Halfway done! Keep the momentum going in Stage 4’s rolling hills and flats.
Go for your personal bests as you make your way through various KOM segments. Segment starts are marked with neon dashes on the road. We’ll begin on Ocean Boulevard’s pier, then head to downtown Watopia. Once we’re away from the hustle and bustle of the city, a Southern California-inspired coastline takes over. This stage has a pleasant surprise waiting for riders at each arch. You’ll love the experience.
I really like the Tour of Watopia big group rides. After the crashing incident of Tour of Watopia Stage 3, I decided to “play it safe” this morning and use the laptop. However, it still crashed. Fortunately though, this time it crashed after the event was over, just as I was uploading to Strava. It all seems to have worked though, as I see my ride report on Strava, so no huge deal.
My FTP for this ride was 159w. I aimed to pace around 150w or above throughout. Cadence was not a primary goal here, I’d take whatever I could get.
I tried my best to stick with a pack on this ride. I’ve struggled with this on previous rides, but am aware that riding with a pack is more efficient. As best I understand, I gain some additional watts due to reduced (simulated) wind resistance. For the same effort, I go faster.
With that in mind, I was wondering how far I could get 20 minutes into my ride, and a similar but different metric, how fast could I ride 10km? One of my earliest goals was to ride 10km in 20 minutes or under, so I wondered how fast I could ride 10km in a pack.
Knowing that the big Zwift cycling statues signifies the area in which the Hilly KOM climb awaits, I paced myself fairly well for the climb, and did much better than my last attempt. It’s not a fair comparison by any means, but I was ready for the climb, and maybe even enjoyed it a little.
Better than my last attempt. I’ll take it. It’s a strange climb in so much as the climb part comes at the start, and then the last half, or so, is fairly flat. I think it’s designed to test if you have any legs left after the climb to do a sprint. I … did not.
10km in under 18 minutes, with a climb. I’m convinced this has at least 30-45 seconds of pack riding efficiency to thank.
Normally I would take a breather after reaching 10km, dropping back to either green or blue zones for a few minutes in order to let my legs recover. However, riding with the group, and this being a race-that’s-not-a-race-race, I didn’t want to let up.
I didn’t get the distance at 20 minutes screenshot, unfortunately. Even so, I’m fairly sure this is amongst the fasted paces I have ever ridden at, if not the fastest.
Before I knew what was happening, Zwift dropped the first of two sprints on me. This would be a 200m sprint. I felt good about this one, so gave it my best shot.
I was pretty knackered after this as I recall. Time for a bit of a breather. Thankfully the map designers at Zwift thoughtfully provided a gradual, but mercifully long down hill segment after all that effort.
With the sprint into the downhill, I had pushed ahead of the pack I was previously riding with. Back in a bit of a recovery, they caught me back up and I had to start some effort again to keep up with their steady pace. This was really good for me, as otherwise I would have slacked off for a while longer.
I kept riding with this pack until the next KOM segment. I think this is the Hilly KOM Reverse, but am not 100% sure. I know one thing, this was my first time riding this segment. And I messed it up, big time.
I got my gearing completely wrong on this and went too hard, too quickly, and blew out.
That was really tough and I’d got fully dropped by the group I was previously riding with. I don’t think I ever caught them back up.
I have nothing to compare this too, but I’m guessing it can be beaten on my next attempt.
With the climb over, and a little recovery, I managed to settle back into a pack.
Along the way I met my weekly riding goal of 100km or more.
Before I knew it, another sprint was upon us. I didn’t feel quite so good about this one, and apparently I’d done it 4 times previously, though I couldn’t ever remember having it done it before.
I still gave it a good effort. Perhaps too much effort considering I was trying to pace myself properly. Silly me.
No PR for me today. I was taxed after this though, and didn’t much want to keep pushing. But Zwift was like, no rest for you, have a 5% gradient.
I remember being in a fairly easy gear here, pushing hard to put out those ~250w. Keeping me going was that decreasing remaining distance – just 2km left.
I remained with the pack for the final few kilometers, helped by the draft (I’m guessing!) and using them as a marker for my own pace. I was genuinely curious as to whether our little pack would have a sprint finish. I went for it with 200m remaining.
And that was it. Ride over.
It’s unusual, in my opinion, how Zwift displays this screen. The results are updated as riders cross the finish line. So it looks like I finished 315th of 344 riders, but that’s 315/344 who had crossed the finish line whilst I was looking at the results. It would make more sense, (again imo), to show the percentages against the number of riders who started the race.
One thing’s for sure, my heart rate is sky high.
It blows my mind that anyone can hold 300w+ average for 38+ minutes. Fair play.
I’m not sure where I managed to put out 426w on this ride. I don’t remember it at all. The screenshot below leads me to believe this was in the first sprint.
I don’t remember where or when I did the 428w personal best either, and the site search isn’t helping me find it. Arghh.
The averages on this ride were decent, amongst my best, so I’m happy with my performance.
Lots of this ride was spent at or above my FTP, which is currently a guesstimated 159w. Well, it was.
I feel pretty good about this figure. It’s all going in the right direction which is great, but also I did ride this ride around this figure, so I feel it’s fairly accurate over the hours distance.
I definitely think riding with the pack helped, and in more ways than one. I really like riding with groups. It would be pretty cool to have some kind of chat functionality for small groups. Not sure how that would work. Maybe being able to VOIP chat through the companion app or something, idk.
One thing that did suck was that when I went to end my ride, and upload the results to Training Peaks and Strava, Zwift crashed to desktop. Fortunately my results did upload to Strava and TP, but will I have to contact Zwift again if this doesn’t register on my TOW ride achievements? Hope not. So much for riding on better hardware solving the crashing.
Not sure what to ride tomorrow. Have to wait and see how much time, and energy I have.
Ride on!