Continuing on with my plan of riding one hard climb each week, this week I took on Zwift’s Three Sisters route, which features three of Watopia’s climbs:
- Hilly KOM
- Epic KOM
- Volcano KOM
All packed into one 47.7km circuit.
Knowing that Zwift love to throw the Hilly KOM at you a little too early (imo), I opted for a brief warm up ride on the London Classique map.
I had a real life thing I needed to do at 10:30, so couldn’t spend overly long on the warm up. If I’d had more time, I would have liked to have maybe done up to 10km. Just to get the legs moving.
I opted for Three Sisters for a few reasons.
Firstly, having missed yesterday’s ride due to a family party, I was down on my Zwift riding goals for the week.
Secondly, my demo subscription to Tacx Software has lapsed, and whilst I have found the 30 day trial code I got with my Tacx Neo 2 purchase, I didn’t want to activate that whilst I’ve still not figured out a way to screenshot the rides effectively.
And thirdly, I watched Ash Beech tackle this route on YouTube, and figured I’d have a bash at the same:
Sadly, my time would like not be quite on a par with Ash Beech… but I did watch his video to get an idea of how long it might take me, and what to expect along the way.
On that front, a mistake was made… more on that later.
So yep, out of the gate, 1km in, hitting the Hilly KOM.
Thank God for warmed up legs.
At just 0.9km this was a great way to get in the mood for the work to come.
If anything I likely went too hard on this one.
I really need to update all my stats so I can check current ride times against past performances. I’m not sure whether this was my fastest time up the Hilly KOM, but it certainly felt pretty full on.
The other two times were previous workouts I think, probably FTP Builder workouts at that.
With the Hilly KOM out of the way, I have to say I took my foot off the gas.
I immediately felt like there was no way this ride was going to be record setting. My legs just didn’t feel up to it.
Previous Sunday climbs have been tackling continuous climbs. This one felt different, with three efforts spaced out between long-ish flat sections.
Honestly, I think I prefer just hitting one continuous climb.
Early on I hit the 100km weekly riding goal. All good.
At the bottom of the Epic KOM I set myself a target of staying at or above 200w. Anything over that would be good enough for me today.
Things generally went well on the Epic KOM climb.
At just 3% for long segments, I found it really challenging to get a steady rhythm going. Again this comes back to the hitting one longer, hard climb. It just feels easier to remain consistent than with the road constantly changing between 3 and 10% gradients.
I do find it incredible that I can continue to put out over 200w fairly consistently now for prolonged periods of time.
This is in huge contrast to where I was 6 months ago.
I remember the first few times I hit the Epic KOM. What a shocker it was. Now it still feels challenging, but I’m fully aware of how hard things can really get.
Along the way I hit the 9.9 hour November / Movember riding goal. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed it took me this long – half way through the month – to hit that goal. Still, it’s done now. And when that pop up appeared it gave me a bit of a fright. I thought my route had gone wrong.
Things were going pretty decent on the first half of the climb.
I split it mentally itnto two chunks.
There’s everything pre-castle, and then everything after.
Unfortunately that castle flat really threw my momentum. By the time I’d switched to the big ring and tried to build myself back up, I was on the next chunk of the climb.
And much like last time, as I recall, I really felt it in my calves and shins with the change of pace / rhythm. Felt like a big old fail.
It took a minute or so to get back into the swing of the climb after the short flat.
Mentally, I couldn’t help but feel my idea of a 20 minute road test had just been completely thrown out of the window.
Again, coming back to what I mentioned earlier:
It’s really hard to get into a groove when things get into roller coaster mode, as they do near the top of the second chunk of the Epic KOM.
Visually, I think this section looks cool, but as a riding experience it’s not a great one for me.
Digging in, I pushed through thinking that I’d have a lovely easy coast down to the bottom after passing through the arch.
And this is where my mistake from skipping through Ash Beech’s video really hit me.
Three Sisters includes the Radio Tower Climb.
Lucky me.
It also meant I didn’t get to screenshot the live leaderboards, as before I knew where I was, I was heading up the Radio Tower bonus climb.
I remember saying out loud (to no one, except me), that this would be a slow one.
As it was, I just stuck to my guns. Aiming for anything above 200w, and ideally over 2.8w/kg.
I think I did what I set out to here.
This segment isn’t officially timed, but I made it up there slow and steady.
I was now ready for an extended break, for which the Radio Tower + Epic KOM descent segments seemed ideal.
Typically on a workout I try my very best not to stop pedalling, regardless of whether I’m on a descent or not.
I feel I’m just cheating myself.
But in this case, with a climb still to go, I figured I still had a few more calories to burn. So why not ease off and super tuck it a touch?
On the descent down I managed to pair up with fellow rider .Le 177 who was seemingly also on the Three Sisters tour de hills.
We rode together, taking it in turns to push our way along.
After a brief tour of the Volcano CCW, the bottom of the final climb was upon us.
Once again, my strategy for the Volcano KOM was to be anything above 200w.
I don’t recall, but typically my strategy now for climbing is to immediately drop into the little ring at the front. I’ve tried doing the grind thing, and it’s just not for me. Keep me spinning, please.
Easily the mistake I made on this climb was to base my effort off the #1 slot on the leaderboard.
That would be a 6 minute and something climb.
When I hit 6 minutes… I still had another 4 to go.
Again, my problem with this climb is the fact it’s split into two, effectively, with a flattish segment half way up.
I wonder if I switched to the 0% trainer difficulty setting, whether I’d feel differently about things like this?
My time was nothing stellar. From my leaderboards page I can see this was not faster than any previous ride.
Still, after two previous climbs and 40km, being 6 seconds off my previous personal best doesn’t feel so bad.
And with that, I took on the Volcano descent at a very leisurely pace.
But when I looked at the clock I saw I only had 10 minutes (or so) left to finish the full route before I really needed to be off the bike and into the shower.
I had to push harder than I’d have liked to meet the start / finish arch of Watopia downtown.
I’d have quite liked to continue on and finish the 50km, but if I had I would definitely have been late for my real world commitment. So I didn’t.
As above, my attempt at setting a new 20 minute effort during the climbing portions of this ride went out of the window. I figure the only realistic way to do this on Zwift now is via the Alpe Du Zwift.
Smashing through 1077 calories before breakfast on a Sunday morning is a fantastic start to the day. Even if it does absolutely kill my legs for the rest of the day.
So that was me done. Three of Watopia’s climbs done in one ride. Felt good.
Honestly I only did it for the XP.
Be a good one to hit in reverse, maybe.
I did manage to set a new 2-3 minute personal best according to the critical power graph. So that’s something.
I’m thinking next weekend is going to be a Tacx Video climb.
With that in mind I really need to get my act in gear and get an alternative screen recording set up sorted. Otherwise … it’s all gunna be pink again.
Just did Three sister today for my first time, started Zwifting i late February this year. Came in at 2h 00m ,I am pleased with that. I thought the Radio Tower was KOM number two:)
Nice work Torben, and welcome to Zwift. That radio tower is no joke is it ? Absolutely brutal.