Hill Climbing in Cycling for strength! During February 2024 I will be trying different features in Zwift, giving my opinions as I cycle live at 5 (PM GMT). In every stream I’ll be talking Cycling Training , Workouts, Fitness & Eating Well. Learn tips on everything Zwift Cycling related such as getting started, setup, accessories and how to Zwift. On today’s stream I’m cycling up a big hill using the Zwift climb portal
Today I am cycling Cheddar Gorge : 4.7KM (2.9M) Distance & 171M (561 Feet) of elevation Avg gradient 3.6%
I’m cycling on free energy from my solar panels & talking about everything cycling. Ask me anything.
Thanks for watching
I may use clips from the chat to make shorter videos for my channel
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro- Zwift Overview- Climbing Hills
5:00 Warming up Tips for Zwift Cycling
10:00 Do you Round Up to Nearest KM in Zwift?
12:53 Zwift Climb Portal- Explained & Overview
17:50 Zwift Climb Portal- Cheddar Gorge
21:00 Cycling Cheddar Gorge-Deep Dive on Zwift
26:00 Zwift Climb Portal: The Colour Gradients For Pacing
29:45 Strategy Planning on the Zwift Climb Portal
33:15 Final Mile Climb Cheddar Gorge Zwift Climb Portal
37:10 Reaching the Top- Zwift Cheddar Gorge
38:20 Zwift Climb Portal- My Live Review Summary
42:56 The Supertuck Down Zwift Cheddar Gorge
43:37 Closing Comments: Zwift Climb Portal
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3 2 one 321 live we are live back back big back again welcome to the BBC I am live at 5 we are riding drift the online cycling game and we’re chatting as we experience cycling up a hill today I’m going to be suffering up a hill it’s
Time to Gorge yourself the BBC takes on cheddar Gorge so we’re talking about 7.2 km of distance and around about 130 to 170 m of elevation something around there nothing too taxing but of course you will see me sweat so if you’re wondering what Hills are all
About you’re going to find out in this next stream let’s go okay so I’m just doing my warm up which is important especially when you’re going to take on a hill so I’m riding with the robot Pacer in drift this is D Bernie dgroup traveling at I
Think it’s somewh like 1.8 watts per kgam so nothing too taxing get warmed up heart rate is currently 140 I think that means I’m warmed up woo yeah so I’ll probably wrap this up to about 10 minutes maybe 15 minutes talk a bit can’t even talk okay talk a
Little talk a little bit about what’s on today’s agenda so I’m probably going to suffer up the hill there’s not too many red sections but I think it’s a total average gradient of about 4% so if I’m not too chatty it’s because I’m suffering check out the heart rate just above
146 if my heart rate starts going above 160 170 and you know I am working hard you can see the Watts 140 at the moment and looking at the WTS will give you an indicator as to how hard I am working and of course if you look across
To the top right of the screen you can comly see a yellow number three four 4% that’s the common gradient of this hill I better slow down let Burnie catch up for a bit see CH see change to 5% so yellow is mellow it will start turning like orange
And then red as a gradient gets steeper so you might see get a little bit steeper although you’ll see go even steeper going to actually hit the official Hill Climb and of course just above you can see my current speed distance travel total elevation 63 M climb so far my lapse
Time everything El is just personal Rider metrics such as how many drops I’ve got what level them on and while I’m with the pace partner the robo pace I’m accumulating additional multipliers to my XP 1.2 at the moment as long as I keep him in zone so I better slow
Down the garin’s currently got me up minus three although it does say fair keeps a track of my 40 is it 45 45 day fitness average it’s more or less where your FTP is so you know whether you’re slacking or working hard it also tells
You how much rest you need to do for your recovery I think I need this shune for the actual Hill Climb you know you don’t want anything too dreamy you want somethingone that’s going to make you ride hard hard okay so as always questions in the chat I will keep
An eye to The Ripe try and spot your chat questions as they come in and if I do miss the chat which I probably won’t but if I do I will answer it afterwards in the replay I do put Channel chapters below within an hour after doing this live
Stream so I do talk about lots of random stuff hopefully Guided by your questions but if you want to particularly focus on a certain subject just check out the chapter headings jump to the bit that’s relevant for you to we’re probably going to talk mostly about hill climbing and
Training so I’m nearly 10 minutes but warmed up should we talk about the warm up so I recommend and bear in mind I don’t know anything apart from my own experiences so I kind of recommend if you are going to let me fire off this power before I get a new
