{"id":4608,"date":"2019-01-30T12:03:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T11:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2019-01-30T12:03:12","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T11:03:12","slug":"tour-de-zwift-2019-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/tour-de-zwift-2019-complete\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de Zwift 2019 complete"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

This morning I completed Stage 9 of the Tour de Zwift. I have now finished the challenge. In the process I went from riding on the shorter events during the first stages to taking the long options for at least the last two stages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A slow start before ramping up. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I don’t start the stage as fast as others. It takes me a few minutes to warm up and I have a psychological need to know that I’m over half way through a stage before I start pushing. I got two personal records on the last stage, personal<\/g> record for at least one lap and although I was down to 420th place at the end of the first lap I was able to gain on other riders. I finished in the early to mid 300s so a gain of at least 50 places. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fun of competition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When I’m hiking I’m often at the front of a group until I get to about 3200m and then I slow down and eventually get towards the middle or<\/g> the back. With Zwift<\/g> events<\/g> it is the opposite. I start weak and then gradually warm up and overtake. It’s usually by the second sprint that I start to pedal harder. I went from putting out 140+ watts for the first lap to 170 and then from there to 240 or more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that my body acclimatises to putting out a certain amount of power on a certain gear and when that starts to feel easy I go to a harder gear, and then a harder gear after that. I reach the sprint at over 200 watts and ramp up my cadence to 150 strokes per minute, if the data is correct and I sprint through and get a PR. Today it happened twice in the last two laps. I’m happy about this because it means that I had enough in reserve to push through right until the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Final kilometre<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The final kilometre was fun. We were at least four to six riders and we pushed each other to go faster. Eventually they broke off from me and I finally started to sprint really hard and caught up with them again. It’s a shame that I don’t record the screen as I race. It would have been fun to see this particular end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the last 960 metres of the race, I was putting out an average of 289 watts, with a peak of 400 watts for 30 seconds. This might not sound like much when you compare it to professional riders but I can see definite progress since I started Zwifting<\/g>. I went from a cadence of around 70-80 strokes per minute to an average of 97 strokes per minute during this stage. I have gone from struggling to generate 200 watts for a minute to being<\/g> able to generate 200 watts for longer and longer periods of time. I was able to maintain 400 watts for at least 30 seconds at the end of a 39 kilometre<\/g> event. I have made progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Next day<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After writing this blog post I decided to have a short nap. In normal circumstances I wake within half an hour or less. In this case I slept for over an hour. This morning I can still feel the effort in my legs. Zwift is a real workout. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>This morning I completed Stage 9 of the Tour de Zwift. I have now finished the challenge. In the process I went from riding on the shorter events during the first stages to taking the long options for at least the last two stages. A slow start before ramping up. I don’t start the stage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[736,1073,1054],"tags":[733,1066,1076,1055],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling","category-sports","category-zwift","tag-cycling","tag-indoor-trainer","tag-tour-de-zwift","tag-zwift"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}