sdmc530

Today I set out to complete the Alpe De Zwift. Here is my take of it:

Good:
The map is great, black background and the road turns red when you pass buy it on the little map. I liked that. I also like the fact on the way back down it removes the red portion.
It counts the turns, 22 counting the finish, that is nice it counts down as you go.
I like you get 3 power ups on the way up. wasn't expecting that.
I like the wheel of fortune game at the finish, I got gloves today.
The sign about 1/2 way up saying watch our for the yeti...then seeing the yeti a bit later lol!
The ride down is crazy, average speed over 40mph all the way down...ZOOM!
The Northern lights are pretty neat too!

Bad:
I hate that the start is so far off, almost 5 miles when you choose the route. Need to find a closer starting point. Maybe the ruins route has a closer starting point.
I really hate how hard it is, but that was the point. Soooo hard
I don't like how long it takes, again I know that was the point but if you want to do a quick ride then this is out of the question. I was in the pain cave for two hours on this ride. Not riding for two hours needed rests but still man its a commitment to complete this thing!

All in all its a good route if you have the time and the pain threshold. Its nice they did add two more achievement badges for the hill. One for 5 climbs and one for 25 climbs. I re-upped my subscription for one more month just to ride this thing. Couldn't wait until fall to give it a ride. Glad it did too.

jsigone

sounds like fun! good to push you're self, and yes there are some hills that take 2 hours to climb here in Socal so I know that feeling...sorta

TrojanHorse

It's supposed to be a near perfect mimic of the Alpe D'Huez, which is one of cyclings Great Hills. Pros can do it in 40-45 min, which explains why there are so many <40 min times in zwift already. (rolling my eyes...)

The rest of us figure to "enjoy" that hill for significantly longer. Especially Clydes.

jsigone

sounds like the typical doping issues

sdmc530

The enjoyment ended soon after turn 10 and was pain after that lol


When I did get up there the KOM was like 42 minutes. I was thinking to myself there is no way in heck that a nonpro did that. Seemed crazy to me. I think my ride time was like 1 hour 37 minutes or something. If I could ever get it 75 minutes I would call that a huge win.

jpescatore

I loved it - living in Maryland, not really any opportunity to do a multi-mile climb outdoors. I weigh 230 lbs, so not a fast climber in real life or on Zwift.

I've done one "epic" climb in real life - Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass in Glacier National Park: 11 miles, 3100' elevation gain, about 6% average grade. I really enjoyed the long grind with the great scenery.

The Alp de Zwift course felt very similar, though everything on Zwift is a bit easier than biking in real life. I especially liked the special map that shows up - kinda helped grind through the 21 switchbacks.

I used the Tour of Fire and Ice route, so had a few miles warmup before the climb. The Tour of the Sky is shorter, but I think better to have a warmup. The long downhill return was fun but I'd like to have seen a split - what was my average heart rate and power on the climb vs. the climb+ descent. I'll have to do it again without the return.

ill.clyde

Yup ... the Road to the Sky route puts you closer to the start of the climb, starting near the pier before you go up the first hill to get you up to and over the bridge to the turn off where the Road to Ruins starts.

Was thinking about doing it today ... time is an issue for me as well. My plan, actually, wasn't to do the full climb, but maybe half of it. I could probably do it all after work today, but I prefer riding in the morning ... like now. Clearly I'm still on the fence LOL

Turzy

I'm not even gonna think of doing this ride...especially not on a dumb trainer
Congrats for doing it !

TrojanHorse

Why not? It would be like riding a flat course... but for a really long time.

As for your HR - if you use strava (you do use strava don't you?) you can easily highlight the portions of the ride you want to look at and it will calculate your average speed, HR, power etc for your highlighted part. Or I'm sure somebody already has a segment set up, you can look at that. Should be easy.

I'm sure it will look like: avg HR going up - 160
avg HR going down - 82

TrojanHorse

Speaking of which, ADZ is "featured" on stage 3 of the tour of watopia, so that's gonna suck, but not as bad as that stupid pretzel is going to suck.

I see people doing repeats of the mountain road near me (it's a 22 mile out and of course, 22 back, so 44 miles and about 5300 feet). I mean, what kind of lunacy would prompt you to turn right around and do that again? Insanity. The truly nutty riders add on the ski lift portion for a grand total of 53 miles round trip and 7500 feet. Who wants to do that twice?

Turzy

yeah...at a (too) high power output lol
the problem with using a "dumb" trainer is that the heavier you are, the higher the watts have to be to get up those hills...big ring small cog kind of thing

TrojanHorse

Why that's the exact same problem I have on a smart trainer, the difference being that the trainer ramps up the difficulty so I have to shift DOWN instead of UP. Same effect though, if I"m soft pedaling, I'm barely moving up the hill.

daviddavieboy

I didn't realize there were so many pros out there. It sure is a brutal climb though. I had made 3 or 4 attempts blowing up just over half way up. My first full climb was nearly 90 min and then next I did it in 84. I focused on keeping my cadence steady and around 200-210w the whole climb.

There are a few semi-pros around here but I ain't one of them LOL I am not sure about the #1 guy on the list, in the real world he is NOT that strong.

Turzy

I just checked the real thing on strava, Thibaut Pinot did it in 42:09 during the 2015 TdF

sdmc530

You mean there really are cheaters on Zwift? No way

TrojanHorse

Well, keep in mind Thibault did it AFTER riding 100 miles first, he didn't warm up 2 miles before the start. having said that ... yeah. I guess if having the biggest virtual dick is important enough, somebody is going to step up to the plate.

copperfind

So I have done ADZ four times now. First one was normal Road to Sky (or whatever its called) did it with trainer set to about 50% took around 90 minutes for the climb but wasnt too bad... Did it this past Friday twice back to back, no I am not crazy, I had a friend vEveresting and he was looking for some motivation so I hopped on the trainer and told him a would take a spin up with him... Turned in to two trips and by the end of the second I was cramping pretty bad but with the trainer still at 50% and riding at his weight 85Kg (so I could keep up with him I finished the second one at 80 minutes. Thinking maybe I am getting better at this climbing thing I thought I would give it a shot at 100%, wow what a difference but still finished at 90 minutes. This was mainly due to having done the world hack on a London day with little to no traffic on ADZ. As I was about the a third of the way point I noticed a rider 10 minutes behind me and by half way the rider was abut 6 minutes behind me. My goal now was to not get caught. Took everything I had but I finished with a 29 second gap, which felt good.

All and all felt pretty good... Still never going to be a great climber but learning how to maintain target heart rate 135-140bpm for me and cadence around 80 rpm has been saving my legs on long climbs... Hoping this carries over to the road this year.

TrojanHorse

Riding long hills is ALL about knowing how hard you can go for an indefinite period of time and sticking to it. You really have to be careful about going over your threshold because there's no time or place to recover, especially on that damn ADZ. That is the tricky part about monitoring your effort with a HRM, because you can inadvertently overshoot. Still, it's better than nothing.

I tried the radio tower at 100% and I was miserable. The trainer feel just isn't any good at that low of an RPM (and I didn't have a big enough sprocket either, which compounds things). I generally leave mine at about 50% because... why not.