The last day of winter is March 19th. What do I want to accomplish before then?
I have a thought. It’s doable and I need a deadline. My Everest challenge on Zwift is 93% complete and at the end I get a fancy new bike, the Tron. I’ve been at it for awhile. In October I posted Sam is not a climber but she’s halfway to Tron.
So here’s the deal. By March 19th, I want to do the rest of my climbing. That’s 3,354 vertical metres. I’m climbing about 400-500 a week but that won’t be enough. Probably I’ll need to do a trip or two up the Alpe du Zwift.
Here are some route options:
Road to Sky — A 12.4 mile (19.9 km) climb with 3,753 ft (1,144 m) of elevation gain. The most direct route to the mountain.
Tour of Fire and Ice — A 15.6 miles (25.1 km) trek with 3,825 ft (1,166 m) of elevation gain. This route combines the Volcano KOM for some extra fun.
Four Horsemen — It doesn’t get more epic than this. A 55.5 mile (89.3 km) ride across all KOM segments in Watopia, with an elevation gain of 6,929 ft (2,112 m). If it’s a giant hill, you’re going to climb it.
Why do I care about getting a Tron? It’s the fastest all round bike in Zwift, good on flats and rolling hills.
What colour will I choose? I think I like the multi-coloured bikes the best. Maybe blue and purple?
The Pride Rides are back on Zwift and the schedule is here.
I think the Pride rides and the Swarm were the two groups that got me into Zwift group rides, instead of riding solo, last winter. There’s a lot of conversation on Discord and friendly text chat too.
Here’s the event description: “Join us for a fun ride to celebrate diversity and the LGBTQI+ community. All are welcome in our rainbow-colored open ride and conversation! This is a community-led ride in support of the LGBTQI+ Zwift Community, PRiDE OUT, and in celebration of LGBT History Month in the UK. All are welcome no matter where you ride!
The rides are led and swept by our LGBTQI+ Zwift Community members. Ride leads will keep to 1.2-2 w/kg but may have some optional fun activities planned, especially optional sprints are quite the thing in our group. Regrouping after is key to ensure the group remains a lovely big blob. First-time group riders are welcomed, the Sweep will make sure you do not drop behind.
Chats in this group may involve LGBTQI+ topics so come with an open heart and open mind. Unkind or intolerant comments will be reported per Zwift policies.
The LGBTQI+ Community on Zwift supports @prideoutuk’s #LGBTHistoryRide. Post and tag your Zwift ride pictures to social media with #LGBTHistoryRide to show your support.
There’s a bunch of us in the 221 in 2021 group speeding along, racking up big numbers of workouts. It’s just the start of February and I’m up to more than 50 workouts.
An aside: Want to join us? Here’s how. It’s a very friendly, supportive group.
We had a discussion the other day, those of us who are often working out more than once a day, about why.
Here’s me: “Yes, I’m working out more than once a day most of the time in these strange pandemic stay at home times. It’s partly the Yoga with Adriene January challenge. It’s partly lifting weights with adult serious lifting offspring who has moved back home. Family bonding over sandbag deadlifts! And then it’s Zwift team stuff. I’m taking Saturday as my rest day with a a commitment to no serious lifting and no Zwifting. But even then there are extra long dog walks and yoga.”
So why? And will it last through 2021?
This pace of working out certainly won’t last once there’s evening work commitments out in the world plus theatre and music to go see. So the part of the explanation this year is that it’s a thing I love doing that I can do. I’m missing out on a lot of my work and entertainment activities. There’s no gallery openings and no theatre. No parties on the weekend, no lunch Sunday brunch with friends. Options are somewhat limited right now.
I do read books and watch some shows but when I am stressed I can have a hard time concentrating. I have a short attention span when I’m worried and I’m worried a lot through the pandemic. Again, moving my body in ways that challenge me phsyically is both a thing that I can do-it’s an available fun option– and it helps with stress. I sleep better if I exercise in the evenings and go to bed physically as well as mentally tired. See Bikes and Books, about the dangers bikes may pose to books, and Virtual Communites, which talks about my international book club.
