Catching up on ride reports: vEversting February 2022
Some of you might remember my vEveresting adventure back in March 2021, mostly memorable for a night in the hospital with IVs. For those new to this challenge, here's a little background: Zwift is a great way to ride a bike on an indoor trainer and not get bored. For those that don't know Zwift, it's like a video game with your bike as the game control. There are many worlds and courses, some of the courses are based on real world roads/routes and some are totally fictional.
I mount my bike to a Wahoo Kickr to connect with Zwift, this is a trainer that has a power meter and it controls resistance, this means that the trainer will make it harder when climbing, making you shift down through gears just like in the real world.
Everesting is riding up-and-down the same hill over-and-over until you accumulate an elevation gain that is equal to the height of Mount Everest - 29,029 ft. With the popularity of Zwift, the concept of "virtual Everesting" (vEversting) became a thing. I got the idea that vEversting would be a good idea thanks to Zwift, Zwift encourages riders with badges for achieving challenges and the vEversting badge is one of the very last achievements I have left on Zwift.
There are a number of climbs available in Zwift for vEveresting, I pick the iconic Alpe du Zwift - the game version of the real-world Alpe d'Huez. This is 3,398 ft per climb over 7.59 mile for an average grade of 8.5%. A rider needs to climb Alpe du Zwift 8.5 times to complete the vEversting challenge.
Looking at my schedule, I had a limited window to get this ride done before a vacation and I had my first outdoor race shortly after vacation. So February 25 was the date that worked.
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| The fresh look first thing in the morning |
Looking back at my 2021 effort, I had a good idea how to pace myself. Funny thing about pacing yourself on a ride this long ... the open couple climbs feel like your not working at all. But based on past experience, I know the climbs later in the day at the same effort are going be feel brutal.
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| Lisa had fun setting up my riding buddy |
In addition to in-game chat with other folks riding on Zwift, I was enjoying Facebook posts about my effort, and had the radio playing to keep my mind busy. Plus the Zwift display gives you lots of data to watch as you ride.
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| Here's a look at the Zwift screen |
There were some thoughts that my struggles on the last attempt included overheating. So, I had our two fans blowing on me the whole time to minimize the chance of overheating.
Throughout the day I kept a basket of snacks on the table right next to the bike, this was empty by the end of the ride! Snacks included peanut M&Ms, Sports Beans, Kind Bars, and Salt Sticks. Plus water bottles with Nuun tabs (electrolyte mix), Starbucks Doubleshots, and Coke. I took a couple breaks to get whole food, like an omelette in the morning and been burrito around noon.
When I was getting worn down and mentally fatigued after my fifth trip up the Alpe, I was super happy to have Birchwood friend Ben jump on and ride with me on the sixth climb ... and that ride up saw an improvement in my pace. It's funny but a riding buddy on Zwift is just as helpful as in the real world.
My last trip up the Alpe, I could barely turn the pedals over. I had planned to finish the ninth climb, but my body let me know that this was not an option! But to avoid any technical issues, I went past 20,029 feet, finishing at 29,501 for the ride.
In total, it took me nearly 14 hours and I was riding (or the avatar was riding) for over 13 hours, so there was very little down time. I can finish Alpe du Zwift in under 60 minutes; but that is doing the climb one time. For vEversting, my fastest early climb was 75 minutes; and slowest 90 minutes ... I'd call that good pacing! I was able to keep my heart rate between 130 and 140 BBM for the whole effort. Other nerdy stats: power averaged 166 to 192 W on the climbs; and I kept my cadence between 80 and 90 rpm on the climbs.
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