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.
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