Sebastian Kienle on Staying Motivated (Zwift PowerUp Tri Podcast #6)
Staying motivated to train hard every year can be challenging, but when you’re a professional, it’s necessary.
2014 Ironman World Champion, two-time 70.3 World Champion, and three-time European Champion Sebastian Kienle knows a thing or two about this.
In Episode 6, he dives into the demands of staying motivated and goal-setting when you’ve already been on the top. Jordan and Matt also give an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the creation of the new Watopia expansion and discuss the latest wetsuit brand creating waves.
About the Podcast:
The Zwift PowerUp Tri Podcast is hosted by former pro triathletes Matt Lieto and Jordan Rapp, lending their in-depth knowledge of the multisport to the Zwift Tri audience.
As explained in my introductory post, this season I’ve decided to jump into bike training with a personal coach. Due to a variety of circumstances I haven’t gotten around to posting my monthly progress reports, so now it’s time to play catch-up!
Here’s my report for February, my first month of training with Shayne Gaffney of GC Coaching.
Where I Began
Note: Shayne uses TrainingPeak’s WKO4 software to analyze ride data, and it’s quite an amazing tool. The screenshots and data I’ll discuss here generally come out of WK04.
After feeding my January 2019 ride data into WK04, Shayne was able to calculate my pre-training program modeled FTP and time to exhaustion. Here’s what my chart looked like:
Shayne told me:
This image represents your FTP contribution from January. FTP is comprised of your aerobic + your anaerobic metabolic system. So, during the base phase you want to see a higher contribution from the aerobic system, and a lower contribution from the anaerobic system. FTP trended at 268w for January.
The Workouts
Based on my goals and current weak spots (see the intro post for those) Shayne had me doing a lot of VO2 and Sweet Spot Training (SST) intervals on my “hard” days. He placed my workouts onto my calendar at TrainingPeaks, where I could view what’s coming up. Each day’s workout automagically showed up in my Zwift workouts list, so I could hop on and hit it whenever I was ready.
Here’s the first workout Shayne gave me:
This is a VO2 interval workout, 4 sets of intervals where I held 118% of my FTP for 40 seconds, then rested for 20 seconds… repeating that 6 times for each set.
When I saw the workout I was concerned about how fatigued I would be for the next day’s Zwift race. I was just starting DIRT’s Morning Grind Fondo series, which happened every Wednesday for 12 weeks. Shayne didn’t seem too concerned about the fatigue issue though, so I went with it. And guess what? I felt fresh for the race (see it on Strava)… Zwift even said my FTP had bumped up (from 295 to 299).
This was the first of many times that I realized Shayne actually knows what he’s doing, and the numbers don’t lie. As a coach he has the ability to look at my data and a block of training and figure out where I’ll be fatigued, where I’ll be fresh, etc. And he is impressively accurate.
Here’s another example of a typical workout Shayne had me doing in February. Lots of Sweet Spot work.
In February our workout pattern basically looked like this:
Monday: core workout, no ride
Tuesday: VO2 work
Wednesday: Morning Grind Fondo race
Thursday: rest day, core workout
Friday: Sprintapalooza ride
Saturday: longer session with a lot of sweet spot work
Sunday: more sweet spot work
Ride Hard, Rest Easy
Honestly, this first training block contained a lot more rest than I was used to. To be more precise: it felt like harder rides, with more rest in between.
There’s a maxim in training: “Make your easy days easy, and your hard days hard.” I hadn’t been doing a good job of that, but following Shayne’s plan ensured that I was receiving the recovery which is so key to building fitness, and when I did do a workout it was for a real purpose.
Shayne told me he typically plans training blocks in sets of 4 weeks, with the 4th week being a “rest” week where the workouts are much easier. So my final week in February was quite easy, and I’m sure my body appreciated the chance to regenerate and recover. (I also was out of town snowboarding, so that worked out nicely.)
