The 2019 Tour de Zwift event is a 9 event cycling event on Zwift. it takes you on nine different routes across five worlds with hundreds, and in some case more than 2000 participants at a time.
Zwift Tour description
“…the Tour is a celebration of Zwift and the worlds within. You’ll experience the best of Zwift, together with thousands of people riding by your side. It’s not a race, but a giant party on wheels and a great way to experience Zwift.”
This event is different from others in that it spans several days. It also varies from other events in that the range is from 1-4 watts per kilo for A, B and C categories. Category A is the long distance course for women and men. B is the short distance for women and men. Category C is a Women’s only category.
Stage One
Stage 2
Stage Three
Stage Four
Stage Five
So far the experience of riding these events has been fun. I have also rode in other events in the gaps between TDZ events and I’m happy to have the occasional sprint or climb to do. I look forward to going up the Alpe De Zwift yet again. You’re not riding in the real world and you can’t really converse with people but it’s fun to have a group to keep up with, or a group in the distance to catch up with. I look forward to the last four stages.
The Seventh stage of the Tour De Zwift was Innsbruck, a course that some people can do in about 388 minutes. It takes me around 54 minutes. As I have not ridden this course frequently enough I decided to try to keep up with others and that meant a 20 minute best of 197 watts.
My lack of familiarity with the course meant that when the climbs came up I did not push as hard or as long as I would have if I did know the course. I went up faster than some but was easily overtaken by others. On the Alpe de Zwift during my PR I did not have this issue.
Cycling during the event
Towards the end of this course I got to the sprint and at this moment I saw that the best time was around 19 seconds so I decided to give everything I had to get the best sprint time on this stage. During other events I have come in positions ranging from 38th to 200th or slower. This time I was lucky.
According to Zwift’s algorithms I generated an average of 823 watts with a peak of 1112 watts for 20s averaging 54.7km an hour and peaking at 59.4km/h. By the end of this sprint I felt faint. This puts me in 816th place on this segment overall. The top ten sprinters did it in 14-16 seconds. I am 45th for this year. That’s easy to achieve at the start of the year.
I don’t train hard enough to generate from 4-6 watts per kilo for an hour or two at a time. I can’t keep up with A and B riders. I do however have the ability to sprint and this does provide me with an advantage. When I climb I always try to sprint for the last four hundred metres or more. This means that I put down a lot of power for a short period of time.
Zwiftpower strengths
According to Zwiftpower my strengh is uphill sprinting, where I can generate 17.61 watts per kilo. As a short sprinter I can generate 1057 watts. Both of these figures explain why I am theoretically good at sprints. I don’t use a power metre so these figures are hypothetical. As a rouleur or time trialist my ratings are 265-229 watts per kilo so this explains why I am easy to leave behind. Compare this to the 300-600 watts that we see Simon Richardson and others put out on Zwift live events.
And Finally
It’s easy to think of indoor cycling as sitting on a recumbent bike looking at a bar graph and straining to keep up in a gym for fourty minutes listening to a podcast or someone exercising in the corner of an apartment watching tv whilst simply counting down until the 15-20 minute session. Zwift is much more than that.
When you ride on Zwift you suspend disbelief and you feel as if you’re on a real bike ride with real goals. Some days are terrible and you want to stop and others are excellent and you exceed your goals. This is about having fun as you get fit.
Today the weather was rainy so I had a Zwift session. I decided to cycle the Yorkshire circuit. Cycling indoors is not as exciting as you don’t see as much. I listened to a hiking podcast but I didn’t pay much attention to the Zwift interface for at least the first fifteen minutes or so.
For the first time in 44 days or more I started the car’s engine and went for a drive. I heard the engine making a slightly different noise than usual so I let it warm up a bit and then I drove to the shops taking the long route. By long route I simply mean the walk that I’ve done dozens of times. It’s around 10 kilometres of driving in total. As it’s a diesel car it makes sense to drive far enough to get the engine warmed up and ready for when life returns to “normal”.
To switch off during sport, try to designate ten minutes of your run or ride to consciously focus on the world around you. What do I smell, hear, see and feel during exercise? Focusing on the here and now gives a feeling of security and makes conscious enjoyment possible.
With all of the pictures, descriptions of smells and even river walking I think I’ve definitely lived up to point 1. I have been running, cycling, walking, river walking and exploring variants on the routes I walk often. I can now walk without crossing people for ninety eight percent of my walks. People in cars don’t count.
I have spent a lot of time on TikTok which is both good and bad. It’s good because it cheers me up and now I’m familiar with another video sharing platform for when I’m applying for jobs but it’s bad because I could do more during the day.
