Vatternrundan Group Ride Series #4 (D)

• 

• 

• 

For this morning’s ride I took part in the Vatternrundan Group Ride #4, this one being 1 hour 45 mins on London’s Greatest Loop.

There were three reasons I attended this ride:

• I wanted a longer, lower intensity ride after the Tour de Zwift conclusion
• I wanted the kit… it’s awesome
• Zwift keep emailing me about it, so I thought it only right that I attend.

The alternatives for this morning’s ride were either:

• The Zwift Gran Fondo (well, bambino fondo for me)
• Or… stay in bed.

I decided against the February Fondo, simply because it’s a direct repeat of the January route.

And I decided against staying in bed because I’m not that lazy 😉

• 

• 

Well, I say I’m not that lazy but I did manage to stay in bed until 8.15, with the ride starting at 8.30GMT. I had to get up, get my kit, get some toast, make my wife and I a brew, grab my towel, brush my teeth… and then my kids needed to show me various things that for one reason or another couldn’t wait.

Even though I’d booted up Zwift and got everything ready on that front, by the time I got on the bike I had literally seconds to spare before we were off.

• 

• 

• 

I was led to believe this ride would be taken at 2-2.5w/kg.

I was planning to stick to around 2.2w/kg, and head up to 2.5 – 2.7w/kg on the climbs.

By and large this went OK, but at one point as I’ll point out below, I did get dropped unexpectedly.

After the short, sharp racing, and the fairly long (30-40km) group rides (but with lots of climbing) of the Tour, I was hoping to take this ride as an active recovery session. Not done a true one of these in a while.

There were plenty of early complaints about the fence.

Personally I wasn’t getting close enough to the beacon to be worried about such things.

I figured there’s be a ball around the beacon, and then a fairly long snake back from there as riders of varying fitness levels began to clump together.

That didn’t really happen.

There definitely was a ball around the beacon, but the snake back was fairly small.

I admit to kinda tuning out and doing a few exercises of Duolingo whilst not paying that much attention to what was happening on screen.

• 

• 

When I did start paying attention again – for the first time – was when I spotted we were crossing the bridge and heading out towards the climbs.

Had I misjudged?

Would there be a trip up Box Hill or worse?

Alas, no.

We hit what was dubbed “the baby climb” – which to be fair I had never realised was actually a climb before. Anyway at this point I did manage to get close to the beacon. Too close.

When we hit the escalator – the 15% plus bit of short fun – I was almost upon the beacon. So I slowed somewhat, and around this time my brother was texting me about the fallout of Storm Ciara.

• 

• 

For about ten minutes or so I was back and forth, texting away, having a nice little conversation. For the record, the most damage I’d seen was that the kids slide had been blown over. Elsewhere around Europe things seemed to be worse.

When I ultimately did start paying attention again for the second time I’d been fully dropped.

As above, I expected this ride to form small blobs, and maybe I just wasn’t up to keeping with the beacon blob.

But I was out in no man’s land, and there was almost no one around me. It was only when the ride leader suggested that we either jump back on his blob, or find a more suitable one that realisation kicked in – I needed to hot foot it back to the pack, pronto.

So after the biggest burst of the ride for me, I managed to catch back up with the pack. No way I would have done this if they weren’t going ~2w/kg into the climb, I don’t think.

After this I did start paying more attention to the riding, trying to take my mind off things by joining in the group chat, but that way still paying attention to what was happening on screen. No more text chat for me.

• 

• 

The rest of the ride went by fairly uneventfully. I stuck with the group, with what felt like hundreds of riders around me at any one time. I felt decent about the pacing, even with the previous 100km of the week already in the bag. Definitely feel my fitness has come on a notch or two in the last several weeks.

• 

• 

As we’d been chatting in group chat, I didn’t even realise we’d passed the 50km mark until noticing 52km on the board. Nice.

By this point my ass was killing, however, and I was looking forward to getting off the bike and onto something more comfortable. Which in this case, is the bench of the kitchen table. Probably not anymore comfortable, to be quite truthful.

All in all I really enjoyed this group ride. The chat was excellent, the pacing was perfect (after my own mistakes), the ride leader was helpful and welcoming.

I am not entirely sure about the real world Vattern Rundan, and what it entails honestly. For me, this is about training for the Manchester to Blackpool 100km event later this summer. And maybe, if I’m lucky, the Ride London 2020 event.

A nice little feature after completing this one was an email from Zwift to confirm completion. I’m not sure why this event is being so heavily promoted by Zwift, but it’s nice to get a follow up all the same.

Smashing 984 calories on a Sunday morning feels good. Plenty of space made for a forthcoming hearty Sunday lunch. I doubt I’ll get one, but plenty of space made all the same.

• 

• 

What I’m most looking forward too now is a rest day (Monday).

I’m also going to have a look through the list of Zwift events and try to hit Crit City on Thursday night, if at all possible. Never ridden that circuit, and feel up for a weekly race now.

OK, have a wonderful rest of your day people.

Ride on!