Something unexpected today. Usually I would save my Tour of Watopia rides for Wednesday, and do a Zwift Race on a Tuesday.
However, due to the clocks changing to British Summer Time over the weekend, it turns out that Zwift didn’t follow suit. Which ultimately means the races no longer start at the very sensible time of 12:10, but the much less convenient times of 11:10, or 13:10.
It’s an odd one. I thought the USA followed the whole Daylight Savings Time thing… ?
God knows.
Anyway, the point is it’s messed things up. I’m going to have to have a late lunch tomorrow (or a very early one), and somehow fit this in.
Fortunately, other options are available.
And so I picked today to do the Stage 4 group ride, albeit not the longer one, which I am “saving” for the weekend.
The Shorter and Standard rides in Stage 4 are, I believe, 17km and 30km, and I figured what with Zwift’s rampant group ride pacing, I could probably slip in a 30km effort in my lunch break, and still have enough time left over for a shower before my 1pm meeting.
Whilst that did happen, I was definitely cutting it a bit fine.
The route for this one was Road to Ruins. I’ve definitely done this route before, but seemingly the last time I did this it didn’t come with a route badge.
This one clocks in at something like 29.7km as you cross the line, and 276m of climb.
What’s interesting about the climbing on this route is that ~240m of the total comes in the first 20km. The last 10km is practically flat, or all down hill. It certainly feels flat after all the climbing you’ve just done.
Also, this one features a full loop of the Jungle Circuit. One weird thing, from my point of view, is that they didn’t alter the route for the Tour of Watopia to feature the newer portions of the Jungle area that came out in the previous year. You would think they would want to show off the shiny new bits?
Beyond that, I was feeling pretty tired today. Still feeling as though I haven’t fully recovered from Saturday, truthfully.
There was certainly no desire on my part to join in the bunch sprint at the end.
I believe the Stage 4 Longer ride is basically the same thing, albeit with yet another visit to Titan’s Grove. At this point I’m thinking we should petition to rename this tour to be the Tour Of Titan’s Grove.
But yeah. Bit disappointed not to have been able to do the race. Hopefully my ever full workday meeting schedule allows me to get this done midweek. The races look unusual this time around. One is a literal lead-in, and that’s it. Then the second is up Fox Hill, as far as I am aware. It’s a two parter.
Always fun.
