We won't bury the lede: we're presenting our first-ever Slowtwitch Indoors race on Zwift this Thursday night, in our Hilly Vanilli timeslot. For our first race, we also thought that we'd give you a taste of the finest climb that Zwift has to offer. So we're storming up Road to Sky: 12.4 miles, 3,753 feet of climbing. Please follow our category guidelines when signing up (understanding that, when climbing, you're likely going to be holding a higher average than you might otherwise find yourself in on a "normal" day). Bring your climbing legs, turn the fans up on high, and go.
In terms of our other Slowtwitch Indoors Rides:
Ride of the Valkyries, Tuesday 6 AM Eastern
Our women's only structured training workout sticks to Watopia's Waistband this week. Although everyone is banded together, there's still plenty of hard work to be done this week. This week's workout is "The Bends."
Tuesday Structured Training, Tuesday 7 PM Eastern
Another one of our structured training workouts, Tuesday's night time ride will have you headed to Richmond. Although the structured training element will take the sting out of the climbs over the second half of the course, the workout will still be a difficult ride -- you can thank Slowman himself for this week's workout.
Rise and Grind, Thursday 5:35 AM Eastern
This week's early-morning power exhibition covers a little bit of everything in London. We take on the Keith Hill After Party course. This should work out so that we keep groups together until the final climb, at which point the gloves will come off. This week, you'll have Mark and Matt for the B group, Alex and myself for the C group, and Shaun will head up the Ds. As a reminder: please register for the correct category! Ride leaders will look to average the middle of the w/KG range for their respective groups. If the fence is available, we do use it to zap flyers.
Slowtwitch Indoors Runs
We're still keeping everyone on May Field for the time being, with approximately 33 minutes of running all together and messaging. Yours truly will be trying to hop on for this Wednesday's 7 AM edition of the run. As always, you have (as of this writing) 3 more sessions you can possibly join this week: tonight (Monday) at 7 PM Eastern, Wednesday at 7 AM Eastern, and again Wednesday evening at 7 PM Eastern. Socially distancing doesn't have to mean going at your run alone -- it just means we're going to keep meeting virtually.
We Noticed: Lionel Sanders and the Ronde Van Zwift
Did you catch Ronde Van Zwift this weekend? Three laps of Richmond with cobbled climbs, 27.6km, Matt Stephens and Jörg Ludewig on commentary sounding just about the equals of Phil Liggett and Jens Voigt.
Slowtwitch Forum favorite triathlete Lionel Sanders wiped the floor of Canyon Zwift CC
and the rest of the pro cyclists. Ludewig is fluent in English but brings just enough German in to make for good copy. “Sometimes triathletes like to kick cyclists’ asses and
Lionel is really doing this at the moment,” he said. It’s “very difficult to crash on Zwift, even for Lionel Sanders.” You’ll hear the unconscious dissing of triathletes during the webcast, but the announcers did lavish praise where praise was due. “People were
laughing about him,” said Ludewig, but, “here we have the results.”
It’s a short watch, very compelling, but if you really want to get to the meat of it, start watching about a half-hour in. Oh, and Canyon got the last laugh on this one. Yes, Lionel beat up on Canyon’s team of professional cyclists… riding his Canyon.
Have fun in Watopia, everybody. We'll catch up next week.