One if you are going to do any form of bik ride warm up first so even if that’s some sort of like light stretch in before you get on the bike and then try and pick something relatively flat you can just spin the legs out bonus 10 XP get your heart rate
Pumping get those muscles warmed warmed warmed up ready for the work you’re about to pull out your body will thank you and your recovery will be so much better now for me I think at least 10 minutes you know gradual r put from your Zone one into your zone
Two for me that means spining it around about 85 to 90 RPMs I know that once my heart rate gets to a a settled Pace that’s above 130 I’m good so have your water your hydration prepared I’ve got my science in sport what you call it electrolytes
I add some powder with the juice of a fresh onion squeezed in it and a couple of extra teaspoons of sugar just because I know I need that little energy insert F number two kicked in got my towel tow for wiping the face sweat another towel here for zapping up
The the swe I know I’m getting graphic I don’t want sweaty handlebars cut by wristbands on you know I’m coordinated do you coordinate when you cycle and are you opposed to Lyra Don’t Fear The Lyra or would you want something flapping around as you’re cycling trying to get your
K TI like a nice wicking Wick away that sweat and of course some big buckets at the back for holding your sports gels your snacks even your mobile phone or your camera anyway we’re in doors I don’t have the uh natural cooling of the uh wind and actually cutting through the
Air but I do have my fan in front and my fan to the side let’s go well let’s hope I’ve got the same energy when we hit the clim portal we’re going to stay here for another 2 minutes make sure we’re well and truly warmed up as I was saying 10
Minutes minimum for me I think by the time I’ve got to 15 minutes I feel like I’m warmed up and ready to go so anywhere between 15 and 20 minutes to me as an odor warm up to get you started although plus I’m never usually that
Organized when it comes to jumping on a as with ride before I finish work I sometimes don’t have the luxury I jump off work and I want to jump on to the next available group ride just means I work a bit harder warm up in the leading but the best intentions are
There with the prep okay so 2024 the reason why I’m riding Hills well you only get better by working harder if you can train with someone who’s better than you you will ultimately be always pushing up to their level to that should help you to uh gain and Achieve
Faster you can also get tips even if it’s just tips on experience from older Riders which is what I love the uh zith community and the community we have over there on Twitch where we usually Stream 5 days a week or more yeah and we all support each
Other tips on whether you want to get a new pair of shoes for a bike a new bike turbo trainer issues smft is shoes Sharon is caring dude anyway we are 15 minutes smash the bottle right I will leave you Robo Pacers for the moment I’m going to head over to theift
Menu let’s get to climbing see right now I’m stuck in that dilemma and maybe you do the same if you do leave it a comment below if you’re riding drift do you stop whenever it’s time to stop or do you always have to wrap up to the nearest whole kilometer
Or are you more extreme than that would you be like oh no I’ve got to go to 10 what did you round up to or did you not even bother I mean it seems a shame to go right now it’s all downhill light pedaling minus 2%
Gradient and uh it’s all uphill it’s all uphill from here oh but it’s obviously self inflicted righty should we get this done we want 6 6 km’s so see you can see that my whole attitude my whole Dem demia you know what I’m trying to say my whole
De yeah typic for me in the chat as uh as lifted I warmed up my heart rate is at a steady 136 I’m Zone one into zone two not going that that strong on this down hill section come on is threee should we get
Started let’s do it oh no Ken you got to round up to seven what we’re going to um I’ve nearly ended the stream accidentally okay so it’d be a shame not to R up to seven I’m going to round up to seven because that is what you do I need that 10
XP look I’m nearly at level 53 there’s a there’s a pretty good chance I could finish this uh this ride and I’ve leveled up to level 53 so maybe every 10 every 10 x 20 XP why did I say 10 right okay so we’re definitely stuffing now let’s do this Andoid save This oh glasses oh there you go level 53 it must be the extra bonuses that’s um giv me that extra boost okay so let’s do this so SM introduced the climbing portal in 2023 I think it was about late summer and Rodan Hills is where you will get
All your strength gains uh you know when you’re working at your hardest is when you gain the hardest so you know yes you will gain if you was let’s say you was in the gym lify weights was picking up gbts and you lifting say 2 kg dumbbell