The Results
Shayne ran February’s data through WK04 and came out with an updated chart:
Here is February’s chart overlayed on January’s:
Shayne said:
As you can see, your aerobic contribution is higher generally, your time til exhaustion (TTE) has increased over 9 minutes from 38:36 in January to 47:47 in February, and your modeled FTP rose from 268w to 289w (+21w). These changes are all what we’d like to see for the base phase where we’re working on improving aerobic capacity.
Time Til Exhaustion?
This is a metric I had never dug into, so I did some research. Ready to jump down a bit of a rabbit hole?
Here’s the thing: FTP isn’t actually “the highest power you can average for an hour.” It’s also not “95% of the highest power you can average for 20 minutes,” even though that’s how Zwift typically estimates it. My Zwift-estimated FTP was 299 watts at the end of February, but my modeled FTP was 289 watts. Which was correct?
Functional Threshold Power was developed by Dr. Andrew Coggan and is specifically defined as “the highest power a rider can maintain in a quasi-steady state without fatiguing.” It is an estimate of the power output that corresponds most closely with the maximal metabolic steady state or metabolic control limit, or what is more commonly referred to as “threshold.”
So what is “threshold”? From the same article referenced above, it is:
The highest exercise intensity at which blood lactate levels are stable (or quasi-stable) represents the athlete’s maximal lactate steady state (MLSS). MLSS represents the highest exercise intensity at which the rate of lactate clearance matches the rate of lactate production, and corresponds to an exercise intensity that can typically be maintained for 30 to 60 minutes, though some scientists say 40 to 70 minutes.
Did you catch that? Riding at threshold “can typically be maintained for 30 to 60 minutes, though some scientists say 40 to 70 minutes.” While most people understand FTP to be “what you can hold for an hour,” it’s really not. It’s what you can hold in a steady-state effort, and that effort is anywhere from 30-70 minutes depending on your physiology.
Although this range can be from 30 to 70 minutes, for many training athletes, it typically falls in the range of 40 to 55 minutes, which is one of the reasons why it is often associated with an hour, and why 40km (really ~40 km, since few courses are measured precisely) time trial power was originally proposed as the best estimate.
TTE is defined as:
The maximum duration for which a power equal to model-derived Functional Threshold Power can be maintained.
Based on all this information, I would say modeled FTP (mFTP) is more accurate than my Zwift-detected FTP. My mFTP increasing by 21 watts was great news. On top of that, the amount of time I could hold mFTP power increased from 38:36 to 47:47, a 9-minute increase. Double gains!
Conclusion
February was a good start, and even though I was working hard on Shayne’s workouts I was also able to place high enough in the Morning Grind Fondo series to be in first place overall by the end of the month (B category).
I’m looking forward to what next month holds. Chime in with questions or comments below!
For the 102nd edition of the Giro d’Italia, Zwift has just announced a partnership with RCS Sport (organizers of the Giro) which includes the release of a brand-new course open to all Zwifters.
The course replicates the 8.2km (5.1 miles) TT prologue which the pros will race, and will be released the same day the pros ride it: this Saturday, May 11th.
This is the first time a grand tour course has been available in-game, but it certainly won’t be the last. Read on for details…
About the Course
Starting in the historic town of Bologna, the prologue features a 6km run in but finishes atop a biting 2.1km climb with an average gradient of 9.7% and a maximum gradient that tops out at 16%. This is an all-out short course which will certainly make the legs burn, with 233 meters of climbing in the finish!
The race takes place against the backdrop of two of the city’s symbolic sites: starting in the majestic Piazza Maggiore and finishing on Colle della Guardia hill, where the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca stands.
Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca at the finish
Giro d’Italia TT Challenge and Prize
The new course will be available to riders of the Giro d’Italia challenge on Zwift, which is a TT race event. Details are unclear at this time, but it appears that a new “TT mode” will be unveiled to allow riders to participate in the TT Challenge whenever they’d like.
Anyone completing the challenge between May 11-13 will be entered into a drawing to win the official Giro leader’s jersey (the Maglio Rosa) signed by the 2019 Giro winner.
IRL Pro Event
An exhibition event will be held on Thursday (May 9) from the Bologna race village. Four of the competing pro continental teams (Nippo Fantini, Bardiani, Androni Giocattoli, and Israel Cycling Academy) will take to the Zwift Bologna course in two separate races.