Activity trackers are designed for walking, running, canoeing and activities where you move your arms. Cycling is not one of those sports. Unless you’re cycling on a specialist bike that has handles you’ll be using your legs and your upper body will move very little. I have a workaround.
My workaround is to put the activity tracker in a pocket. In so doing it counts how many times a leg “steps” and your goal for the day is not missed. This is especially true when your goal is to take several thousand steps. Some would call it cheating but I call it thinking laterally.
Yesterday when I did this it thought that I had been running so I corrected it to indoor cycling. Today despite 80-100 strokes per minute it counted my activity as walking.
Looking at the activity data gathered by Zwift we see that it was a 40.7km bike ride with an average speed of 32 kilometres per hour and 182 watts average power. If we look at the activity tracker stats it was a 7.26km walk at 9 minutes 22 per kilometre.
Efficiency
For a while I have wanted to compare and contrast the same number of steps when walking and cycling. We see that the different is about six fold. It’s five times more efficient to cycle than it is to walk. It took 7187 crank revolutions to travel 40.70. That’s about 5 meters per crank rotation. That’s 4 metres further than I travel per step when walking if we assume a one metre stride length.
40km, if walked would equate to about 40,000 steps. With fitbit I have earned that reward twice when hiking in the mountains. I traveled about 26-31km if I remember correctly.
Staying Relevant
Activity trackers could easily be seen as irrelevant if you go to the gym and train on an indoor bike, or if you use an indoor trainer at home. By putting a fitness tracker in your pocket and doing a workout you’re extending the step count. This means that you don’t need to feel frustrated that you worked out for an hour without something to show on fitbit, Garmin activity tracker or similar websites or services.
Conclusion
Activity trackers are great because their goal is to get us to be active throughout the day and aim for ten thousand steps. In practice we burn more energy by going for a bike ride so we miss out on the step count goal, especially after long rides that last a few hours. By putting activity trackers in our pocket we get the step count and we get a more energetic workout. If Garmin, Fitbit and other companies had a way of natively creating an equivalence we would spend less time finding workarounds.
This summer I climbed over 8848 metres in a single month and now I have just completed the Zwift Everest challenge as well. This challenge, on Zwift, is much easier than in the real world because you are not carrying water, the weight of your bike, dealing with keeping yourself balanced on your bike or traffic.
Using a Fluid Trainer.
I don’t use a smart trainer. I use an Elite Qubo Fluid trainer and to climb I use information on speed to decide how hard to work. If I feel lazy I can pedal at 100 watts for a long period of time to get to the top but that isn’t in my nature. I like to push myself. I push until I get tired and then I recover, and then I push again. I also loe to sprint to the end and try to beat my previous time. Yesterday I rode up at a relatively lazy pace. When I got to within 1.5 kilometres of the top I really put out a lot of energy and when I reached the summit I was spent.
I put out an average power of 291 watts for an effort of 2 minutes 29 with a peak at 612 watts and a cadence of between 100 and 121 pedal strokes a minute. It might seem strange to put out such a lot of energy on a bike indoors but the feeling of accomplishment is the same as if you had done it in the real world.
I like climbing challenges because I live in a mountaineous landscape therefore reaching long ride distances is more challenging. It’s not that I don’t have the ability to ride for four or five hours but that if I ride four to five hours I travel one hundred kilometres because I have to climb cols if I want an interesting GPS track.
Stamina and technique
Stamina and technique do improve as you get used to climbing. You might be in the easiest gear going just above “stalling” speed but you endure up that hill until you get to the top. On Zwift you ride your bike in the physical world but a top of the range frame and wheels in the virtual realm. This means that you’re achieving times that you could never reach in the physical world with your current bike setup.
With a dumb trainer like mine, in contrast to a smart trainer with force feedback, you only see that you’re climbing because A) your speed decreases and B)The gradient indicator tells you that you’re on a hill. With a smart trainer it does get harder and you may want to switch to an easier gear Some people even add a gradient machine at the front to tilt the bike.
With what I describe above there are two things that you do not get with virtual climbing. The first of these is a sensation of altitude as the air gets thinner and colder and secondly you do not get that fantastic ride down. On an indoor trainer whether you’re going up or down you still need to keep pedalling. In the real world when you’re going downhill you rest and recover unless you’re one of the top descenders of the Tour De France or other cycling races.