There’s very little everyday movement in these stay at home lives. All movement, it feels like, is intentional movement. I’m either sitting at my computer not moving much at all, working some ridiculously long days, or I’m working out. In the run of the day on campus I do a lot of walking between meetings. I also bike commute to work. There’s none of that anymore. As Cate said, way back at the start of all this, we’re all indoor cats now.
Not everyone has the space to set up a home gym or the means to buy exercise or sports equipment. But we’ve got a lot of stuff and some space. That said, things are cramped even here. I’ve got a combo home office/gym and it contains my desk and computer and several monitors as well as three person’s worth of workout gear including three bikes, a lot of free weights, and soon, a rowing machine. It’s all here. It’s nearby. And I’m wearing workout clothes to work (with some dressier clothes thrown over top) and that makes working out easy. Again, this won’t be the same when I’m back in the office.
So, yes I’m working out more than I usually do during the pandemic for a slew of reasons. You?
I’m not sure I’ll go back to the gym. Maybe the hot yoga studio. Maybe. What about you?
And I’m pretty sure I’ll work out less–but I’ll also have more everyday movement–once the pandemic is over. You?
That’s Sam doing yoga in the dining room with Cheddar the dog
I keep telling myself that January will have been the hardest of the pandemic winter months. I’m not sure that’s right but it felt hard. For the first time in a few years I didn’t fly or drive south with my bike for a week. I’ve had a run of very lovely wintertime breaks. In years past I’ve gone to Florida 2020 and 2019, Arizona in 2015 and 2010, and South Carolina for bike club training camp also in 2015.
Here we are:
Top of the hill with Coach Chris and friends
This year instead there’s been a lot of Zwifting–so much Zwifting–806.6 km worth to be precise. My first pandemic Zwifting goal way back last spring was 100 km a week and then I upped it to 160 km this fall and now I’m averaging just over 200 km a week. Whee! Between that and Yoga With Adriene it’s a busy month fitness wise.
Outside has been dark and cold and windy and icy. Sarah and I got in a couple of long, happy fat bike rides and I’m hoping for lots more in February. Depending on how my knee holds up I’m hoping to get out the snow shoes at the farm in February too. We did have a yurt reservation at a provincial park for winter camping and some actual vacation but that’s now cancelled in light of Ontario’s ‘stay at home” orders.
“As of January 21, campground and backcountry campsites and roofed accommodations (including cabins, yurts and cottages) at Ontario Parks will be closed during the current provincial restriction period in order to help stop the spread of COVID-19 and support Ontario’s stay-at-home order.”
I get it. You can’t both stay at home and go winter camping. But still…
At work we’re making plans for summer and fall and that makes me hopeful. Sarah and I will make a bunch of summer camping reservations in hopes of spending time in Algonquin with the canoe. I’m also looking forward to a summer of local bike rides and Snipe racing.
How are you getting through the winter? What are you hoping for in the spring and summer?
“The year of celebration will include multiple events held in New York along the Mighty Metropolitan route. This is a nod to the roots of many legendary Black cyclists like Major Taylor, and Olympic medallist Nelson Vails who will be joining events as a special guest. Other guests will include Ama Nsek (L39ION of LA) and Rahsaan Bahati, (Bahati Foundation Elite Team) as well as community leaders from the Black Cyclists Network and Level Up Cycling Movement.
All Zwifters will receive invitations to join the hour-long social rides in New York, where the pace will be managed by ride leaders and kept between 1.5-2 watts per kilogram of body weight.
In addition to celebrating Black athletic achievements, the virtual training platform has chosen LA Bicycle Academy (LABA) — a youth education program, community bike shop and youth cycling team — as its charity partner in a bid to expand its impact. LABA was set up by Damon Turner, who has mentored the likes of Justin Williams, Cory Williams, Rahsaan Bahati and Coryn Rivera, and its mission is to support communities without exposure and access to cycling. In addition to making a donation to LABA, which sponsors young athletes without the resources to continue their cycling careers, Zwift will be offering them mentorship opportunities.”