Former Giro d’Italia Winner Ivan Basso will also make a brief return to the race on the Zwift course to test his legs. Zwifters will then be able to see how they compare to the times set by these professionals when the course launches on Saturday May 11!
Additional Events
TT races will be held on the new course for the duration of this year’s Giro. After that time, the course will be available for events (and perhaps free riding?) like other Zwift worlds. Eric Min says,
The Bologna course will live on long beyond the start … and allow many more people around the world to experience a small part of this historic city.
More to Come
With Zwift’s presence and influence continuing to grow in the cycling world, this is certainly just a taste of what’s to come. As Zwift racing evolves and more courses are built we will see popular outdoor races replicated in various ways on Zwift, and outdoor racers participating at higher and higher levels.
And that’s all good news for Zwifters, who will get to be a part of it all as we build fitness together. Ride on!
The reward for your rebel ride? Exploring a new route, knowing you’ve gone where few Zwifters have gone before. And a Strava segment rank in the tens or hundreds instead of the thousands!
Route Description
This is a long flat route which ends in a climb up the Volcano. It is most comparable to the Volcano Climb After Party event-only route, except Spiral Into the Volcano has an extra 10 miles of flat before the volcano climb.
If you follow this route on a map you’ll see how it was named: an ever-tightening counter-clockwise spiral which culminates in the spiral climb up the volcano.
We begin at the downtown start/finish in the reverse direction. Ride around the Volcano Flat to Ocean Blvd then Fuego Flats for a nice flat run through the desert which includes the longest timed “sprint” on Zwift.
Ride through downtown Watopia and around Volcano Flat a second time, but this time when we get on Ocean Blvd we’ll take that all the way back through downtown Watopia. The spiral begins!
Once more through downtown and around Volcano Flat, then hang a left at the Italian Villas to go over The Esses and back to the Volcano. We’ll loop once around the volcano (one lap of Volcano Circuit CCW), then hang a left for the Volcano Climb finish. The route ends at the top of the Volcano as you cross under the KOM banner.
Profile
This route is quite flat, with nothing more than short pitches or rollers until the final Volcano KOM finish which is 2.3 miles (3.6km) long at an average gradient of 3%.
When freeriding, select the “Volcano Flat” route to begin–this reduces your number of manual turns required to just 6. You will spawn just before the downtown start banner.
IMPORTANT: you must ride down through the banner then flip a u-turn and ride through the banner in the reverse direction to begin the route!
Turn by Turn
There are many intersections of this route, but typically only 6 manual turns are required. All other intersections should be routed correctly by default, but sometimes Zwift changes the default turns when you’re deep into a randonneuring rebel route, so stay vigilant.
The reward for your rebel ride? Exploring a new route, knowing you’ve gone where few Zwifters have gone before. And a Strava segment rank in the tens or hundreds instead of the thousands!
Route Description
This perimeter route is just like Bigger Loop except it adds the radio tower and Alpe du Zwift climbs. Suggested by Zwifter Jeff Cottrell, the goal of this route is to ride the entire perimeter of Watopia.
We begin at the downtown start/finish and proceed to Fuego Flats, starting off nice and flat before we hang a left and head up the Epic KOM. And it’s not enough to finish the Epic KOM–once you ride through the banner it’s another left onto the much-hated radio tower climb!
But our reward awaits–next we get to go screaming down the radio tower descent, and continue our descent on the Epic KOM. Then it’s over to the jungle so we can start the toughest feature of this route: the mighty Alpe du Zwift.
Once you’ve made it to the top of the Alpe, take a deep breath and enjoy a quick breather while you descend. Once you’re at the bottom, to finish the other half of the jungle circuit. After climbing out of the jungle we descend to the docks, through the fishing village, and past the Italian Villas so we can make our way around the outside of the volcano before heading back to the start/finish.
Profile
This route is actually quite flat, except where it’s not. The Epic KOM and Alpe du Zwift climbs account for ~15 miles of the 51-mile route, and everything else is either flat or downhill apart from those climbs.
