Right then, the final soiree in Zwift’s Tour de France 2020 is upon us. And to finish we hit the Champs-Élysées. Six times, to be exact.
And as flat as this one was (40m per lap, give or take), it was exhausting from the off. I think this is in large part to yesterday’s long climby ride, and therefore not really having had sufficient recovery from Sunday.
Fortunately I made it in good time today, so was as ready as my legs would let me be for the GO.
I’d joined the B “race” (technically not a race?) for the sake of Zwift Power only. Incidentally, Zwift Power has recently been taken over by Zwift themselves, so maybe we will see this brought more officially into the game. I won’t hold my breath though.
Right out of the gate, the front of the field pelted it. I had no intention of even trying to keep up, but definitely started fairly slowly, even by my standards.
Right out of the gate we were on the cobbles. I’ve knocked the Tacx Neo 2 down to 50% on the cobble real feel road feel thing, but my word, it still vibrates like Billy-o. No fun.
Settled in for basically 40km of cobbles. Fun times.
In many ways this map is a lot like Crit City.
And also a lot like Richmond.
Critchmond.
There are several long straights, and each lap is very short – at just 6km.
It feels like half of the lap is downhill, and the other half up hill. The up hill really only comes in two places.
One being as below, just after the dip.
This is a really short climb, but I noticed on the first two laps that it really split the packs.
The second climb comes shortly after the first.
Just past the start / finish line for the lap, we climb towards the Arc de Triomphe (I guess).
Worth noting is that you get a power up on the lap line, and another at the top of the Arc climb, so they come quickly, and if you get a feather on the second one, keep hold of it all the way round until the dip climb. I made this mistake thinking I’d get more power ups and wasted my feather on a flat.
This second climb up to the Arc is a bit more grinding, getting steeper just at the top – with a timed sprint segment right at the end.
I honestly preferred the climbing portion of the lap to the downhill. The downhill comes after you loop back round the Arc and do the whole thing again.
For the third and fourth laps I found myself all alone.
You’ll see from my lap times below that being isolated meant I was losing on average 30 seconds per lap, all whilst working harder than the other laps where I managed to “pack up”.
That really didn’t help my already exhausted legs.
I sadly got lapped on lap five.
Honestly I expected to get lapped more.
Fortunately I managed to hang on with another rider or two for the last two laps. One of them promptly dropped us on the final lap, and so it was a piece of tandem work to get home. And thank God for him, as by the end I was absolutely dead.
It was raining outside but I think the floor was wetter inside.
For a flat course, this one was tough.
Overall I’m not sure how I feel about the Champs-Élysées map.
I’d say it was the second best France map, with the towns and villages one being first, and Mont Ventoux being third.
I’ve enjoyed the Tour de France series and am glad Zwift pulled their finger out and did something special for the event.
I’d like to see this map in rotation for Crits, though taking it down to 3 or 4 laps for racing. 40km was too much. At least for today, anyway.
Still, was worthwhile getting another long-ish ride in, even on tired legs, and smashing down some calories ahead of an Italian meal out tonight.
I’m still waiting for my new outdoor kit to arrive, and the weather is looking particularly garbage right now and for the next few days.
Hopefully the sun rears its head and I can get outdoors. I like being able to use the turbo for keeping my legs ticking over, but lately I’m definitely enjoying being out in the sun when at all possible.
The crazy thing is I’ve done 97km already this week, over 3.5 hours.
That’s pretty much my weekly goals done, and I’m only two days in.
I might take a rest day tomorrow and then ride Friday. See how I feel, eh?
Have you ridden this years Tour de France tie in? How did you find it? Any stand out favourite maps? Any stinkers? Let me know in the comments.
