Concluding the week with the Standard ride from Stage 1 of this years Tour of Watopia means I have managed to do all three of the available rides. Pretty pleased with that.
It wasn’t always going to be the case. This morning I got my walking boots on and had made it about 25 metres from the house before I had to turn back. My feet were already hurting and any ideas of doing a ~1.5 hour walk on them was immediately curtailed by the pain.
Anyway, back inside I went, one set of kit taken off and another put on, and before I knew where I was I was clipped in and ready to go for ~30km of “flat” stuff.
The interesting things about this ride were that it involved a small climb (up the Hilly KOM Reverse) and at 29km (I believe), the Standard ride is only 6km or so shorter than the Longer ride. Throw in the little climb and honestly I can’t say there was that much in the two, honestly.
The one difference in my approach today versus the other two rides is that I opted for a Tempo pace today, whereas I’ve deliberately done the other two at Endurance. But this one threw in the climb and a couple of little bursts, so like I say above, they felt really similar in terms of overall effort.
There was very little chatting on this ride today. Not sure why that is. I tried a couple of times but no one was up for a conversation. Shame that, as these Tour of Watopia events are usually fairly social. A bit of banter on the bike can really help the time go quicker. In the end I opted for a blast of Kasabian instead.
One interesting thing that’s not on-the-bike related today is that I switched over from my old Dell monitor yesterday to a Gigabyte gaming monitor. The difference is that this one has a 144hz refresh rate. Nothing else on the PC has changed.
That one thing has made a real difference actually. I was surprised how much. It’s admittedly less obvious in Zwift, but in other games the lack of “tearing” is massively noticable. I had no idea just how bad, comparatively, my other screen was performing.
Where I’ve noticed this most is in the gravel / dirt sections. When the big plumes of dust puff up, I was infrequently, yet very definitely seeing horizontal lines cut across the screen, where it was as if half of the screen was showing one frame, and the other half showing another frame. Quite hard to describe, and never that bad that it made things unplayable. But for a second every so often it was quite jarring.
Anyway, I’m surprised that simply changing the monitor “solved” that problem. I would have expected it to be an issue with the graphics card, not the refresh rate. But there you go. If you’re getting visual tearing, it may be that 60hz simply isn’t enough.
All in then a good workout today but nothing amazing.
I have no idea what Stage 2 involves, but I suspect I won’t be tackling Stage 2 until midweek at the earliest. My next event with be Race #2 of the Zwift Race London series, and that will be Tuesday.
Until then!