Getting Started
When freeriding, select the “Bigger Loop” route to begin–this reduces your number of manual turns required to just 3. You will spawn just before the downtown start banner.
Turn by Turn
There are many intersections of this route, but since the route is very similar to Bigger Loop only 3 manual turns are required. All other turns will route you correctly by default. Here are the manual selections you’ll need to make:
After the Epic KOM banner, turn left to “Bonus Climb” (aka “Radio Tower”). 15.3 miles from start line.
When you descend from the Bonus Climb, turn left. 17.1 miles from start line.
After descending through the Mayan jungle, turn right to Alpe du Zwift. 23.1 miles from start line.
After the Alpe descent, turn right to Jungle Loop. 39.6 miles from start line.
If you only arrived on the cycling scene in the past few years, you might be forgiven for taking our many training luxuries for granted. Power meters, in-depth metrics, connected tracking apps, Zwift itself… all of these are readily available today, but were completely inaccessible to the everyday cyclist 20 years ago.
Hunter Allen is the head coach at Peaks Coaching Group, and he has been on the frontlines helping to develop many of the training tools we use every day. Are you training with a power meter? He literally wrote the book on it (with help from Andrew Coggan and Stephen McGregor). Need metrics to track your training? Hunter helped develop those too (see his story below). Connected apps? Hunter is one of the founders of TrainingPeaks. Zwift? Hunter wrote some of the very first workouts and training plans available in game.
I wanted to learn more about Hunter’s full story, and take a peek into the development of the key cycling metrics I use every day. I emailed Hunter requesting an interview, and he happily obliged. What you see below is the result. Enjoy!
First, tell us a little about yourself. Where do you live, what is your cycling background, and what do you spend your “work” time doing?
I live in Bedford, Virginia, near the Blue Ridge Mountains. I started racing when I was 11, and started in BMX. I raced BMX until I was 18 and then started racing MTB. I had the skills for mountain biking but not the cardio system, so I bought a road bike and formed a collegiate road cycling team at Randolph-Macon College with my best friend, Adnan Kadir. He and I did a ton of training on the road bikes and it turned out that I was pretty good and much better than I ever was on the BMX bike.
By senior year in college, I was a Cat 1 and dominating the local and regional races. I moved out to Santa Cruz, California after graduating and won three Pro/1/2 races that year (1991). I got an invite to race on the Kaiku-Gurelesa team in San Sebastian Spain for 1992, so I packed everything up and headed to Spain for the year. That was a hard year of racing, let me tell you! All mountains and no flats! We had Abraham Olano on our team and he won every race, seriously, every race from February to April, when Festina finally picked him up. He was amazing and of course went on to win the Vuelta and be World Pro Champion on the Road.
In 1993, I returned to the US and raced on the top amateur team on the East Coast at the time, Race Pace out of Baltimore. We crushed it every weekend and had a blast racing up and down the East Coast. In 1994, I turned Pro for the Navigators team and raced in ’94 and ’95 as a pro. My favorite win was the A to Z 120 mile Road Race from Athens to Zanesville, Ohio. What a great race, point to point and rolling enclosure, it was special and I won solo, after attacking the 12 man breakaway about 5k from the finish.
I decided I had “slain my dragons” and started my coaching business in 1996. One of the first ever to have a coaching website in 1997! I didn’t know what a website was in 1997!
Nowadays, I spend a lot of time answering emails, working on proposals to various companies that are partners of ours, planning cycling camps, organizing and working with my team here at the home office of PCG and lastly, writing articles and books (editor’s note: including the recently-published 3rd edition of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter“).
I love cycling and still ride as much as possible. Sometimes this is one day a week and sometimes it’s five days a week, it really depends on how far behind I am.
Hunter with his son at an Iceland training camp last summer.
When I first joined Zwift 3.5 years ago I remember seeing your name quite a bit in relation to workouts… so you’ve been in on the Zwift thing since the early days. How did you first get involved, and are you involved in any ongoing capacity at this point?
