gthomson

Is anyone following the Zwift Tour De France virtual rides and joining in on the rides offered? I did Stage 1 which was just Watopia and passed on 2 & 3 but joined stage 4 which was pretty cool. Lot's of French scenery with a little bit of elevation. I had to bail early because I was on my lunch hour but the actual ride was over an hour long so a good work out. I felt like a tourist with all the pictures I was taking while riding but probably the closest I'll get to the TDF in a few years.

atwl77

Yeah, I did stage 3 on Monday and stage 4 yesterday. Lots of pics for that first time on stage 3, but too bad at the end of the ride Zwift only allows a maximum of 5. I still ended up plastering them all on Strava, lol.

Love the little bump at the end of each loop of stage 4. It helped me jump up a significant amount of position on the 2nd lap.

I am sort of looking forward to, and also not too keen on, the Ventoux climb. On one hand, it's an iconic climb and would love to try it virtually. But on the other hand, I hear that it's a long, 90-120 mins climb depending on your level of fitness, and so limits when I can actually attempt the thing. Weekday training nights after work are definitely out in this case, leaving only weekends but I'd rather be riding outside during the weekend.

Andy Somnifac 

Done all the stages so far. Looking forward to the Ventoux climb this weekend. Gonna hurt for a flatlander just getting into shape again.

Thomas15

I haven't done the virtual TdF but I have completed the 1st and 2nd stages of L'Etape du Tour. It's not supposed to be a race per se but the two stages I did, most riders were pushing it. I'm not in a big hurry to ride the new routes in Paris/France mainly because I'm trying to do as much outside riding as possible since the weather has been nice.


Going to do stage 3 on Sunday, the ride up Mount Ventoux. Looking forward to this knowing that it will probably be painful. I generally take about 70 minutes to go from the foul line to the spinner on the Alpe, 1:22 for the complete Road to Sky. Ven-Top adds 1400 feet of climbing and a few miles? Should be able to take my time and finish this in less than 2 hours. I hope.


As an aside, I worked really hard last winter to get all 67 routes completed and get the Tron. I managed to do this from Mid Nov. when I started Zwift to end of April. Once the routes were completed it became harder to level up due to a lack of bonus XPs. I spent 6 or 7 weeks in level 29 which has a 20,000 XP gap to level 30. So keeping a few routes for next winter when riding outside is not my thing.

str8jakett

I did stage 3 L'Etape last week just to see the map. I really like the scenery. Yesterday, started the stage 3 Discovery ride to quickly bow out and climb Ventoux. I can do the Alpe in just slightly under an hour but it took me 1:45 to climb Ventoux. I was also very touristy with the camera on the way up.

atwl77

I ended up doing L'Etape stage 3 today, because I had washed my bike yesterday afternoon, then it rained from evening right into the night and the roads were all still wet by morning, lol.

Had two bananas, coffee and a cereal bar for breakfast (maybe not enough) and started out too hard. Perhaps insufficient warm-up too. Less than 25% into the ride I was already feeling it, high HR and sweating buckets. Dropped all the way down to 34-28T and slowed down to low cadence, was just Z2 but felt like I was doing Z4. Lost a ton of position, from around 200+ at the start all the way down to 700+ out of over 1200 riders.

But after a while I finally found my legs and slowly started bringing the effort back up. Around 5km remaining took an energy gel and kept pushing to the top, eventually finishing just somewhere below 700th place. Reached the top at 1:57:30 (1:53:22 on the Zwift Insider-verified Strava segment).

I feel like if I was more prepared at the beginning and avoided the minor bonk, I could have ridden the course at a more steady Z3 pace, then push Z4 on the last few KMs and shaved off maybe 5-10mins off that time, then slowly work on improving it afterwards... but for now, I guess I should be glad I managed to finish under 2 hours.

Fun crowd too. There were a bunch of (Australian?) riders chatting and telling jokes all the way up, that really helped with the mood and motivation.

gthomson

wow great effort on your stage 3, I'm impressed. I had heard it was really hard, like Alpe De Zwift only worse ha ha. I've only done Alpe De Zwift twice I think and that's enough for me so stage 3 will kill me! I'm 5'11" and 190lbs so Zwift punishes me on any incline. Nothing worse then seeing only a few kilometers to go but you're doing at 10km/h it takes for ever ha ha

I Zwifted today while watching the final stage tour of the virtual TDF. Those guys just rip through those watts. I was watching Mike Woods yesterday (Canadian shout out) and couldn't believe his ride. How could you stand an entire hour like that? interesting comment about the ride is like running. Never thought of that until I watched him.

Thomas15

Did the L'Etape Stage #3 Mont Ventoux Sunday. My total time was 2 hours 15 minutes. This was difficult but I feel fine today. I really didn't push it hard just wanted to do the ride. Once out of the pens I was in position 1199 (out of 1510 riders), by the finish was position 915 so I did make some progress. This hill seems like it never ends. I didn't notice the observatory at the end until I was almost there. I think there was a 12% gradient in the last mile or so, close to the finish which was a bit over the top.

Once Zwift opens this for free rides I will probably alternate Ven-Top and the Alpe, I usually do the Alpe once a week. It usually takes me about 72-73 minutes to do the Alpe, I've never done a sub 70 Alpe. (on edit: actually in April I did a 66 minute Alpe).

I had been think about this ride since it was announced that it was created. Will do it again, try to improve my time. I only thought about quitting once at about the halfway point.