“We rise up”
Change begins when we come together. I’ll see you out there fellow feminist Zwifters! Let’s ride. And as part of our celebration of Black cyclists I’m hoping to share some of their stories here on the blog.
True confession: That’s not my blog title. Thanks blog title generator. I tried a bunch of them. They also suggested:
Need More Time? Read These Tips To Eliminate ZWIFT PANDEMIC CYCLING STRESS 7 DAYS A WEEK
Everything You Wanted to Know About ZWIFT PANDEMIC CYCLING STRESS 7 DAYS A WEEK and Were Afraid To Ask
Also true confession: The blog content is all mine. Life hasn’t been easy lately. On the one hand, I’ve got a great job I can do from home, a supportive family, some lovely pets etc. On the other, there are stay at home orders and rising SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in the province where I live, and attempted coups in the country to the south. I feel like I am holding my breath until the transition of power takes place and then again until we’ve vaccinated the most vulnerable members of our society. I’m sure that ‘holding one’s breath’ feeling is worse for American family and friends. I also have family in the north of England where things are very bad and I’m nervously watching the situation there too.
All of that said, I have been really enjoying myself on my bike and it’s a thing that spills over to the rest of my life and keeps me calm and relatively happy. I sleep better after riding my bike. I smile more often. As a result, I’m riding lots. I’m alternating feeling proud of this and feeling ridiculous about this. Yes, it’s good to relax but surely I should be reading more good fiction. (Are bikes really beating books as they worried in the 1890s?) But the fact of the matter is I’m struggling like everyone else with attention span and distractability. I still read a lot but riding helps even when reading doesn’t.
I’m also socially engaged with my bike teammates. I’m even meeting up with real world cyclist friends on Zwift even though we’re trying to get out on our actual bikes at least once a week.
Mental and emotional health and well-being turn out to be a pretty good motivation to ride.
What’s a typical week of riding look like? I thought I’d share my last week of riding with you.
Here’s a rundown:
Sunday
Sunday morning fat biking in Guelph
What: Riding trails around Guelph on our fat bikes
How far: No idea really! We didn’t even take our Garmins
How long: We didn’t really even keep track of time. Somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours.
Purpose: Fresh air, fun
The rest of my rides are on Zwift
Club social ride
TFC Social Ride on Zwift
What: Team social ride, we split into two groups, one at sub 2.0 watts per kilo, and one at sub 2.5, we banter on Discord, and ride tightly packed as a group except for designated sprint and regroup sections. We also race at the end for those who are keen.
How far: Usually about 30 km
How long: One hour
Purpose: Connect with teammates, promote the club, share info about TFC racing
Monday
TFC Monday night race, a rare sight, me in the QOM jersey
What: TFC Monday Night race, D category
How far: 40 km with killer hill at end, Keith Hill After Party was the route
How long: approx 90 min plus warm up and cool down
Purpose: Race!
Tuesday
What: DIRT family values ride
How far: 30 km
How long: 50 minutes
Purpose: Dad joke ride at recovery pace
My favorite dad jokes from the Dads Indoors Riding Trainers (DIRT) ride tonight:
What do you call an apology that’s made up of dots and dashes? Remorse Code
I trapped some vegan burglars in my basement. I’m not sure they were vegans but they kept saying, “Lettuce Leaf, Lettuce Leaf.”
Thanks for the company Jim Peyton
DIRT ride. That’s me in the pink cap
Wednesday
Here’s our race poster
What: Team route recon, getting ready for Thursday race
How far: 30 km, Watopia Figure 8 reverse
How long: One hour
Purpose: Connect with teammates, discuss race strategy, practise paceline techniques
Thursday
Team time trial
What: Team Time Trial WTRL
How far: 30 km
How long: 55 minutes ish (time includes my cool down)
Purpose: We raced in Mocha class and came 15th out of 65 teams. Woohoo! (More importantly, we raced well together, had pretty smooth transitions, and kept up a nice pace–40 km/hr on the flats.)
Personal achievement: I stayed with the group up two climbs!
Friday
At the end….