Mike McCarthy and Charlie Issendorf have been longtime friends and fellow racers and they asked me if I would create some training plans for Zwift. I was skeptical at first, so they had to do a little convincing, but we got “Hunter’s Challenge”, “Your first century” and “Winter training program” in there. So, if you do those plans or workouts, you’ll see a little Peaks Coaching Group logo in there.
People send me regular emails about how they really like them and how hard “Hunter’s Challenge” is, which makes me smile because that means they are getting stronger and faster! I am not really involved at this point, these guys are killing it and full steam ahead.
You’ve helped develop some very popular and powerful training metrics and tools for cyclists. Can you sketch out that history for us here?
When we (Kevin Williams and I) began developing CyclingPeaks Software, which became TrainingPeaks WKO software, we were learning so much and so quickly about power training. I quickly realized we needed a “Score” to give each ride that would account for time and intensity. KiloJoules was the closest thing we had, but it didn’t account for intensity. Dr. Andrew R. Coggan was helping us in an advisory role and I was always chatting with him about some of the new things we were learning and did this theory or that theory have any basis in exercise physiology.
One day, I said
“Andy, I need a score. I way to quantify each ride and how hard it is on the athlete. Then if I can do that, I’ll be able to start predicting performance and eventually plan by that score so that your entire season is built around it and we can better predict success.”
So, a couple of weeks go by and he calls me up and yells, “Eureka! I’ve got it! It’s called Training Stress Score and it’s based on time and intensity as it relates to your FTP. I also came up with Intensity Factor which is just a decimal percentage of your intensity as related to FTP. And I had to come up with this thing I am calling Normalized Power. This is the power you would maintain if you pedaled smoothly the entire time. It takes into account the metabolic cost of the workout.” So, right there, TSS, IF and NP were born.
We played with them for a while, tweaked them and made them better and finally released them on the world in 2003 with CyclingPeaks Software. Since then, we have come up with the Performance Management Chart which was one of the ultimate finishing lines to reach from the beginning because it takes that “score” (TSS) and helps you to understand your peaks of fitness as it relates to your chronic and acute training load and of course how fresh or fatigued you are.
Recently, we came out with Gross Power Released and Gross Power Absorbed to better understand the individual left and right power outputs. Functional Reserve Capacity, modeled FTP, Pmax and Time to Exhaustion are also recent metrics in the power world. We discuss all of these in our third edition.
Just a note of clarity. I was one of the founders of TrainingPeaks Software and an owner until 2014. Peaks Coaching Group has grown alongside it and is my coaching business. These get confused all the time and people think that we are TrainingPeaks and TrainingPeaks gets emails thinking they are Peaks Coaching Group. I now solely own and focus my time on Peaks Coaching Group.
“Training and Racing with a Power Meter” (co-written with Dr. Andrew Coggan) is one of the key books for cyclists interesting in digging into modern-day training methods. It taught me so much when I first got a power meter and began using that data to train! It has been revised three times now. I’m curious: how have you seen interest and methods of power-based training evolve over the years?
We have moved through the entire life cycle of the product and ideas From the early adopter phase to now it’s basically ubiquitous on any serious bike rider’s bike. It’s an essential piece of equipment, just like your head unit on your handlebars now. It took a circuitous and unconventional path to everyone’s bike though!
At first, the early adopters were all of the Master’s riders in the category 3 and 4 races. Those guys were primarily engineers, computer programmers, math geeks in their real jobs. By 2004-2005, they knew more about training with power than any of the pros and most of the cycling coaches.
Training and Racing with a Power Meter, new 3rd Edition
Around 2006, when our 1st edition came out, more and more people gained the opportunity to utilize the principles of training with power that we created and soon you started seeing more and more power meters on bikes in races. Around that same time, some of the power meters began making it on pro’s bikes. I had a lot of pros and their coaches emailing me trying to figure out how to use them, it was a bit comical, to be honest. Normally, when new tech comes out, it’s a “trickle down” to the masses from the elites. Think of Formula 1 racing. They had “electronic/paddle shifters” back in 1995. It wasn’t until 1997, that it showed up in the first street Ferrari, the model 355. It’s taken 20 years to trickle down to Hondas, Toyotas and normal everyday drivers. In the power meter world, it went the opposite way! It went UP from the everyday amateur and master racers to the pros. Pros were the last adopters and it took a lot of convincing for teams to allow them to use power meters in races, especially if they had other crank or wheel sponsors.
