Zwift Riding With The HERD on Watopia Two Bridges Loop
Another chilly day outside so I looked for a Zwift ride. (55 degrees when I started today) I thought stage 2 of the tour de Zwift would be one of the events but I only found stage 1 which I rode yesterday. The HERD Tuesday Social Ride looked good so I signed up. The 11:55 AM start rolled around and I thought I had all the technical parts connected to Zwift but my cadence sensor was not connected. Yesterday I moved the cadence sensor from the left crank arm because my shoe was rubbing on it. The spot was my left shoe but I did not orient it in the right direction. The ride started when I figured this out so I repositioned the sensor on my left shoe and all was good. It didn’t show up in the Zwift companion app but it did on my computer. With the dealy I missed several minutes and rode alone until the front flyers lapped me.
I rode the Watopia Two Bridges Loop once before on 12/31/2020 but only one lap. According my notes I was trying a method to connect two routes in one ride. I don’t think it worked. Today’s ride was 60 minutes rather than distance based. ZwiftInsider.com describes the course, “Introduced in Zwift’s December 2020 update, Two Bridges Loop is the first route to use the new KOM Bypass – a short stretch of road which connects the Hilly KOM forward with the Hilly KOM reverse approximately halfway up each climb, effectively shortcutting both KOM segments. This route is simply an abbreviated version of the event-only Hilly Route Reverse, since we remove 2.1km of road and 20m of elevation gain by taking the KOM bypass.” There were a couple of short 10% climbs to test my legs. My left knee is still a little sore though after I “popped” it this morning the soreness decreased a lot. I think the flyers lapped me at least 3 times while I rode 14.7 miles and climbed 876 feet during my ride. I did score some Strava personal records thought.