You did like 10 of them yeah if you was doing a 5 kgr you’d obviously work out a lot better so Hills is the same the harder you work out the more effort the more gains you get so Swift introduced uh the clim portal which allows you to just literally just ride
Hills now what I love about this clim p is normally I just pick a a route in drift that I knew had a lot of heels so for example let me show you so I can look at um different Roots okay let’s let’s look
At these so sandeno I can see 222 km 181 M of elevation so some slight clins but nothing sort of like too taxi taxi this one here it’s 40 km it’s twice the distance and it’s double the elevation again nothing to tax in there so not
Much of a hill so if I was looking to sort of like find a particular workout that I knew had high heels I’ll just go to the route menu here and I’m looking at the elevation as we coming down here so all of these are going to be pretty flat
Pretty much flat there’s the clim portal pretty much flat or flat flat flat flat flat flat okay so road to Sky th M now that’s out theft so if you want to do out theft you know that’s 17.9 km um pretty much most of that is going to be
Going up the out you have about 5 and 1 12 km leading um and then obviously it’s about 12 and 1 12 km just elevation climbing um t five and ice You’ got a little bit of an extra lead in then you actually finish off with the AR so this
Is what I do so you know but you just climbing the hills so what I like about the introduction of the clein portal you can pick actual Hills now they they have featuring Hills at the moment we’ve got this watopia hill which is available for one more day but I like
How they’ve got the different color sections so unless you’ve ridden up out the multiple times which I have you kind of get familiar with understanding as to sort of like what the next gradient coming up is and um what the average percentage is going to be and how much
Is left but when you rid in the hill for the first time you don’t really know um what’s coming or how much effort to put in but I do like this that because it color codes the gradients kind of like it does with the um gradient on the on
The home screen at the top L of the screen so you can see this one’s yellow so you think okay I can give it extra here or okay I’ve got a red coming up so okay and I can see okay it’s not that long so let me just dig extra harder
Here and get some extra effort I can see it’s yellow or it’s even it’s green next so I can have a little bit of recovery and I like that a lot better because it gives me like patient I can see how much distance I’ve got um going it’s like
When you come to the final few meters um of finishing like um up this way so you can see the Met coming down like okay okay last push so anyway this is this one here but what I’m going to do is I’m doing the cheddar Gorge because it’s in
England um and you can see here so it’s 7.2 km including the leading um 4.7 km is actual H itself now I didn’t realize this must be a new feature that they’ve actually give you extra feat there in terms of like difficulties so I could do like 50% of
The elevation so instead of doing the full um 171 m I could just do 85 or I can do 75 but I’m going for 100 100% elevation 171 then I can lock in the 125 elevation so depending on how long it takes me to do this I might do it afterwards because
The way to get better is by doing hill repeats so I found a loer hill to me but the weather’s pretty crappy at the moment not really the weather you want to going up a hill and then rolling back down again multiple times but I can do
It in drift so I pick this one here and whatever time get today the next time I go up I Look to get a faster time than last time and by doing that you’ll get stronger you develop gains gains gains right so I’m calling down now so I’m just going to stop
Talking let’s select this I’m going to move the keyboard so I don’t sweat all over it and let’s go climb a hill I should have really changed the bike so a climbing bike but doesn’t really matter so you start off you will what the word you will
Spawn in a location that takes you up towards the um clim portal then you will teleport and you climb a virtual rainbow a bit like the rainbow roading Mario Kart and then the starts feel free to place your guesses in the chats as to how long you think
It’s going to take me to go off I’m not looking to go all flat out so I’m probably looking to be green yellow up I guess we’ll see when we get there Pon it take me to climb 4 a bit kilm up a hill so at least uh the time that I
Spent Ning on the zift menu screen this little bit of a leading before we get to the climb gives me a chance to get warmed up again see it’s 2 minutes coming up 1 kilometer I am glad though that I do choose to do a personal warm up
Before there’s no point getting yourself destroyed on the first 100 m of a climb cuz you haven’t warmed off get the body all loose prepare Myself I can see the portal in the distance just through the trees oh exciting look at my face now or happy very sweat free there it is this might not have been a good idea especially after an afternoon swim but you only get stronger by working harder hello car in the