Around 2009, all of the cycling magazines and websites had pictures of pros with power meters on their bikes and that was the start of the traditional “trickle down” of tech, as amateurs saw them on their bikes and decided they needed a power meter as well. That further accelerated the adoption of power meters.
From then on, we were able to access pro data from the Grand Tours, classics and every race in between, which allowed us to further learn about the demands of the event and train athletes more specifically.
In 2009, our 2nd edition came out and that expanded on the “Performance Manager Chart” which again was one of the goals from the beginning. The 2nd edition was translated into seven languages besides English. I have taught in Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, South Africa, and 10 other countries.
Hunter at a recent training camp in China
At this point, cycling is growing in many up and coming countries like China, while power meter sales are relatively flat to slightly growing in the US, and only continue to grow as new cyclists enter the cycling world or buy a second/third/fourth power meter for their other bikes. So we have reached what I would call the “mature and stable” stage here in the US and also in Europe for power meters. One area that is really growing also is indoor cycling!
Zwift growing in popularity with its watts-based engine must have revved up even more interest in the “training with power” topic, right? Of course, power meters are also getting cheaper and cheaper…
Absolutely, and a smart trainer with a built-in accurate power meter has been critical to this new growth. People that do not have power meters on their road or mountain bikes now have smart trainers and are training with wattage, which is exciting. We have seen many riders that bought a smart trainer for their winter training, go out and buy a power meter for their outdoor rides because they see the value in it.
A power meter is perfect for indoors, as there are no distractions, no rolling hills, no wind or any other factors that contribute to making cycling highly variable. This allows the rider on the indoor bike to execute perfect wattage-based intervals with no excuses.
It’s fun to see all of the new people coming into indoor cycling that haven’t used a power meter before and they instantly “get it” and recognize how easy it is to understand their strengths and weaknesses along with seeing their improvements.
I’m sure many Zwifters could benefit from some coaching, but they aren’t sure where to start. Tell us a little about Peaks Coaching Group and why folks may want to jump on board with your coaching team.
When I started PCG back in 1996, I wanted to create a collegial group of coaches that could each benefit from each other’s knowledge and expertise. We have 50 coaches now with an incredible diversity of expertise from sports psych to RAAM to the Tour de France to amateur masters riders looking to kick butt on the Saturday group ride.
It’s a great group of coaches and each of them is an expert in training with a power meter of course and I do a lot of continuing education with them as well. We are constantly learning and staying on top of the latest in tech.
We coach athletes to improve using Zwift and have over 1000 workouts now that we have built in a “structured workout format” that creates a .fit or .zwo file to be used inside Zwift. This really allows us as coaches to build a progressive, rational and periodized approach to performance improvement. No matter what your goals are, we can help build a plan based around your unique physiology and time constraints. We have coached riders that have wanted to win the CVR World Cup and riders that want to crush it on their Saturday race inside Zwift. Our coaches are well versed on the “ins and outs” of Zwift and we ride in there regularly as well. You’ll see the half blue/half yellow jerseys of Peaks Coaching Group on many of our coaches and clients.
The best way to get started with one of our coaches is to email our coach/athlete coordinator, Lee Sandstead and he will talk with you and work for you to find the best coach for you. It’s important that we match you with the right coach, as that coach/athlete relationship is so critical in order to create success. Email [email protected], and check out our coaching website at www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com.
We also offer pre-built training plans if you aren’t ready or interested in a personal coach. These are a low-cost way to get a structured and progressive plan that I personally wrote using all of the workouts I use with my personal athletes. I have written nearly 300 different training plans now over the past 20 years, so there is something for everyone and you can “string together” my plans for over 3 years without repeating a plan and keep increasing your FTP! They come in the “Structured workout” format which again, you just load directly into your Zwift account.
