2019 Tour de Zwift Recap

As I long time user of Zwift, I've had the opportunity to do some of the organized events over the last couple of years.  Although I don't engage in the racing aspects of the game, I've entered a few of their social rides and had a monthly goal of riding at least 100 miles (I'm increasing that in 2019 in order to prepare for the Triple Bypass in July).  There are usually a few "tours" that take place over the course of the year, but I haven't done those before, largely because the distance/ format didn't fit well with my schedule.  However, that changed this month.

For 2019, Zwift kicked things off with a 9 stage, Tour de Zwift.  The nine events (they aren't races) take place across all 5 of the Zwift Worlds and riders can generally choose between Long (Gropup A) and Short Course (Group B) rides.  There's also a (Group C) which is set aside exclusively for women.  Given my time constraints (I'm NOT getting up at 4:00 a.m. to ride extra before work), I've chosen the B Group when it's one of the options.

Here's a breakdown of each of the stages in this year's tour:

1) Watopia Jungle Circuit- The Tour starts with a long lead out as you ride from "downtown" up a farily steep climb, before dropping down into the Mayan Ruins Valley.  This is one of my favorite courses in Zwift as it offers a mix of climbing, descending, and flats.  For the B ride, there were nearly 2 loops in the circuit. This was a great way to start the tour.  There seemed to be a lot of people interested in the Tour with over 1,000 riders participating in my stage alone (Zwift offers the same stage multiple times over the course of a couple of days).  In fact, during one of these stage days, Zwift broke their own record for number of riders in a single day, coming in at over 10,000.

2) New York (Everything Bagel)- I have mixed feelings about the New York Course in some ways.  I'm glad that it is a "futuristic" version of Central Park as it provides some additional challenges that I think need to be built into each of the worlds (at least while there isn't the built in option of switching worlds).  The 2nd stage gave participants a chance to do a bit more ascending and the Everything Bagel route covers the entire Central Park course.  In the end, I like New York in part, because I just like New York City.  It's also fun to ride a course that I've actually seen in real life (having visited Central Park) a number of times in my life.

3) London Keith Hill After Party- London is probably the second most popular course in the Zwift Universe.  Like Watopia, it provides a mixture of terrain (although not technically accurate for London).  One thing that was different about this ride was that a rider's overall "place" was removed from the event.  Usually, you can see what place you are in relative to other riders in the same event.  This definitely promotes more of a "race" mentality, but it appears that given the volume of riders, and the fact that it's an event and not a race, this was removed starting on this stage GO BACK AND CHECK.

4) Volcano Climb After Party- This was a great race consisting of 2 full laps of the Watopia Volcano Flat route before finishing the ride with a climb up the volcano itself.  I was able to cruise along at an average of about  +22 mph, before tackling the climb which is relatively easy in the Watopia world.    I've ridden Watopia so many times, that I'm now able to anticipate the course ahead, and when there will be climbing or descending.

5) Richmond- For this stage, we "jumped worlds" over to Richmond, which was nice as we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.  I hadn't ridden this course in a long time as it doesn't frequently appear on the Zwift monthly calendar (it's not unusual for it not to appear at all).  The course, which was two laps for me, was fairly flat through the first 8 miles or so, before tackling two short climbs at the end.  This was also a mid-week early morning event for me, meaning I had to be in the saddle and riding by 5 a.m.  Although I was a bit tired, I managed to ride the first 10 miles just a few seconds past 30 minutes.  The second lap caught up with me a bit however, and I wound up slowing down considerably when I reached the hills for lap #2, which was more like 32 or 33 minutes.  No matter.  Towards the end of this race, I also hit the 200 mile mark for the month.  With 4 more stages still to go, plus any additional weekend rides), I knew I had a good chance of riding more than 300 miles in January, which would be the most I'd done in many years.

6) Watopia- Road to Sky- Ahh! The "Queen Stage" of the Tour de Zwift.  After a 7 or so mile lead-in which no one in my race was expecting, this one climbs 3,000ish feet to the top of the Alpe Du Zwift, a roughly 7-8 mile climb divided into 21 different segments ranging between .1 and .8 miles.  This ride is all climbing, no downhill, no flat segments.  I've done the ride a few times before and I was pleased on this day as I set a PR climbing and even wound up riding an additional 17-18 miles afterward.

7) Innsbruck Early Morning- This was another "on the bike by 5:00 a.m." ride for me.  The fun part was that it was taking place in the Innsbruck world which is one that I think I've only ridden once, maybe twice, before.  This was also a very short route that was only about 15 miles or so.   What I didn't know going into the morning, was that the ride had a good deal of climbing.  It wasn't as much as the Road to Sky, but it was still a bit of a shock to the system, given the previous stage.

8) London Loop with Box Hill Finish- The day before this ride, I decided (for some reason) to do a hard 20 miles on Watopia.  I really pushed myself on the ride, averaging over 21mph and maintaining a higher wattage than my typical ride.  As a result mind legs felt a little tired going into this ride, so I elected to push a bit less on this stage.  I still road pretty hard, but it was again a shorter stage (just over 15 miles) so I managed it in just under an hour (about 51 min).  Afterwards, I jumped back to Watopia and rode for a few minutes.  With that, there was just one stage to go.

9) NYC Park Perimeter- The last ride of the tour was a bit like the last stage of Le Tour.  But only in the sense that it was an easy ride.  I rode the 11ish miles in just over half an hour and then stayed on the bike for a few extra minutes.

So that was my 2019 Tour de Zwift experience.  When all was said and done this month, I rode a bit over 300 miles which is a pretty good start to the year.  With the arrival of February, I'm looking to add some longer rides as part of my training.  I'm also going to start the month with an FTP test.  This will give me a chance to see the impact (if any)  of increased miles and some weight loss (about 10 lbs since the beginning of the year).  I may try doing a monthly FTP test from now on.

Restart?

It's been about 18 months since I last posted anything to this site.  It wasn't intentional, it's just the way things go as life moves on and things shift and change.  In my case, it was a trip to Europe for two weeks and the start of a new job that pulled me away from blogging in the summer of 2017.  Furthermore, I just wasn't doing the types of events that were worth writing about anymore.  In fact, I wasn't doing much at all beyond the occasional half-marathon, and a handful of triathlons.  And even at that, my approach  to these races had shifted, and not for the better.  Instead of putting in the time and carefully preparing for these events, I found myself doing the absolute minimum amount of training (often because I was busy with work), and then hoping I could "hang on" to finish each event.  I usually managed to do that, but they weren't accomplishments worthy of writing down.

There are some folks that don't believe in the annual ritual of setting New Year's Resolutions.  Personally, I don't necessarily write these commitments down, but I see the start of a new year as a chance to renew commitments, accept new challenges, and generally try to live a better life.  So I'm trying to lose some weight now, commit to exercising more frequently, drinking a little less beer, and generally trying to live life a little better. I'm also trying to get back to do some of the things I've enjoyed doing in the past, like writing this blog.

On January 2nd, I registered for the Triple Bypass bike ride, a 120 mile jaunt between Evergreen and Avon, Colorado taking place in July.  It includes climbs over three passes and a total elevation gain that comes in just a touch under 11,000 feet.  It isn't the most "epic" thing I've ever done in terms of endurance sports (the 2013 Collegiate Peaks Ultra and the 2015 Ironman still rank highest in that regard), but it will definitely be a challenge.  You can read about my training leading up to this event, as well as a thorough race report when all is said and done.


So that's it for now.  Look for an upcoming post in the next couple of weeks on "The Tour de Zwift,"  which is the start of my training for this event.  Thanks for reading and welcome (or welcome back)!