Queen of the Downhill

 I have already gotten caught up in past hunts for 60 second power, 20 minute power, most repeated efforts on Richmond and Yorkshire (nobody even cares about local legends on Zwift.) and less we not forget the hunt for ten orange jerseys. Why? I don't really know. Why was I obsessed about each Alp section for two or three months? Why did I train for an all out session on Ventoux? Because I need goals. 

So why in the world would I want to climb twelve stupid red, yellow, and blue mountains when I hate climbing? Answer, to race down as fast as I can. Why do I try to shave off two or three seconds on a downhill of ten minutes? I recently rode on Watopia for a short warmup. I sprinted down the hill, taking the virtual qom on the descent. I have all of the France descents. (not that anyone should care about their best time on a virtual downhill anyway.) I don't want to start on Watopia, so I decided to let someone else have the Watopia crown. (I beat them by 3 seconds) She will never know. And when I looked at her ride, she tried really hard to get her time down. But, the sprinter in me just takes it from the very start. It was the same way I beat LVH in last year's sprint by half a second. She put in a huge sprint. But I had so much speed going into the sprint that I didn't need to hit 12 or 13 w/kg to win. I admit, it took me about seven attempts to beat her. My first attempt put me in second place by only 0.02 if I remember correctly. But I threw everything aside to beat her. Training and racing that same sprint until I got it just right. My time in practice before the Academy was under 22 seconds! But breaking 23 that month was a huge, huge task.

There are three new climbs coming to France and the Madone is rumored to be coming but only in Watopia I'm told. While the Alp and Ventoux are sort of manly macho climbs, the French view the Madone as a weaker climb. I'm not sure if I can explain it. I guess it is just softer, less steep. Ille Gardner ripped the throat out on her ride this year, demolishing the former times. Maybe it is in the name. Maybe it's because it has never been included in the Tour. All of its rides are pure time trial performances. It is a climb for purists, a virgin climb. It is a bit too long for me to perform well. I hated training on Ventoux. But if your coach was an hour specialist on the track, sooner or later you get forced to make a long attempt. Riding an hour at full intensity is so exhausting physically and mentally. 

I love sprint training and racing. It has taken Zwift years to finally start real sprint races. I won two of them! Scotland was by far the hardest because it included two climbs up the Sgurr with three sprints. I won all five that race. I took six or seven sprints in a Richmond race, skipping the first of two climbs to save my strength for the sprints. I wish we had this years ago. I could use a race like that now. But they are very rare.

In between now and the Academy, I will be doing some pointed workouts and probably another attempt on the Makuri route. I will probably do the Madone even though it is 3 km longer than in real life and it will take over an hour. I think both Ventoux and the Tourmelet sit at 62 and 61 minutes for me, and no I will probably never break the hour on either of them. 

I'm excited for the last Academy in November. I hope the races will be good for a sprinter to win. See ya!

September

Looking forward to the next two months. Zwift will announce the Zwift Academy very soon. It will be my last hurrah, my seventh and final academy ( I believe ). It just feels like the time is right. After a few bad months, I've trained and fought my way back into top condition. No, I'm not going to beat any all time records. I can't even get close to my top one minute, perhaps my best effort ever in the Academy.

In August, I searched through a lot of routes looking to get or regain some QOM's. They have never been too important. But the efforts really boost my power and condition. I fought and fought for my forward Richmond hilly route back in the day. But with the pack dynamic super blobs, a good number of racers put in times even a time trial bike couldn't match. Then there were a good number of 'glitches' where riders were able to do 46 kph steady, even uphills at only 100 watts. Add banded cheat rides on the Alp and you have a sort of wild west theme on Strava segments. Strava refuses to police records for bots, weight doping, and other forms of cheating in virtual cycling. They use to in the beginning, but I think it just got progressively harder to filter results. So Strava is sort of anything goes, even e-bikes are popular now.

I have two Q's on Watopia from the old days, my FloJo efforts with zpower. I regained two of my London laps, one last year and one recently, which was very hard. I trained and captured one in New York (super hard), Richmond (very hard), and added Scotland (hard) and Innsbruck (not as hard as I expected). I may need to do another Innsbruck or two in case some others come to hunt my times. As for my downhill efforts, it started when someone at Zwift said the Alp will have auto braking soon. So I went all out a few times. Then, it just seemed fun to do it on the portals. 

I am going to follow some coaching tips from Nathan Guerra to see if I can sharpen my sprinting. I've mostly worked on one to ten minutes. FTP test is coming too. 

I have two attempts coming up. One is a France route that may be achievable. This is because the pack in the race did not go very hard on the flat section. The climb on the petite however, was first class. I'll have to ride my best the last five minutes. Then we have a 'beat the cheat' effort. This one seems out of reach but I will run some test efforts. I will have to 'bomb' the downhill to strive to get ahead. The time trial bike will have an advantage in this section. My husband crunched the numbers I need for the uphill: 313 for the first part and 461 for the last part. That will be 387 average. In this lap, the dq 'winner' beat the men in the race by 14 seconds. I'll see if I can even get close to this one, over 50 kph. (nope, this one seems impossible. I was 16 seconds too slow. I can't see a way of gaining this much time.)

ADD: I ran the Rebel route on France today. I got the Q by 6 seconds. It was a hard session. It was another case of tt bike versus a pack of riders. In the compare efforts on Strava, we went a bit back and forth. I got the 6 seconds in the last 30 or 40 seconds with a hard charge to the line. One thing to reflect on: I was doing an all out effort for one lap. Maddy had the previous best time in a fondo with 100 km to go. In that perspective, that was one fast effort in a 100 mile event. NP was 260. I had 20 extra watts with a faster bike and ran the same exact speed on the flat sections, and I was pushing harder everytime there was a small incline. This kind of racing is really hard, really challenging, and really rewarding.