Not too fired up one way or another about the vitual TdF race they will be holding (don’t see how it benefits me), but am excited about the new virtual Ventoux climb they are building for it.
Was on Ventoux in 2009 with my wife, just above the Chalet Reynard, where the Zwift climb will end.
Will be interesting to see and ride them. I’m bummed they are in a new “world” vs being included in Watopia. Just a shame to have another ball to juggle on scheduling and not necessarily have access on a regular basis.
Per prior releases, this will be overloaded in the calendar at the start, and we will see where it lands in the long run. I expect it will be an optional world for the rest of the season considering there are two alternates available all the time now.
The comment of the race ending at the mid point on the climb makes me wonder if Z has the full climb done and the event is just finishing early to keep from being too long, or there is an actual limit in what they modeled? Might even be a preview of new functions to start and/or end at different points on a longer climb?
That was the speculation in the Zwift Insider podcast last week (although they did not predict it ending at the Chalet). The thought was that Zwift needed 1) name recognition and 2) not be overly long (~1 hour in length).
So the virtual TdF is now official…again, not really too fired up about the pro race, but whatever…I’ll probably tune in for a stage and see how it goes.
But there will also be Etape stages across all 3 weekends, for everyone to ride in. Also worth noting that it looks like the whole Ventoux climb will be in the game, but the pros are only climbing to the Chalet. For the Ventoux etape stage, subscribers will be climbing all the way to the observatory.
The full climb is in zwift, the Tdf was due to finish 3/4 the way up so they have recreated that route, plus then the full 1500/1600m of the climb.
Again poorly implemented by leaving it out of watopia. Will see how it pans out as most of the real works stuff they have implemented as actually been the boring bits… Yorkshire, Richmond, Innsbruck… tbf NY isn’t that great either… might as well just stick with Watopia as far as I’m concerned.
After Chalet Reynard is arguably the hardest part, as the winds are the strongest there. I went up all 3 routes in 3 days last October for the Haute route and the last 5kms was always the worst.
Every time a game developer spends money making a new map, rather than enhancing an existing map that people enjoy, a piece of my soul dies.
Details of the RGV route in the upcoming France map.
It is very much along the same lines as the other ‘real world’ courses in Zwift. It might be better once more people get into the world but so far I would say it’s a nice change but a bit dull. I was only doing 90 minutes tonight so didn’t do the full Ventoux climb.
Nice…you snagged a KOM on Strava. Not many get to do that!
Didn’t realize the new courses were up already. This AM it was still London and Yorkshire.
The courses are still “locked” AFAIK. Those that have ridden them have hacked in (and are at risk for account actions, if the FB comments are to be believed).
The open access won’t happen until the official events start on Z.
No one has hacked in as such, I havent changed anything at the server end. I just changed the world in the Map preferences file on my PC. If they want to ban me for that then they can, I’m happy to take my money elsewhere. If they dont want people to access content that we (I) pay them for and that is on my PC then they probably shouldn’t push the update until they are happy with it.
To be fair I used to swap worlds fairly regular when they didn’t offer a choice and had zero comeback for it. If they choose to start taking action now that is their perogative to do so but I’m not a captive of Zwift. Plenty more virtual fish in the sea!
Insane effort by Mike Woods to claim the stage…6.21w/kg for 45 min. Good lord.
https://www.strava.com/activities/3780644919/segments/2719581371199606506
Was impressive and all the out of the saddle work no less.
That was totally insane - I kept watching it thinking he must crack! Awesome to see.
I’m excited for these new maps. Better get more familiar with climbing for Ventoux 
Just did the climb, and confirmed it’s plenty hard.
So, who got to try Ventoux on Zwift while it was still accessible (without ‘hacking’ the world selection)? How did you find it?
I’ve done it twice now and, for the most part, I think Zwift did a pretty good job of it. They’ve added a bit more visual interest to the lower two thirds of the climb - a necessary difference to the real climb I think - but the last third (the ‘moonscape’ bit) feels and looks pretty accurate (as far as Zwift goes anyway). The KOM jersey for the climb is pretty cool as well. I’m not sure that it is something that I would do all that often though - climbing on zwift just doesn’t feel enough like real climbing for me (you don’t have all the other pressures on your body, so you can just lock in and treat it like a TT into a strong headwind).
Having just completed Sweet Spot Base HV I&II, I felt pretty comfortable with long intervals at high percentages of FTP, so Ventoux was a good challenge. Managed to hold just over my training FTP for the whole of the climb, so I guess that means its time to bump the FTP up a bit for the coming build phase.
I’m looking forward to the France maps going on rotation
I’ve done the full climb once and once up the the intermediate finish. I like it. Sure is a longer kill than AdZ, but it’s pretty.
