Watts Up in Watopia: Mountains, Beta Races, and More
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the dog days of summer are here. It's a blowtorch sort of day here at Slowtwitch's New England outpost. For many of us, the options are to either get our training done very early in the day, or to take refuge indoors on Zwift with fans and air conditioners blasting.
Luckily, Zwift is offering up a lot of variety this week in terrain and events. Let's dive into it.
World Schedule
This week is a little funky, as we change over months heading into the weekend, and August's guest world schedule will not be announced until just before the start of the month. Regardless, you've got a good mix of courses available to you, in addition to the always available Watopia:
Monday: Richmond and New York
Tuesday: Richmond and New York
Wednesday: London and Yorkshire
Thursday: London and Yorkshire
Friday: London and Yorkshire
I would suspect that we will see a significant amount of France being mixed into the calendar come August. We'll certainly be using the new world for some of our Slowtwitch Indoors events.
Slowtwitch Indoors Preview
Speaking of which: it's a good mix of courses and workouts this week for Slowtwitch Indoors. Ride of the Valkyries will be on the Innsbruckring, whereas Tuesday Structured Training will be on London Classique. Both workouts are relatively stiff this week and come courtesy of Mr. Slowman himself.
Meanwhile, our Thursday rides will be all about the after party. The event only routes of Libby Hill After Party and Keith Hill After Party will be delighting the riders of Rise and Grind and Hilly Vanilli. New to Rise and Grind is a staggered category start: there are one minute gaps between groups in order to help Bs, Cs, and Ds sort themselves into the appropriate places. Be sure to register for the correct category!
Our Casual Friday ride, in conjunction with Every Man Jack, sticks in Watopia with the Figure 8 course as a change of pace from the flatter scenery. As always, though, this workout is designed to keep everyone together and warm you up for a weekend of long training or racing. And as always, there are our runs over on May Field to keep you occupied.
Other Events We Noticed
Norseman Festival of Climbing
The mountains are calling! Each day this week, tackle another route with some serious vertical along with fellow climbing enthusiasts. Routes get progressively more difficult throughout the week and conclude with a weekend chock full of racing. You can see the full slate of rides and runs at the above link.
ZHQ Beta Crit City Races
These are slightly more difficult to track down — you'll need to go searching through your Companion App to look for them, as they aren't otherwise tagged. There are various time slots available, but these races are often an opportunity to check out the latest features on Zwift; recently, this included the new Boost Mode activation of "saving" and "discharging" watts at key points during the event. At 12 laps, it's often a very brisk paced event as well.
We'll see you in Watopia!