Fields sheep in the field you go so we’re going to enter the Stargate 3.7% average overall 171 M so you can see at the moment I’m on 8 m so that will give you a a countdown towards me finishing it you get some sort of powerups or X
PES to go through as well so it’s war time and look there’s the old me and as you can see the uh pathway is currently blue CU it’s nice and easy it’s only 2% gradient you can see the percentage of the gradient just above me you can see the little snake little map
And then you can also see the gradient topology come on 22% and you can see the color segments as it still get steeper color will change so we’ve got yellow coming up next and then the segments are just behind me here this one’s currently 5.3% average orange coming up gradient getting bigger
6% 7 8 10 9o yellow again so there are 10 total gates to go through picking up a power up or some XP on the way still feels good yellow’s mellow hello all right fever and I can look ahead and I can say it gets steeper so I want to use
That fever when it gets really steep maybe towards the end of this orange segment here I can see I’m going to get another one further up and if you look below where you got this little Rainbow ribbon graph here that’s like the indication of all of my power effort and my current
Power reason why I follow that fa I Fe is I want to get the full benefit before the yellow which isn’t as steep but it looks if I collect another one just afterwards oh yeah pedals feel like I’m pedaling through treeo you right tree so at 5% does feel like a bit of
Recovery says my ETA 16 minutes 30 Radiance going to increase 6% not too bad what power are we going to get please be a FV I’ll take the XP super heart at 160 and climbing I’m going to drop the pedals drop the gear that a bit keep the Cadence
Up give this guy a ride on you got it Bradley offer some support so I can see it’s getting red next so it’s going to get steeper I’m going to try and stay in the saddle for Now 7% 8% oh yeah nine feel a change already give this guy a ride on 10% I’m going to push through to the orange there’s an example of knowing you can push it a bit more 12% knowing that it gets lighter ahead oh just for a bit then it’s red again
11 12 got to drop a game again trying to keep highish Cadence enjoying the XP every kilometer right little bit easier it’s orange so the thing is I can really feel it in my legs the burn the effort and it drives me forward knowing that it’s
Gains this makes me stronger it make me faster make me fitter power up is XP all right if you look you can’t see cuz it’s underneath me but you also have a progress bar just below behind me you can’t see but it shows your overall progress on 32 and 1/2% completed 1.5 km down 82 M of elevation done so that helps you uh work through
Mentally it’s not just a endless Hill that you’re climbing up it’s getting easy toet up the gears a bit let’s not just have it as recovery get some speed that should also bring that t down a bit 3% I’m about 13 of the way Through So I’m pushing a bit harder but I’m still getting some active recovery 8 minutes down halfway through in terms of time 41% of this climb Done I’m already thinking of where I can improve next time so I think it’s quite possible to push the Ws up here go tempo I’m more or less at Tempo now but a higher Tempo it’s about 190 200 up this section doing like a 10 minute TT Pace
Might be even stronger than that actually hold STP all the way to the top we’s see there’s some some some blue bits sprinkled in for Recovery if needed what you Reon have you done this climb anyone watching what’s your fastest time up here and also how did
You find it did you have a strategy for any of the segments where you just flat out all the way all right guess the power Up just don’t give me a draft XP off the pace a Bit you can still guess my ETA if you want feel free to use the zift indicator up There so I’m 56% completed Get the power up it’s going to be X XP XP off ever XP all the way Yeah two3 through it’s about a mile left XP 20 it’s time I like this it’s decent pace I can feel it in my legs but I know that I’ve got 1200 M left 30 m of elevation I can just keep pushing I can rest on the way down and also
Doesn’t get any steeper Than This Here Comes the blue section so here comes some recovery I still keep the effort up though 3% 1% more or less flat what re XP XP there it is 600 minutes left come on Heart Right 167 want to make it on 16 Minutes new PR 1543 whoop whoop see the that there that’s gains Gaines people Gaines right now the best thing about climbing up a hill AP from doing it and the gains is the downhill on the way back so use it to recover on this occasion I going to use it to
