Two hands is better than one/ My First Group Ride

As you already know, if you have read the other two blog posts, I was in a sling for quite some time. Just recently I have been able to use two hands. This is still only on an indoor trainer, but I will take what I can get. At first I thought that not much would change in my virtual performance because when I road with one hand I still felt like dying. I was wrong. You would not believe the difference this makes on a indoor trainer. For one, It You don't have a sling on one hand, so you stay a lot cooler during your ride. When you have a sling on, and I pillow support, you feel as if you're wearing a sweatshirt while cranking up your heart rate to 190 bpm. Once you get that sling off, your whole body feels better. Your fan hits a new spot on your body. The sweat doesn't build up in the sling, and you just feel like you can conquer the world. Another amazing thing about not having a sling on is the use of two hands. It's nice. After about 30 minutes of using one hand, you trice gets sore, your leaned over to one side, and everything doesn't feel "equal." With two hands, you power distribution is a lot better, the position you are riding in feels normal, and one leg doesn't feel 100 times worse than the other.

Now if this whole blog post was about why 2 arms is better than one, this would be a boring blog. So I also I want to talk about my first zwift group ride. yesteerday I decided, "fuck it." I want to send myself to the cave so hard sweat will drip off my nose for hours. So I singed myself up for the tour of watopia: stage 5. This stage consisted of 30 miles, and 2,900 miles of climbing. I thought if i went steady I would be fine for the majority of the race, but I didnt and I went way to fast way to early. The first hill was the "zwift KOM," which isnt super long, but enough to get your legs feeling like shit. I got to the top of the first climb and settled into this little group of about 5 riders. My dad has ahead by 17 seconds in a few groups ahead, but i never saw him again. We road steady on the flats for about 10 minutes until we hit the bottom of, "epic KOM." This was the long climb of the day. The climb consisted of 5 miles, and an everage gradient of 5%. This was enough to make a grown man cry, tears of sadness. We got on the climb and within the first 5 minutes I was dropped by my group of guys and kept waiting for another group to come along. A large group never came along so I just sucked it up and dug deep until the top. once I got to the top I realized we all had to go up the radio tower. This climb wasn't long, but an average gradient of 12%. I thought I could hold about 280 watts up the climb, but unfortunately I feel back again. At this point int he race I was in about 35th position. I get to the top of this climb and let myself rest while my virtual charater shoots down the mountain. The decent last about 7 minutes. Once I got to the bottom I realized a group of people werent to far behind. I let them catch up so i had a little bit of a draft while we road to the next climb, "Volcano KOM". This climb was shorter then the others, but since it was at the end of the ride, you were going to feel it. This was about an 1:10 into the ride. The group hit the bottom of the climb and I immediately got dropped. I was starting to have doughts about my fittness but realized that Virtual biking, is not the same as regular biking. Get to the top, feel like actual crap, ride down, then ride to the finish. I was in about 45th out of 300 people, so I felt ok about my riding ability. The last mile I forced myslef to push 240 watts to the finish. Once I got there, I wanted about 7 rest days. The 1:30 minutes of riding took everything out of me.

For the whole ride I averaged 240 watts, which I was ahppy about. The only thing i learned from this was that i suck at virtual biking. It is not made for light people. Since your bike never moves up and down, you never really get the climbing feeling, so people who are huge and can push crazy watts are going to be the fastest. It is safe to say that I should stick to regular racing, and not try my luck in virtual pain.