Week 49 - Alpe du Zwift

After playing pickleball on Monday and some openers on the trainer on Monday, I participated in the 'NCC Season Finale,' which was part of their Time Trial/Hill Climb Zwift series on Tuesday. The NCC season finale involved racing up the Alpe du Zwift climb, a 7.5-mile segment with almost 3400ft of climbing. With a long lead-in, the total route was 36 miles and lasted more than 2 hours. Despite not feeling 100%, I still achieved my fourth-best time on the Alpe. When I realized I was still under an hour upon finishing, I took a short break and then cranked out some impressive watts, this resulted in an average of 254 watts over the hour. This is significant, as it is only 1 watt off from the 20-minute test I did recently, which is 95% of the 20-minute power.

On Wednesday, I played more pickleball, and on Thursday, I went out for a 'longish' ride – 29 miles to Williamsburg and back home via Ashfield, including several of my favorite local gravel roads.

Friday, Paula and I rode a short, mainly gravel loop over Graves and Roaring Brook Road.

The sun was out, and the temperatures were very mild; it felt like a spring day.

In the evening, we played some pickleball and played some more the next morning. Afterward, I went for a ride where I attempted to meet and ride with John and Pamela. However, I left too late, and our rendezvous was early in my ride, so while they rode home I continued and did about half of their ride in reverse.

The next day, I joined them and Jason for a ride before the rain was forecasted to arrive later in the afternoon. But, when we were in Ashfield after an hour, the rain had already started, so we returned home earlier, completing a 20-mile ride.

On West Road, Jason challenged me to race up the 'What's that statue on your right' segment, and I ended up with an 8th place on the KOM list, with a time of 57 seconds and averaging 561 watts. I was pretty happy with that.

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