Summarize what we me and you just did unish line portal there we go no XPS on the way down unfortunately but we might get some super togging so this was the cheddar Gorge clim portal selected from the zift main menu right at the bottom to the
Left there’s always a couple of uh Hills on rotation this one shed a Gorge only about 4 and 1/2 km total distance just over 3% average gradient nothing too taxi in some orange sleep bits I think it Peaks at about 12 13 maybe even 14% for like a few seconds
Most of the gradients were like 6% or less hence the 3.3% average gradient and uh apart from the one feather going through with the pars which you get 10 gates to go through every other pup was an XP there were mostly 10 points I did notice a 20 XP so
That’s moving me closer to level 54 normally I’d want to be getting feathers all the way made the climb a little bit easier but it doesn’t really matter what the climb portal Al the rft definitely just feathers please right the best thing about this as well is I’m still spinning the legs
I’m still getting some work out this is absolutely recovery you can see the uh ribbon cograph at the bottom there it’s in Gray now Zone s my wats are under 100 still traveling at 48 km though because it’s minus 3us 2 good luck guys on the way up I’ve
Warmed it up for you yeah so an uppr you can see my segments just above my head so you get a breakdown of each of the different SE um sections the last one towards the uh Finish Line average power was 2 44 did it in 1 minute and 1
Second 197 before that 199 so a nice leer Le Pace one say so gate five 17 yeah that looks to be my lowest one you know I wasn’t looking to go through too fast but now I have a measure so when I go up again on we
Looking to go harder than the first time now normally I go up and out and I do like three or four of these but for today it was just to test this out so when you catch me on again I will be doing two plus be three of
These up and down and my time to beat will be the time that I got this time now although doing three backs a back it is more like a hill climbing conditioning but we’re going to go for a record time on the first time at the very least so you want to be
Uh quicker than 15 minutes 43 seconds I’m going to go sub 15 what you reckon sub 15 you want to specify what time you think I should be able to do it in put some in the comments you can do that just after you subscribe what you mean you’ve already
Subscribed but hit the Bell button or whatever it is they say but uh most importantly like this video share it to someone who likes a psychist don’t share it to someone who hates a psychist instead check out my other shorts videos send them one of those at the very least it will make
Them laugh at best it will slightly change their opinion of their Cy but not all bad also I’m not always a cyclist sometimes I’m a motorcyclist some I’m a motorist and sometimes I’m a pedestrian so my heart rate see p at about 168 170 I think it mached out
At on the way down I’m pedaling some but the Ws aren’t that great heart rate is uh settling down to like 125 it’s possible I could super talk so I just show you the super to let me um change the uh camera position so as long as you are going
Faster than 56 km an hour and the gradient is more than minus 3% you will be able to go into this super toop position see my speed is increasing on Arrow more AR than a chocolate flying at 100 km an hour this is banned by the UCI for
Safety reasons they don’t want as ordinary folk that’s non Pro psychist copying the likes of um Wiggins and other psychist bent over their top bar trying to get maximum gains right so we come to the end should we go up again shall we or should we just call it quits
Anyway thank you for watching this is theft CL portal the only thing I wish to do here is I wish you could just do do automatic repeats so I don’t even think I could even do a U-turn let be do a you so I’m going to try a U-turn from the companion
App would it send me back oh it does okay maybe they fixed it didn’t it didn’t look like we did it the last time well the first time I was on it I thought I could keep going without you turning come back around again anyway let’s not go
In hey you thought what’s going is it yeah that’s tomorrow anyway the FKS for watching I’m going to cool down I’m probably going to jump on with the pace with the I always call them Pace Partners I’m going to jump up with the pace Partners the road Pacers probably
Ride about another 30 minutes or so that will give me roughly about 80 90 minutes of workout I’m not looking to do extra hard effort just really get the legs nicely spinning have a nice cool down I have swammer earlier so I don’t want to overdo it I’ll have some nice
Uh chicken in the air fryer with some uh with I might do some stir fry vegetables in the walk for you Uncle Roger it’s going to be happy anyway chatting waffles thanks for watching I hope you enjoy these videos if there’s anything you want to see just let me
Know in the comments and on that note I will see you again