It’s raining again. Another day for Zwift. I chose the Innsbruck map. I planned on doing two laps around the climbing segment. The idea was to post a negative split. Today was a game of patience. I forgot how much time it takes per lap, so I had to guess how much time I’d be on the trainer. I guessed it would be around 25 minutes per climbing segments. Turns out that I was off by about 7 or 8 minutes. I think it took around 10 minutes to reach the base of the climb from the beginning of the ride. My approach was to ease into the climb and let the cold legs get warmed up. This climb is very steady but has steep segments here and there. I was doing in and out of the saddle efforts. In the saddle to recover, hydrate and wipe sweat. I was trying to guess how much time I had left in the climb so that I may gauge my effort better. I tried to keep the wattage below 3 W/kg, but above say 2.4-ish W/kg. I was also assessing ailments. The first lap was mostly ailment free. Some hand numbness here and there. After making it to the summit for the first lap, I made it in just over 32 minutes. So, that meant I would put over an hour of climbing at the end of the ride. I kept that in mind. From the summit, I was able to relax a bit on the descent and prepare for lap 2. Lap two went as planned. I was able to post a negative split. It was a game of patience today. I think the last lap went faster in perception. Likely because I was warmed up. I approached the climb similar to lap one, except I was doing slightly more wattage. I was keeping an eye on my placing going over the top. I got about 65th on the first lap and 34th-ish on the second. After making the summit for the second time, it was mostly recovery time. I made my way back into the city. From there I cooled down till the HR reached 112 BPM.

Concentration was good, but my patience was wearing thin. I kept it together and was in the zone most of the time. Balance and form felt good. Ailments, some right knee soreness. The knee was complaining on the last climb, but I was able to adjust my cadence and in and out of the saddle efforts. My hands became numb when I was doing long out of the saddle efforts. Sitting and shaking them fixed that problem. Nutrition was good. I drank most of my sport drink, no water. Gear worked flawlessly. I had to use the Ant+ dongle to get the HR sensor to work. BT didn’t work. My cleats were squeaking in the beginning of the ride, so I cleaned them out with a damp cloth and the squeaking stopped. Other notes, there were about 650 riders when I hopped on this map.

Other notes, I think there were about 16,000 total riders on Zwift when I hopped on.