Have you every wondered how realistic Alpe du Zwift is when compared to Alpe d’Huez? I have now ridden Alpe d’Huez twice and Alpe Du Zwift multiple times. In this video I place the rides side by side, although I have to admit that the comparison is not an equal one.
The Alpe d’Huez ride was in 2022, when I have been training for our trip to the Alpes for several months. The Alpe du Zwift ride was on 26th December and was my first ride for 3 weeks (and I am 8kgs heavier!).
Overall I think Zwift have done a great job of re-creating Alpe d’Huez in the online environment. I set Zwift to the highest difficulty setting, so I was mostly using the 34 chainring during this ride (as I was on Alpe d’Huez). My average power and speed were a bit lower, and this was reflected in my overall time. Let me know what you think in the comments.
My time for the official Alpe d’Huez strava segment was 1h 16m 25s, but as you will see, I have several stops – moving time was 1hr 12m 44s. By best time on Zwift is currently 1hr 05m 32s.
If you ever get the chance to ride Alpe d’Huez in real life, you could do a lot worse than practising on Zwift!
🎵 Music from Artlist.io Data overlays (cadence, grade, power, speed) added using Wahoo Element Bolt and Telemetry Overlay.
5 Comments
Well done! It looks like Zwift training is close to real world training.
I guess the 5 min difference can also be due to the different avarage watt..a comparison with same wattage could have been more appropriate but well done anyway
Very similar. Comparing parameters with the videos the are so close. Thanks.
Hi there! Great idea for a Col video 👍
Can you tell me how you superimposed the data & route images onto your video? I’m planning a trip to return to these Cols in August after 35 years (I retraced Roche’s 1987 Tour for Charity in 1989 and want fulfil one of my bucket list challenges. L’Alpe is one of the passes). Also, I’m spcurrently using a Tacx Flow with Garmin Training app. Would you recommend the Zwift over the Garmin software? Thanks in advance, Eoin 🙏👍🇮🇪
How was the resistance by comparison? I think I have my Zwift trainer resistance at 50%. It feels good until about 6 or 7% then it doesn’t really get any harder.