You can find them all here.
Finally: as a coach, what three bits of advice would you give to Zwifters who want to get stronger/faster?
Focus on riding near or at your FTP at least 2x a week. Riding at what is called “sweetspot” (88-93% of FTP) is highly effective to improve your FTP. Cycling is an aerobic sport and the higher your FTP, the faster you’ll go.
COOL yourself! Big fans, cold drinks, towel, and a cold room. It’s critical that you cool yourself while riding indoors if you want to gain any real improvements in fitness. If you are not cooling yourself, you are fooling yourself.
Don’t race every day or just do random workouts. Have a plan. If you want to race in the winter, pick one race a week to race in and then go for it. I can promise you, those that race every day or 2x or 3x a week all winter, will be crushed and burned out come April. I saw it this year and it will happen again. Buy a training plan that’s well thought out by a reputable coach and then stick to it.
The reward for your rebel ride? Exploring a new route, knowing you’ve gone where few Zwifters have gone before. And a Strava segment rank in the tens or hundreds instead of the thousands!
Route Description
This perimeter route covers portions of Watopia’s three “flat” routes, (Tick Tock, Volcano Flat, Watopia Flat). We call it “Watopia’s Waistband” because it nicely encircles key landmarks in Watopia proper including downtown Watopia, Fuego Flats, the Italian Villas, the Volcano, and the Fishing Village.
We begin on Fuego Flats at the spawn point, moving clockwise around the desert loop until it drops us off on Ocean Blvd. Take Ocean Blvd toward the Fishing Village (away from Downtown), turn left toward the Italian Village, then another left at the fountain to head toward the Volcano.
Ride around the Volcano clockwise, make our way through the downtown start/finish line and onto Ocean Boulevard before a quick left back to Fuego Flats.
This route was inspired by Zwifter Ryan Goldenberg, who created a Strava segment for this route but in the opposite direction and beginning at the downtown start/finish line. We prefer the desert start/finish in the clockwise direction due to how the finish lays out, with little rise near the end leading into a long finishing sprint.
Profile
At 3.25 meters of climb per kilometer of travel, Watopia’s Waistband is flatter than all official routes except Tempus Fugit and Tick Tock. The only noticeable uphills are the rise outside of Saddle Springs, the ramp out of Ocean Boulevard and the climb to the Italian Villas which follows, the volcano kicker and the shallow climb back into the desert.
Getting Started
When freeriding, select the “Out and Back Again” route to begin–this reduces your number of manual turns required to just 3.
You will spawn just before the desert start pens, giving us a lead-in of approximately 2.5km before the sprint finish line rock arch, which is the official start/finish line for this route.
Turn by Turn
Here are the turns you’ll make to complete this route. Only turns labeled (manual turn) require you to change from the default turn selection, so this route only requires 4 manual turns:
Review: The Black Bibs – Quality Gear at Bargain Prices
Not too far back (November 2018) I was in full swing, developing a full-blown Zwift addiction. I had put in nearly 2000 miles over the past 5 months and the weekly mileage was increasing. But while the mileage increased, my weight was also starting to decrease. And pretty soon I found myself no longer fitting well into my cycling bibs. The legs became too loose and would ride up 3-6 inches on my thighs. It was time for a new pair of bibs.
Fortunately, I happened to recall a post from a friend of mine in the Texas Bikepacking Facebook group praising the quality and value of a small brand of apparel called The Black Bibs. Being a cycling addicted dad on a budget it piqued my interest. Could I get a solid set of bibs for a reasonable price?
The answer was YES! I ordered my first set of Black Bibs and got the Black Bibs Plus version. Not their base model, but one step up. The chamois for all of their bibs are the same, but the Plus version upgrades the leg gripper to a nice Italian power band that keeps the bib securely in place.
I got these bibs and I liked them. They were clean and simple. No designs, no colors that contrast with all the different team jerseys I’ve accumulated over the years. Just stylish quality at an affordable price. I rode these bibs, and I rode them often. Between December and today, a span of 5 months, I’ve ridden nearly 2,500 miles and a large portion of that has been in these bibs. To my great surprise, these things are incredibly comfortable and the chamois cushion has held up extremely well. Still comfortable today!
