My brain doesn’t really work like that. All I know is that with a controllable trainer, resistance increases relative to the gradient a bit like real life, so you have to use gears in the same way as in real life. If you don’t have a controllable trainer you can put out the same power and it’ll feel the same to you on the flat or on climbs, but the terrain determines how fast you’ll move with the calculation including weight. With a controllable trainer you can feel the resistance kicking in and out with the gradient.

Thing is a 100kg rider going up a 5% slope experiences twice the resistance compared to a 50kg rider so I’m assuming that the turbo also has to provide double the resistance to make it feel realistic.

But given that I am that heavier rider and I’m big ringing a lot of climbs, maybe not.

Well, it’s variable anyway as you can mess with the trainer difficulty setting to make it feel easier or harder on climbs, though your avatar still moves relative to your power output, Standard setting is 50% of ‘real’. Who knows what it all means.

Did my first attempt this morning in 61 mins 35 secs. Nice touch to have the roulette wheel awards at the top, I can see that being an added incentive to plug away to the top. Certainly hard work for me at 6’2” and 78kg but made a nice change to the run of London of late. Not sure I will be doing it everytime I’m on zwift but it’s nice to have another option! Did laugh at the stats difference between myself and the Japanese rider who rode with me – same time and distance give or take but me burning an estimated 500 odd calories more!

“Trainer difficulty” by default 50%, determines how big a range of your cassette you will need for the course, bearing in mind the gradient emulation capabilities of your turbo and the gradient of the course (max was 17% near radio tower). The Direto can emulate up to 14% gradient, so at ~85% trainer difficulty, I usually need my lowest gear (34/32) for the steepest slope. At 50% difficulty, I can get up the steepest bit in ~34/25.

Trainer difficulty does not affect your speed, that is still determined by your inputted weight and power.

If I was riding the radio tower at my 2016 weight of ~95Kg, my Direto would not be adding more resistance on the gradients compared to my ~77Kg these days (too much eating, not enough riding since January). Zwift gets the power readings of the Direto’s integrated power meter and number crunches that against my weight to determine my speed. Once you are tackling ~7% or harder gradients, it’s all about power:weight ratio, I’m getting closer to being able to tackle the full reverse Mount Zwift cat2 climb at 4W/Kg (292W for 20mins the other day)… Perhaps, by the end of the year.

Well I’m level 12 now (see above…).  Looking forward to riding up the Alpe rather than my many times down it for a change… 😉

Completed the horsemen loop – alp climb at 59 min – that’s not shabby considering the start of the ride includes volcano climb, epic KOM and tower!

Its good fun but can’t see me doing it regularly

Took three attempts and ~940 feet of warmup climbing to eventually teleport to a rider at hairpin2 earlier, just over 59mins of brutal leg killing at 222W average. Such a step up from the radio tower climb, no chance of holding similar power consistently, dropping to sub 200W on the easier slopes was welcome relief from the pain!

Not sure if I want to ride outdoors tomorrow morning, even if it is dry, legs need to recover a lot overnight.

Resubscribed to Zwift purely to have a crack at this today….

Already have heavy legs from a tough week on the bike so I’m pretty sure it’s a terrible idea!

Will report back

51:47 average 264w, wasn’t rested think I can do a little better but good first attempt. Although its still under construction the route mimics the real one quite well I think for bends, layout and steepness. Its training after all, I like the direction Zwift is going in.

Reporting back as promised – weather forecast has changed and doesn’t look like rain anymore. I’m off outside instead!

@Pawsy_Bear that’s a great time. What w/kg does that work out at?

I’m guessing from the times posted that w/kg really is king in comparison to flat layouts. Admittedly me effort was only just over 200w, but my time is lots and lots slower that most. I’m guessing that’s because I’m 90kg.

You need to be brave at the bottom I think this is key to climbing this one, I was holding 4.0w/kg for most of the way. Towards the top I was holding 3.8 then push for home! FTP 295, 69kg and 59 years young, VAM 1200 on strava.

You need to aim for 36 mins for KoM though LoL

I’m expecting a long slog given my ftp is about 2.5w/kg…

I think the great thing with zwift is that it’s already very good and should only improve over time as they add more content. I do think they should focus on Watopia though, maybe just joining London and Richmond into it so that everyone can ride in a single instance and new content can be added easily.

The level unlocks I’m unsure about from a business perspective. Yes it gives people something to aim for but it’s somewhat off-putting for a newcomer that they can’t ride some of the main features.

My 222W effort from hairpin2 yesterday was ~2.85W/Kg, I’m ~77.5Kg after over-indulging in Feb when I could not train as much.

Hope to improve that a fair bit, given I did ~900 feet immediately beforehand in failed teleports, plus my lack of 1+ hour training really showed from Thursday’s three laps of Volcano Flat in just over the hour at 232W.

