Working my way through the new Zwift courses released 12/17/2020 today I tackled the Watopia Serpentine 8. Reading the description on ZwiftInsider.com and the brief numbers in Zwift when I selected the Serpentine 8 route I thought the route distance was 12 miles and 575 feet of climbing. The problem with those numbers was they didn’t include the 4.55 mile lead-in segment and it’s climb. The full ride came in at 16.51 miles and 784 feet of climbing in 1:13:28. When I passed the 12 mile mark I thought I missed the announcement in Zwift and almost stopped. But I kept pedaling until the end of ride banner came up. A side note about the route, the physical location for this segment shows up as Temotu Province, Solomon Islands.

The YouTube video above is a faster version from the livestream one at the bottom of this post. I sped up the video after the opening couple of miles and slowed back near the end. If you want details the livestream video will show me fixing the Bluetooth connection issue, getting off and on my bike, and more.

Before the ride I visited my Zwift garage to select a gravel bike. My first choice was the Canyon Grail but it required level 23 which is higher than where I am. Looking at other brands I didn’t find one at my level until I looked at the Zwift frames. I selected their gravel bike, paid with my Drops, and moved to select the route. The reason I wanted a gravel bike came from watching GPLama’s YouTube video where he rode the new routes and switched to the gravel bike for this one. I probably could’ve used a regular road bike frame.

With everything in place I selected the route in Watopia and went to the start area. There I experienced the same Bluetooth problem as yesterday. I tried connecting with the phone companion app which updated earlier this morning with the new maps. That didn’t fix it. I tried connecting with the computer Bluetooth and that didn’t work. I forced the phone app to close and restarted Zwift and the Bluetooth connected. Good thing I wasn’t riding an event because all this would have put me about 8 minutes behind.

Now the ride began. The first mile or so was downhill not taking long to reach 2 miles but after that the work began. I still thought the overall distance would be 12 miles and counted the tenths as I watched the scenery. Some shots during the ride.

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Looking my ride in Strava I learned I notched several person records: 2 gold medals, 3 silver, and 1 bronze. One of the silver medals happened on the Hammock Bridge segment which seems to zap me climbing from the bottom of the hammock. Today I built up speed and got to the top quick enough to get the silver. Power output was similar to other recent Zwift rides at 117 watts average with a max of 229 watts. No out of the saddle climbs today.

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