What: TFC Christmas Smash Fest
How far: 35 km, 18 laps in crit city
How long: One hour and five minutes
Purpose: No category racing! So much time in the red zone. I was able to jump on the back of faster riders as they lapped me and I did okay in the end as a result
A friend asked for advice the other day. Not in a serious way, in that Facebook joking way, asking for random advice about anything.
My advice giving theme for her was grandmother’s advice. In my family that’s things like ‘take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’ and ‘an hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after.’
The other grandmother favorite of mine is ‘start as you mean to continue.’ I think I’ve even blogged on that theme before. Let me go look… Why yes I did. It’s here.
What I like about it is the thought that you should just begin.
“Don’t make big plans for your future self. She’s busy and easily distracted. Instead, do it now, whatever it is. Make it routine, part of your everyday. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike.”
So on New Year’s Eve I was part of a small but mighty team riding up the Road to Sky, the climb portion of which is Alpe du Zwift. I’d never done it before and now I have a baseline time to beat. It was a team time trial but we didn’t make much effort to stay together once the climb part of the ride began.
Tough going but lots of encouragement and conversation kept me pedaling.
We raced down together at the end and laughed a lot. Thanks friends!
I entered the workout in the 220 in 2020 group this way, “Epic last workout of 2020. Climbed Road to Sky in a team time trial including 1000 m of climbing on Alpe du Zwift.”
The next morning, January 1, I joined in on a meet up organized by some teammates to ride the full PRL (Prudential Ride London) course, about 173 km. I joined in for the first 30 to meet my weekly 160 km goal. They abandoned the meet up version once the rubber banding in Zwift which keeps riders of different speeds together went wonky. For me it meant starting the new year with another 400 m of climbing. Box Hill twice on the first day of the year!
Now we’re off to Prince Edward County and the farm for a couple of days. There’ll be walks in the woods and some Yoga With Adriene. We had hoped for fat biking but there’s no snow here. That will have to wait until we come home to Guelph.
Welcome 2021.
I’ll write about plans for the year later but for now I’m starting as I mean to continue, with Zwift, supportive teammates, yoga, and time outdoors in the winter sun.
There’ll also be more home weightlifting now that the weightlifting son has moved home for the semester.
Sunday evening bike rides are a thing among completists. Cyclists usually have weekly mileage goals and then check Sunday to see how they are doing. This can lead to the oddball distance Sunday night ride.
These day though I am riding lots more. This week I got to Sunday and was already over 145 km.
Riding with a friend on a Sunday morning
My Sunday began with freshly baked croissants and an 11 am social ride with a friend who is just starting his indoor, winter training. Since we’re in different cities now and there’s a pandemic on, we’re riding in Zwift. We set out to do the TickTock route, a nice, flat 17-ish km in Watopia. It was wild though because that’s the route for the WTRL race this Tuesday and every racing Zwifter was out there giving the course a ride-over. Luckily the meetup function in Zwift keeps people together no matters what watts or speed you’re putting out. That’s very useful and we had a fun ride chatting on FB messenger as we rode.
Croissants!
(Thought: I could set up a Fit is a Feminist Issue meet up ride some time if enough of us are interested. Let me know!)
So that got me up to 162 or so km.
Next up, a bunch of work work and yard work and house stuff, followed by the TFC club social ride at 3:15. That was a chatty bunch of laps in Richmond with fun sprints each lap. We also raced the last 5km. Look at all the red! I think you can tell I was working hard. I’m also wearing the green sprint jersey. The club ride was 37 km.
Recovering at the end of the TFC social ride
You can see where this is leading. There I was at the end of the day just a few kilometers short of 200 km.
So while Sarah and I were chatting about dinner plans I hopped on the bike and rounded out my week in virtual France. (It was also a well rounded day in terms of places: Watopia, Richmond, and France.)
France
There, I did it!
200
Happy now completist friends?
Honestly, it felt good. I might have regretted not finishing the distance. And I’ve increased my weekly cycling goal to match my new habits.
