Orny's Cycling Journal

In my previous post, I outlined my plan of using Zwift to mimic real-world rides I had planned but couldn’t ride due to the Coronavirus lockdown. My goal has been to ride the same distance and elevation gain as the actual route.

When my first event came in late April, I somehow had to identify a route on Zwift that would provide me with the same 7,687 feet of climbing over 123.19 miles as the IRL ride. I cobbled together a mash-up of three different routes, but it was a bit off: 8,402 feet of climbing over 125.56 miles! My mileage was good, but I’d done 10 percent more climbing than I needed to!

I knew there was a better way. Someone should write a program that would take stats for all Zwift’s routes and compare that to my target route, then tell me the Zwift route that would allow me to finish with just the right combination of distance and climbing.

Obv, that someone had to be me.

So I went to work and produced the Zenturizer. You give it the distance and climbing in the ride you want to simulate (metric or imperial), and it will list which routes on Zwift are the best match, and how many laps you need to do. Just like this:

Last weekend, I wanted to test the Zenturizer and get another “Zentury” under my belt. While I didn’t have any real-world events in May, I decided to replicate a ride I used to do over Memorial Day weekend back when I lived in Boston: the Tour d’Essex County, a 102-mile century in Boston’s north shore and Merrimack valley that included 3,000 feet of climbing.

Feeding that data into the Zenturizer produced the following options, in order of how closely they match my criteria:

1. Ride about 15.9 laps of Flat Route (Watopia) 94% match
2. Ride about 44.7 laps of Volcano Circuit (Watopia) 88% match
3. Ride about 44.2 laps of Volcano Circuit CCW (Watopia) 88% match
4. Ride about 34.8 laps of Classique (London) 83% match
5. Ride about 16.4 laps of Greater London Flat (London) 83% match
6. Ride about 6.6 laps of Greatest London Flat (London) 75% match

Although I wasn’t very excited at doing the bog-standard Watopia Flat route, it was the best match, and I wasn't about to ride any course 35-45 times, so Watopia Flat it was!

According to the Zenturizer’s calculations, it should have taken exactly 15 laps of Watopia Flat to accumulate 3,000 feet of climbing, and 15.9 laps to go 102 miles; on my Zwift ride, both those estimates were right on the money!

In an ideal world, I would complete both distance and climbing goals at the same time. But because the closest Zwift course wasn’t a perfect match, I finished my climbing goal a full lap before my mileage goal. In riding that extra lap to complete my mileage goal, I wound up doing an extra 213 feet (or 7 percent) of climbing. However, that actually matches the Zenturizer’s estimate that the Zwift route would only be a 94 percent match for the IRL route.

All told, I think the Zenturizer did a fantastic job finding the right Zwift route to simulate the real-world ride I chose. Feel free to try it out yourself!

Okay, that’s enough about the Zenturizer; how did the ride go?

It was hot. I was hoping to ride Friday or Saturday or Sunday, but I spent those days suffering with a migraine. So Monday it was, and temps inside my pain cave sat at 90º throughout. Being my first hot indoor century, I suffered a lot, but also earned a number of lessons:

• Have tons of ice on hand. Two trays of cubes isn’t enough!
• Start early in the day. I got a late start, and it was already hot when I saddled up.
• In addition to a towel over the handlebars, have a second towel nearby to sop up excess sweat. I normally don’t sweat, but given the conditions...
• Nothing feels better than a cold, wet facecloth. Lifesaver!
• Watch out for cardiac drift. As the event wore on, I had to back off markedly because of elevated heart stress. Take it easy; there’s no point in trying to hammer for five hours straight in the heat.

But I knocked it out, thanks to the Zenturizer. And that’s the story of my 5th Zentury of the year!

Exceeding coolness. Today I got an early birthday present from my friend and longtime supporter Jeanie: DeLorme's TopoUSA mapping software! It's very cool, and the coolest part is that I can map out routes and then display and analyze an elevation profile of it, such as this example, which depicts the first day of the Pan-Mass Challenge. As you should know, I've been doing more and more hill riding, and TopoUSA will be tremendously useful for getting an idea of the relative difficulty of a ride before I go. It'd alleviate concerns about how many hills would be involved in riding, say, from Portland to Augusta Maine, or across the Appalachians from Pittsburgh to Washington DC. Very cool stuff! And in other news, I finally was credited with a missing $300 donation, bringing this year's PMC fundraising to a record $3500!