In February I had started a conversation with The Black Bibs about our group, Team DIRT, Dads Inside Riding Trainers. I thought that the message that The Black Bibs lived by was excellent. Quality products that are affordable. This is the kind of gear that I love to wear and support and I wanted to help get the word out to the DIRT cycling team. We have seen the cost of cycling gear skyrocket over the past 5 years and it’s refreshing to have a company that puts out such great quality at an affordable price.
Today I own not only my original set of Black Bibs Plus, but also a pair of Adventure Bibs and a Pro Summer Jersey. The Adventure bib is the same quality bib as the Plus version, but it adds pockets directly to the back of the bib. This makes it great for us mountain bikers who may be wearing a loose t-shirt or jersey, because it gives us a secure place to keep our keys or phone while riding. Also for us indoor specialists: during the hot summers I ride with no jersey or base layer about 80% of the time. Texas is hot and that extra layer makes it extremely brutal in a hot garage. The adventure bibs allow a place for me to stash my phone running Discord during rides.
And the prices… that’s the best part of all. They are affordable. Just check out this lineup.
Black Bibs – $40
Black Bibs Plus – $65 and upgrades to Italian power band
Adventure Bibs – $75 and upgrades to bib pockets
And while you may be able to find cheaper gear, you probably will find one of two things.
The quality of those items is poor with rough stitching, cheap chamois pads or low-quality leg grippers.
Otherwise, it’s probably something that you found on a bargain bin website, we have all tried them. They only have 2xl or size small left in stock, never a size that would fit you. And you can never find the same product there for the same price again.
With The Black Bibs you know the quality you are going to get and it’s coming direct from the manufacturer, so being out of stock in your size is rarely an issue. It’s the same simple selection over and over.
All in all, I’m extremely impressed with the quality of the bibs and jersey from The Black Bibs. If you are in the market for a new set of bibs, a jersey, or even base layers, arm warmers and leg warmers then check out The Black Bibs.com. What you’ll find is a quality piece of gear at a fair and reasonable price. You won’t be disappointed in what you get.
Your Thoughts
What do you think? Is the promise of quality cycling gear at an affordable price too good to be true? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Riding Watopia’s pre-planned routes is a blast, but sometimes it’s fun to go your own way. Here’s the first in a series of “rebel routes”–those which are not defined in Zwift, thus requiring manual turns. (EDIT: see additional Rebel Routes here >)
The reward? Enjoying a new route, knowing you’ve gone where few Zwifters have gone before. And a Strava segment rank in the tens or hundreds instead of the thousands!
I’m currently the Strava KOM holder on this route: who’s going to take it from me? Come and get it!
We begin on Fuego Flats at the spawn point, moving clockwise around the desert loop until it drops us off on Ocean Blvd. Take Ocean Blvd to downtown Watopia then hit The Esses to the Italian Village. Take a right at the fountain to head towards the Volcano, then a left onto the glass bridge before continuing straight onto The Esses once more.
This time when we hit the Italian Village we’ll continue toward the 360 Bridge, but hang a right before we get there onto Ocean Blvd. We’ll ride almost the entire length of Ocean Blvd, turning right after coming out of the tube so we can head towards our start/finish line. The route ends at the sprint start/finish rock arch.
Profile
At 3.92 meters of climb per kilometer of travel, Triple Flat Loops is flatter than all official routes except Tempus Fugit and Tick Tock. Still, the inclusion of the bump outside of Saddle Springs, two Ocean Boulevard upramps, the Esses (twice) and the final bump into the desert provide spots for strong riders to put in digs and gain time.
Getting Started
When freeriding, select the “Tick Tock” route to begin. You will spawn just before the desert start pens, giving us a lead-in of approximately 2.5km before the sprint finish line rock arch, which is the official start/finish line for this route.
Turn by Turn
Here are the turns you’ll make to complete this route:
