A Gift From Mother Nature to Cyclists - Riding The Big Sur With No Cars

Well after 5 years of drought Mother Nature gave us a rainy winter.  It rained and it rained and it rained.  It ended the drought but it took a toll on the roads all over the San Francisco Bay area.  One area that took a big hit was the Big Sur.  The excessive rain created a huge one mile slide that took out Rt 1 and rendered the Pfeiffer bridge impassable.  This created a section of Big Sur that was cut off to all thru traffic.  The only way to drive into that stretch of hwy 1 is over Nacimiento-Fergusson road.  That's a tortuous 2 hour ride over to hwy 101.  All this means that a 33 mile section of Rt 1 on the Big Sur is now essentially cut off to all but local traffic.

What a gift to all cyclists.

The Pfeiffer bridge will open in late October so time is limited to ride the 33 mile Rt 1 segment without cars.

We were able to do it last week and it was a once in a lifetime treat.

We drove to Pfieffer State park and hiked the trail from there to other side of the Pfeiffer bridge.  The trail is busy with school kids and professionals headed to school or work.  They take busses or have cars on either side to get from home to work or schools. The trail climbs up about 100 vt feet over many stair steps.

Once on the road the ride begins with the full splendor of the Pacific coast in full view.  And a note for all cyclists the ride has no flat sections.  You are either Climbing or descending.  I remember thinking on every downhill as we headed out that I'd have to climb it on my way back.

Here's the profile of the ride - a real saw tooth and over 5,000 ft of climbing.  Many of the climbs are cat 4s.  That's over 18 times up WIllow Springs

Riding along the Big Sur in the solitude of you, your effort and the awesome rugged coast below is truly inspirational.  

Here's the complete ride on Strava.

Here's my pictures from our ride.

Zwift - Spin Class Meets Velominati Meets Gamers

I have been riding in Zwift now for over a year now and it has been fascinating watching the intersection of the spin class community, the hard core Velominati and the gamers. It's an interesting and weird melting pot. 

For the Velominati Zwift is a place to experience rule #5 pain no matter what the weather or time of day. To hardcore Velominati jumping on the trainer during bad weather was giving up on rule #9. Riding a trainer is about the most boring thing you can imagine. Before Zwift the most I could ride the trainer was about 45 minutes.  In Zwift it's easy to whileaway multiple hours.

For the Spinners Zwift makes exercising way more interesting. It's Spinning anytime you want right in your own house. No need to go to the gym, just jump on and ride. Group rides at your fitness level offer a built in support group and fun conversation as you spin away.  It also gets the competitive spirit going experiencing what it takes to keep up with the group.  Faking intensity won't work as you'll be left behind.  Here's what a group ride looks like in Zwift

For the gamers  it's "Wait there's game I play by riding my bike, cool how do I win." Well, the more you ride the more you win.  Zwift prizes feature more options for dressing your avatar and riding faster bikes.  The hardest bike to win is the Zwift Concept bike called the Tron. You have to climb 50,000 meters to win it and that's a lot of climbing.  It took me 8 months to get the Tron and that makes it feel like a real achievement. The Tron looks really cool with customized fluorescent wheels of any color you choose.  Here's me on my Tron.

Zwift did some really smart things to build their community quickly and bring the Velominati, Spinners and Gamers together.

• For the Velominati they supported dumb trainers which lowered the entry costs for users that had a bike, a computer and an a dumb trainer in the garage that they hated to use. With the immersive experience those folks got hooked quickly. I used to hate riding the trainer and only did so if it was really bad weather. But with Zwift I found myself riding the trainer even when the weather was great outside. It was more fun riding with 100 others in Zwift than alone outside. The Velominati is a rabid group and getting them hooked was a key strategy.
• For Spinners they created group rides at specific fitness levels. Because a Zwift ride is recorded with real GPS coordinates it can easily integrate with Strava.  Once a ride is in Strava all the Strava analytics work especially the Flyby feature which shows who you road with. This means you can start conversions in the Strava activity comments with the folks you road with in Zwift. That's how I'm now following almost 200 riders from all over the world. I have even been able to meet them in person later when traveling to their home towns.
• For Gamers they created a very compelling virtual world in which all the cycling dynamics like drafting, climbing and descending work as they do in real life. By calculating speed using watts per kilo it also makes each rider's dynamics very close to real life outdoor rides. This creates situations where skill in the game means more success.  Knowing when and how hard to push, when to use power ups and when to start sprinting for the finish sprint are all skills to be learned  The gaming element also encourages you to ride more as the further you go, the more you unlock cool kit and equipment to deck out your avatar.

By being extremely attentive Zwift fostered a rabid community of supporters through social media especially facebook and twitter. They are hyper aggressive in responding to problems. In my own personal experience as I was just getting started in Zwift and I couldn't get into the game. I planned to join a group ride that was about to start. I thought how can I get help quickly so I sent a Tweet to @GoZwift asking for help. In less than a minute I got a response and was able to get started in time for the group ride. Later I checked who had responded so quickly and it was Eric Minn the CEO! I thought, "man these Zwift folks are on it!"

So with a large supportive community in place and the Velominati, Spinners and Gamers all interacting daily I see several interesting conversations going on.

• For the Velominati the conversation centers mostly around racing and the cheaters. You can cheat in three ways: 1) set your weight lower to get a higher watts/kilo and go faster especially on climbs; 2) have incorrect dumb trainer settings that generate really high Zpower wattage readings and 3) use a mechanical assist to generate higher watts.  
  
  Eventually the cheating discussion delves into to all the subtleties of using watts/kilo to define the racing categories. In races the watts/kilo limits are absolute so going over the limit results in immediate disqualification.  It's not like IRL racing where you aren't upgraded to the next category until you regularly win in your current category.  This comes as a shock to most racers, myself included, when they get disqualified and upgraded in their first race.  As such Zwift racing has evolved to gaming skills - when to go hard, or draft, or let others race ahead knowing they will be disqualified for going over the watts/kilo limit.
• For the Spinners the conversation centers most around keeping everyone together in group rides.  In group rides the game is to try to stay as close to the leader as you can.  This means staying under the advertized watts/kilo for the ride.  Inevitably there is a group that hammers off the front which prompts the leader to plead for them to slow down and rejoin the group. The drafting effect in large groups is very real.  If you get dropped you will have to put in a very hard effort to catch back up.  Many rides have sweepers that will drop back and pace dropped riders back into the pack.
• For the Gamers the conversation is mostly about learning aspects of the game and cycling. This group is not well versed in cycling terms or dynamics so there is a lot to learn which makes it more challenging.  I experienced this learning curve with my brother who I convinced to get into Zwift.  He is a gamer and not a cyclist.  It took awhile for him to grasp the cycling dynamics required to ride in Zwift.  Simple things like not being able to pair his speed detector because he wasn't pedaling or controlling his speed to be able to get into a draft.

I must say I'm having a lot of fun participating in all these conversations as they unfold in in the various forums in Facebook and the Zwift Community.

Feel free to jump in and have fun.

RideON!

Bettini On Willow Springs Road

One of my favorite Specialized adds.   Filmed in the green Californian spring on Willow Springs road, a road I ride often.

Enjoy

Buyer Beware: PowerCal Will Not Work in Zwift

I got the PowerCal to be able to ride in Zwift on Spin bikes while traveling. However, the PowerCal does not produce reliable enough power numbers to be used in Zwift. For a given heart rate the watts will vary from 0 to 150 to 250 in a given 10 second period. In Zwift this means you are stopping and starting constantly.

In working with PowerTap support I did some testing on a trainer to compare the PowerCal to a Wahoo. I recorded a single session 2 ways.

- Using Zwift I recorded the power from the Wahoo and the HR from the PowerCal
- Using a Garmin 820 I recorded the power from the PowerCal and the HR from the Powercal

During the test session I could not determine any pattern to the power output from the PowerCal. At any given HR the power jumps around randomly from 0 to 100 to 150 to even 600 watts. I would have expected that for given HR there would be a given consistant wattage.

Here is the Strava data from the session

You can see that the HR data is nearly identical as you would expect but the power data is significantly different. A note the difference in distance is due to Zwift calculating speed based on terrain and Watts/Kg while the garmin is using only wheel speed.