This afternoon – or perhaps early evening I guess – I completed two laps of Zwift’s new Yorkshire map.
This time I took on the forward route. I’ve ridden Yorkshire once before – Zwiftcast Recon Ride – Harrogate Circuit Reverse (D).
The route was definitely different in the forward version. It felt more of a grind. But not in a bad way.
By grinding I’m talking about several long, but fairly gradual up hill sections, combined with some shorter, steeper descents.
By comparison the reverse route is the opposite of this – lots of gradual descents with some short but brutal climbs.
I’m still really loving the scenery of this route. It’s very much reminding me of home. I’m not from Yorkshire, but the Northern vibe – both town and countryside – is really well replicated.
Right out of the gate we’re met with about 2km of ~3% climb.
I intended to be mostly in the green zone for this ride. Aiming to be around 160-175w.
This didn’t work out very well, at all.
My plan was to pace fairly lightly ahead of the final Zwift Academy workout.
I am now aware that’s a 4 minute max effort ride, and given that I have pulled a muscle in the previous Academy workout, I’m somewhat hesitant to go into the next one with a injury.
This fast downhill is a brutal climb in the reverse loop. 
I had planned to do the next Zwift Academy workout tomorrow night after work.
That’s now been pushed back to Saturday. I want to do the final workout as a group ride. Therefore I’ll be doing that at 2pm on Saturday afternoon.
That frees up tomorrow night to be something else. I will ride, but will likely take on one of the ‘formal’ free ride workouts. I’m wanting to do a steady effort, no map features to concern myself with.
The issue – such as it is – that I faced on this map was that whilst I was trying to pace myself for an easier ride, I got swept up in the drama of the KOM, and the sprint. On both laps.
Silly me.
As this was my first time riding the circuit (in forward mode, at least) I can forgive myself for messing up my gearing and generally being caught somewhat unaware of where the KOM (and sprint) would start.
From the graph it’s obvious I went hard on this climb. At near enough 4 minutes, I guess it was a good bit of practice for that forthcoming 4 minute max effort.
I’m fairly confident I can improve on this time on my next proper run at the KOM. I’d be happy to see a low 3:30.
Typical of Zwift, once the KOM is done, the sprint is almost immediately upon you.
I coasted (figuratively, not literally) down from the KOM, and then was met with another short climb up to the start of the sprint. Lovely.
This sprint starts immediately after the 90 degree bend in the road.
Again, I’m very confident that I can do better on this sprint next time round. I was caught off guard by the start line, and had to very quickly change to gears – and was not at all spun up and ready to go here.
I gave as good as I could, under the circumstances. I could see myself shaving a second off this time with a better run up, but gave a pretty much full gas effort all the same.
After this sprint I remember telling my wife that I was done with the silliness, and would now be going easier. That didn’t happen either. I’m basically useless at doing what I say I will.
Forgetting I was on a timed lap, I coasted after the sprint for a while, too.
Now, one thing that is good about Yorkshire forward circuit (and maybe reverse, I’m not sure) is that when you start the lap, you start before the lap marker. This isn’t always the case in Zwift. Sometimes you need to do a full circuit to then “start the clock”. London suffers from this.
Not so here. I was met with the lap timer, so found myself going back on the pedals – though not that hard, it has to be said – in order to put in a fairly decent lap time. By my standards, anyway.
It feels like a lot of this lap is up hill. The entire start / finish straight is up hill as best I recall.
This could be interesting in a race.
With no base of reference, other than the live leaderboard, I put in a 28 minute 44 second lap time. This seems faster than my attempts on the reverse circuit – my best then seems to have been 29 minutes 22 seconds.
My plan was to definitely take it easier on the second lap.
I wanted to do ~1 hour of riding, which I figured put me at ~2 laps. I knew this pre-ride, based on the reverse circuit.
I didn’t really succeed in my goal of going easier.
Definitely I went easier on the second lap. On the KOM I intentionally went as close to FTP as possible, but not much higher.
This is reflected in the time difference between the first and second attempts.
On the approach to the sprint I hit my weekly riding goal of 3 hours.
This is good, but the 100km distance goal is the one I really care about.
Again, whilst supposed to be taking it easy, I couldn’t help myself in attacking the sprint.
Having a better idea of the starting position, I gave myself a better run up, but on tired legs, couldn’t beat my previous attempt. Still, not too far off.
A few months back my second attempts were often significantly slower, so this is signs of good progress for me.
On the home stretch I thought – wrongly – that I would be able to put in a bit of a hard push at the end and beat my previous lap.
My thoughts here were that on the previous lap I’d been going easier at the start (not so), and that I would be fairly comfortably ahead.
I was quite wrong.
Anyway, a good run out.
I enjoyed the Yorkshire map. It felt totally new to me – completely different to the reverse circuit. I really like the scenery, and hour’s ride passed by quickly.
Takeaways from this ride are definitely around ride management. It’s too easy to get carried away when the resistance kicks in on a climb. And those pesky sprints…
One thing to note – the map was packed. Unfortunately I didn’t see how many riders were active and online before I started the ride, but I’m guessing there was well over a 1000 people riding. It was very busy, both riders and runners.
Anything over 500 calories per hour is good enough for me.
I weighed myself after the ride – 11 stone 2lb 6ounce. It feels like I’m going to have to do more to get below 11. Not that I’m particularly trying, I’m just keen to see how / when / if it happens.
As mentioned, tomorrow will be something more like a true free ride. I’m keen to just do a steady spin before the final Zwift Academy ride.