I did 288W up “Mount Zwift full reverse” on Tuesday, but that’s only ~1900 feet in ~28mins, even if I was fresh I will need some hard training to hit that power on this HC climb on my Direto turbo.

Change of plan. Zwift it is, wish me luck. I’ve got a 2 hour workout planned today so might go full gas up the AdZ then perhaps a second time if I’m feeling brave

I’ve given the men in white coats a call for you. 😉

just went to do this and found out I’m only level 7.  what’ the quickest way to level up?

Ride, lots.

To be fair it doesn’t take long to level up, just do fairly flatish routes and ride ride ride. I started Zwift in November and I’m level 14, done around 1100 miles on it.

Darren, hack your way in, as someone kindly suggested after my rant on Thursday. 😉

Start Zwift and then before you start riding, look through the list of riders under the workout and route section, find someone who has done 5+ miles and is averaging under 10mph. Click their name, then click the icon down the bottom to “join” them.

If your Zwift Companion app is synced in or you have a keyboard connected to your device running Zwift, use the u-turn button to descend the hill but u-turn again before you pass through the level12 barrier.

You can then climb the whole thing, I made do with climbing from hairpin2 on my third hack attempt yesterday..

To reach level12 relatively quickly, Volcano Flat on the TT bike using Km metric rather than mph (20 per km vs 30 per mile respectively). Check your “achievement” list for easy ones, like giving up to 100 “ride ons” to random players.

Just mashed myself into a deep dark place.

Managed to claim the Zwift KOM Jersey 🤓

44:06 @ 71kg. Averaged 322ish watts which works out about 4.53w/kg.

I set off a bit too fast, suffered for a bit and then emptied the tank with 2 corners to go.

Used a Kickr at 100% with a Stages on my mtb with 32t chainring and 11-28.

44:06. Seriously! That’s just, well, astounding

Thank you 😁

Was aiming for 50ish mins so very happy with 44:06. I’m pretty sure I’ll never do it that quick again!

Kudos x1000!

For the hack (hate that word) I suggested earlier, between 24 and 25k into a ride seems like the ideal distance to be early into the decent

>44:06 @ 71kg. Averaged 322ish watts which works out about 4.53w/kg.</span>> Outstanding well done you smashed it. weathers shit here, maybe get put tomorrow. But I only need 800m for the tron bike 😀 LoL

These times that you are all setting, which route is it for? I may have to abandon the kids one day next week to have a stab at this. Is there 4 different routes on this Alp?

Road/route to the sky I picked.

Did it this morning. I incorporated it as part of Hunter’s Challenge day 4 (or maybe it was day 3): 20 x 1 min efforts alternating between 220w and 180w to focus on cadence. Then to finish the workout was 20 mins at 220w (my ftp is 221; weight is 74kg) followed by 10 min cool down. That took me to apex 14 of 22 at about an hour or so (but that includes whatever I did before the climb). Then rode at around 190w the rest of the way to finish the climb.

Finished in position 113th and 75 minutes or so. Descent took around 10 minutes I think. However I was out in Mallorca last weekend and did Formentor last Friday, the climb up to Luc cafe on Saturday and Sa Collobra on Monday so done a bit of real life climbing already. And did HC day 2 yesterday. So with fresh legs I might be able to do it quicker but Alpe du Zwift was such a boring climb I won’t be doing it again. Total turbo time was just under two hours.

If it’s supposed to mimic Alpe d’Huez then I didn’t think the last three turns match the climb. Getting from turn 1 to the top was tedious. Descent was fun though.

Have fun…!

Why did they have to release ADZ whilst I was out of the country! It’s very cold and windy here in Denmark too so can’t brinh myself to do a real life ride.

Inspired by this thread I rode it today, 1h6m, which is a couple minutes less than my best Duez.

Notable that IRL almost always in the lowest few gears on a compact set up, whilst on zwift I didn’t change out a 53, that’ll be the difficulty thing at 50%

Overall I would think your time on zwift  will be indicative of your time on ADH.

Had a second try at it earlier…turns out I was more knackered than I thought from yesterday. Lost about 3 minutes in the top 3rd of the climb having resorted to twiddling my way up.  Might need a rest day before trying again.

Anyone improved on their first effort?

Did it yesterday in 51 minutes, actually quite tough! Not entirely sure I’ll do it again any time soon! I did the fire and ice route, which just seemed to have a load of gradual descending before, with a short climb at the bottom of the reverse KOM.

My time on the official AdH segment is 1:09 (and i was fitter), but the real thing goes a lot further than the Zwift segment – hairpin 21 is actually nowhere near the top! I’ve not compared equivalent finishing positions.

11 minute descent is quite fun, but seems a bit of a waste, but obviously I could’ve just pedalled!

Chapeau for 44 minutes, that’s very good indeed!