I’m not going to argue in favour of Zwift racing, I’ll save that for another post. 🙂
But to be clear, even when I give the argument it’s not going to be the kind of argument that seeks to persuade those who know that they don’t like racing.
Short version though: It’s a great way of tracking your individual performance and improvement, and in the case of bike racing it’s as much about co-operation and teamwork as it is about competition. There’s also a pretty big element of strategy in some kinds of bike races.
Hand holding an ice cream cone with clouds as the ice cream
“Let’s just take it as given that some of us do care about speed, that it’s an aesthetic thing that doesn’t need an explanation, like preferring chocolate ice cream to vanilla ice cream. You can say what you like about chocolate but that doesn’t give reasons for the vanilla ice cream lover to switch.
That said, lots of us do care about speed and keep caring about speed as we age. From that point of view, this is mostly good news. Training still works, you can keep your speed, and slowing down isn’t a physiological necessity. Yay! There are bad news bits. Getting in that much training and the right kind of training becomes a lot more complicated. You don’t just have to care, you have to REALLY CARE. And there’s the rub.
I’m going to blog later about what I like about racing and speed. My pitch for chocolate ice cream as it were. I want to be clear what it is I’m doing when I do that. I’m describing what I get out of it, and what you might like about it too, but there aren’t reasons or arguments. It’s totally okay not to care and like what you like.”
OK, back on track, to the main point of this post. If you want to race on Zwift, first, get yourself over to ZwiftPower and register.
What’s ZwiftPower? “Put simply, ZwiftPower is a community-driven website that complements the Zwift app. It lets Zwift racers and race organisers track results and check out all the details of the races they’ve participated in, as well as monitoring and analysing their data.”
It’s the official results site for all Zwift races. You need to be on ZwiftPower to be actually in the race. Otherwise, with some rare exceptions, you’re just along for the ride.
Based on your performance and FTP ZwiftPower will assign you a category for racing. It also tracks your power in a range of different timed categories which let you know if you’re a good all rounder, a sprinter, or best at long endurance efforts.
It’s not the most intuitive website around but there’s lots of information about teams, races, performance, and results.
Zwift Power
Second, start by trying out some individual time trials. It’s just you and your bike against the clock. There’s no drafting and no interaction with other bikes.
“A time trial is a race between you and the clock. It’s the “Race of Truth.” No drafting, no teammates, no tactical games – just you and your bike, trying to cover a certain distance in the fastest time you can. They work a little differently than other races on Zwift. When you sign up for a TT event, you’ll get an individual start time (equal to or after the event’s start time). Make sure to log in and join the event before that time, and your avatar will line up on one of the conveyor belts in the starting pen. These belts will move riders up and release them in staggered starts. Start pedaling before the countdown hits zero. When it’s time for your row to leave the pen, your avatar will speed up to 20 miles per hour for a rolling start. Cross the line and it’s go time!”
Some races automatically put you on a time trial bike but if not go to your garage in Zwift and select the time trial bike.
Time trials are a great intro to racing and they’re a great way to mark progress over time.
My fave is La Bicicletta Toronto Supper TT, Wednesday at 630 pm ET. Often it’s on Fuego Flats, 15 km, which I also love.
Third, having done some ITTs check out out your FTP and go back and see what category ZwiftPower says you are and then go out and do some short, road races, where you can draft with other people and work together to reach the line.
My club, TFC, also has a beginners’ category in our Friday night series. It’s usually shorter and flatter than the main race but it’s unforgiving in terms of power and categories. You get DQed if you go over the watts per kilo for D. It’s not so useful if you’re a speedy beginner!
Bike race
Fourth, okay you’re on ZwiftPower and you’re doing some ITTs and some beginner races, what’s next? I love team time trials. I also love racing with a club and the camraderie that comes with that. You can try out a bunch of Zwift bike clubs, check out their vibe, and their regular racing schedule and commitment. At TFC we run a Monday night and a Friday night race as well as taking part in the WTRL team time trial series. Sarah is a member of ZSUN and you can read about her team members here.
Racing is better with teammates
Do you race on Zwift? What’s your ‘getting started’ advice?
