The promised cold weather (41 degrees) arrived and I stayed inside to ride stage 8 of the Tour de Zwift. The Group C ride in Paris on the Champ-Elysees covered 3 laps plus a lead in from the starting pens. When I opened the Zwift Companion app before going to the ride 39,771 people were in the game, not all in the Tour de Zwift though. Over 710 showed up for the group C ride. I hung around 510 to 525 for most of the bike ride. I rode 14.55 miles and climbed 430 feet. I rode with other people almost the entire bike ride staying in the draft to ease the pedaling.

Earlier this morning I watched the Tour de Provence where the peloton raced in short sleeves and the sun along the beach at the finish. Thanks GCN+.

Just like biking outdoors I needed a few minutes to warm up. The group didn’t ride away from but did thin out as the fliers raced ahead. Not sure why they don’t move up to group B or A if they want to race.

ZwiftInsider describes the route: “As the final stage of first-ever Virtual Tour de France, Zwift’s Champs-Élysées route was designed to mimic what may be the most recognizable road in the world: the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. … Avenue des Champs-Élysées runs between the Place de la Concorde (to the east) and the Place de l’Étoile (to the west, where the Arc de Triomphe is located). The official Champs-Élysées finishing circuit loops around the Jardin des Tuileries on the east end, and around the Arc de Triomphe on the west end. You will begin with a lead-in around Jardin des Tuileries. The road around the back of the garden includes a short ramp down and back up – the steepest sections of the circuit. Once you finish your loop around the garden you will soon ride through the start/finish arch, which begins the official circuit.”

Lead-ins mess up my calculations for lap length. I didn’t know there was a 1.9 mile lead-in so I kept waiting for the lap counter to tick over at 4.8 miles but when I saw the lap marker on the route profile at the bottom of the box above nearby Zwifters I re-calculated the lap length to 4.1 miles. Climbing per lap was not bad mainly consisting of going under the road at one end and climbing to the Arch Triumph at the other end.

As a change instead of listening to music during the bike ride I listened to the Zwift Cast podcast. Some of the podcast covered the Tour de Zwift.

From Zwiftpower.com I finished 309th of the riders with profiles there.

• 

•