Conclusion
I haven’t tried a smart trainer so my experiences and opinions on virtual climbing are based on theory rather than practice. I have used recumbent bikes but they give you a power to achieve rather than a sensation of climbing. Virtual climbing, as I have experienced it, is easier than climbing in the real world because if you go to slowly you don’t fall, and you don’t have the sudden very steep gradients that you sometimes experience in the physical world. Most indoor trainers are blocked at 12 percent if my memory serves me well. In the real world they can reach 23 percent or more.
Today during my walk this afternoon I surprised a cat on some stairs and I moved patiently. It brushed up against me so I started to stroke it. During this pandemic the only living things I have had physical contact with are cats. During a pandemic, if you’re not living with people, you are very limited.
Yesterday I did go out for a bike ride with a group of people, virtually. Before the ride I was feeling really down, and negative. After the ride I was feeling refreshed and relaxed. For the first time in three weeks I was able to do something physical without having to avoid people, worry about routing or anything else. All I had to do was pedal to the limit of my motivation and endurance.
If we went into full lock down then I would treat it as if we were in winter. I’d train hard, on the indoor trainer, so that when we are finally allowed more freedom in the outdoors I’d be fit enough to explore new routes.
The Shopping situation
When I went to the shops they were the emptiest I’ve seen them in a long time. I didn’t even need to queue to get in, although I did have a brief moment of over-exaggerating my steps as I was behind people walking slower than me. Everyone, or almost, walks slower than me, so that’s not a criticism of the people ahead of me. It’s good for you. You can use entirely different muscle groups as you behave in an eccentric manner. Even the self-checkout was empty, just one other person.
Of course in the process I forgot to buy plain rice so now I’m going to have to cook with wild rice today. I think playing the COVID-19 lottery, by going to the shops once a day, is risky enough. Wild rice is meant to be healthier anyway.
A Slow Down In New Cases
According to the figures I see, and articles in the press, it seems that the Pandemic has reached a plateau and we may be able to feel optimistic about the end coming in two or three weeks. Of course we have to be wary. With good weather more people are going out to enjoy the conditions, and the likelihood of another flareup is high if people are not careful.
Having said this I saw a tweet that the Canton De Vaud judiciary is going to start work again today, I saw that a shop selling coffee was open again and that a pet shop was open again too. These could be seen as signs, that more people are optimistic that things are improving.
Societal Change
I see that people are discussing whether society will have changed when this is all over and I believe that it will not have because of two key reasons. The first is that the wealthy, those with the power to effect change, will not have suffered like those that do not have the power to effect change. As a result many things will remain the same.
The second factor is rate of infection. When China was infected every other nation on earth had the opportunity to react, but as we see, after Italy was infected, no societies changed. Switzerland, France, Spain, The United Kingdom and the United States did not change.
It took governments saying “stay home, and self-isolate” for people to take action. To me this is a clear sign that the societal change people idealise is just that, an ideal.
Update: Victorian England was afraid of germs and diseases, which is why they wore white gloves and tried to keep their homes clean. The problem is that the paint they used to cover their walls was poisoning them, as was makeup and other elements of everyday life.
Side Effect
I have seen the headline in French and English that according to some people, the earth is less seismically active than usual. As none of the reputable news services have written about this story I am seeing it as just a curiousity, rather than something serious. It’s more likely that with less traffic, whether cars, trucks or planes, that seismometers, may detect less background noise.
In theory now would be the perfect time to have the LHC running, as there is less background noise.
Yesterday I had a morning ride because I wanted to participate in the Tour de Zwift event. Yesterday the track was London and I was riding slowly for the first half, conserving energy. Eventually, when I got warmed up I started to ride harder and harder until I was overtaking quite a few other cyclists. I took advantage to play on the sprint and got the Green jersey. I took some time to recover and then I pushed myself. I was overtaking group after group. I gained at least 50 places in the standing.
When I got to Keith Hill I was pedalling hard. I was overtaking people constantly and I was pushing from one group to the next, catching up with them just to encourage myself to make that much more effort. Eventually, I got to the top of the hill and I saw that I had both the green jersey and the polka dotted one. “Meilleur Grimpeur” as you hear on French television during the Tour De France. It feels good to push that much, to exceed your previous rides and for it to be quantifiable. This ride resulted in quite a few personal records on Zwift. I also improved my FTP score.
Making such an effort on an ordinary day would be great. I’d have had a good workout and reached my daily exercise goal. In this case, it was a mistake. I went climbing without having a proper dinner in the evening and all the energy I had burned to cycle was now missing for climbing. This was my worst day of climbing in a while. I completed one or two routes rather than the usual five or six. Usually, before I go climbing in the evening I rest. When I get to the wall I’m impatient to climb and I do well.
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