took about 20 minutes after the Jungle for me to recover my composure, by which time we had ~7km left which in my head I was already mental converting to minutes. Soaking wet with sweat, uncomfortable in my cheapest of cheap Amazon bib shorts, and hungry, getting to the end of this one was a grind.
But a good grind.
It’s a shame about how sore my knee feels because this was a good ride. It was a good end to the Tour, which I have enjoyed. Doing both Standard and Longer events each week has been tough, but I feel like my fitness has improved.
That is proven today by setting my all time best 1h 20m pace (just a couple of minutes shy of my finish time of 1h 21m 39s) at 227w. Pleased with that, honestly. It’s so nice to see the metrics moving in the right direction again.
Plenty of work left to do, but I’m wondering about repeating this idea with the forthcoming Zwift Academy series. Do the standard workout midweek, and then do the Longer workout at the weekend.
But for now. Rest the knee. And by rest the knee I mean go for a 2 hour walk tomorrow morning. Like an idiot.
