Congrats!
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Got my Masochist badge today. So there’s that.
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Nice. After completing Four Horsemen today, I‘ll sit at 20, so quite a few to go…
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…aaand it is completed. Wasn’t even as bad as I thought.
Now it’s Über Pretzel and PRL Full. Not looking forward to either.
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240w for that is brutal. Nicely done.
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I had a few beers (too many) yesterday, so I wanted to go really mellow. When the road started pointing up however, I got motivated.
Really didn’t expect to go up the Alpe in sub 50… apparently beer is a really good prep for long days in the saddle 
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I rode all of Route Ma Poule this morning and got to 61.5km before my app crashed because there were like a million riders. 
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Finally ticked off PRL London Full. Frankly, that was just rather unpleasant. 5 hours 5 minutes (4 hours 57 minutes moving time) for the 173km - just far too long to be riding indoors on the turbo. Won’t be doing that again.
They could have made a much more interesting long course using the London map so I’ve no idea why they thought 11 repeats of box hill would be a good idea.
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The original PRL took place when the London map was far smaller. It didn’t have the Surry hills for sure and may have lacked some of the flats too.
They could consider doing something new with the extra roads, but the current one is accurate to what we had the first time they did the course.
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Didn’t know that! Makes a lot of sense
Would it still be Zwift if they didn’t ignore longstanding complaints and make a small change to improve the quality of experience of their users? How much money has come into the company, and they still act like their engineering team is 3 people and an occasional intern.
I’ve got all of the badges now, and I’m peacing from their platform.
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Damn…that is a really impressive time!
At 2.9w/kg the rough estimates for your remaining routes:
- Mega Pretzel: 3h40min
- Uber Pretzel: 5h
- PRL Full: 5h55min
I hope that helps.
I might add ETA-calculator to Zwifthub at a certain point. But it’s really just a rough estimate. Equipment choice, draft, height, weight etc. Quite some variables.
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Thanks - all those trainerroad plans this year showing their benefit. With the benefit of the UK lockdown, being furloughed for a while, and working from home a lot this year, I’ve managed to fit in high volume sweet spot base 1 & 2, high volume sustained power build, and the mid volume century specialist plan - definitely needing a bit of a break now though.
It’s definitely a route where a bit of advanced planning is worthwhile.
I used the tron bike, which I think was probably the best option for me based on what I had available. Averaged 232 watts, so 2.97w/kg for me. I had the loose aim of doing the flats at around 2.4-2.7w/kg, the climbs at 3.5-8w/kg, and coasting the descent, which I very roughly kept to.
Nutrition wise, I was aiming for about 70g or carbs per hour and pretty closely stuck to that (roughly 338 total carbs consumed during the ride, so about 67g carbs per hour). I had:
- four bottles with SIS energy powder - about 50g carbs each.
- two gels - 36g carbs each
- 2 bars of chocolate (mars bars) - 23g carbs each
- 2 coffees with honey - about 5g carbs each
Legs feel pretty rubbish today. I think riding that long indoors on a very static bike is just not good for your body. Outside all the extra movement means that the stresses and strains are more spread out
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Best Bike Split has estimates for all the Zwift courses.
Good find. Here’s the link to all of the Zwift routes on Best Bike Split.
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My experience (n=1) is that your indoor century /. 5 hour ride leaves you feeling pretty wrecked, even if the overall effort level wasn’t too bad. But like most things, it gets easier on the body.
After I did my first one, I swore I’d never do one again…had checked the box and it was a “one & done” type thing. I’ve now done several and it isn’t that bad at all.
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Has anyone had success using the ERG files from BBS for the long Zwift routes? Seems like small discrepancies in weight/CXX over course would cause drift in the timing of the wattage. Is it better to take some general wattages for climbing/flats/descents and control manually?
Yeah, I definitely agree regarding the impact of riding indoors being greater on the body for a comparative distance or time. That said, I think that Zwift’s physics engine is extremely generous when it comes to the speeds that I can hold - or maybe its just that the roads are so bad in the UK that the extra rolling resistance massively slows me down compared to the roads in zwift. For me I think 100 miles on zwift is probably more like 85 in real life.
I’m not sure though that I see much training benefit in those super long rides on the turbo, which is probably the main reason why I will do very few of them. If I want to ride for more than a couple of hours then I think the other benefits of being outdoors compared to indoors (especially in terms of the pure enjoyment) become much more dominant - it ends up being less about the training and more about the riding. Also, if I’m training for long outdoor events then at some point I do need to train myself to the specific challenges of that, which are much more than just keeping the pedals going round.
I’ll probably end of doing indoor centuries on zwift occasionally (perhaps on more interesting routes) but I can’t say that the prospect is something that I look forward to, unlike the outdoor equivalent. Needs must sometimes though I guess
Yeah, Zwift speeds are definitely overestimated, plus there’s no wind. These two ZwiftInsider’s articles examine why that happens.
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