Last night was the first time I experienced a freeze-up on Zwift. My screen froze three times after I climbed the mountain - once for like two or three minutes. It doesn't advance you at all and the time doesn't keep counting, though, so it's kind of like a free break. But it was annoying.
I think I'm figuring out now what kind of rides I like. I really like the climbs. I'd rather go and do a slower pace ride and just climb all day on Zwift than ride tempo on the flat courses. I think part of it is because not as many people ride the climbs so I'm not constantly in a crowd of people. (Talk about anti-social, right? I can't even stand riding in a virtual crowd.) I don't want to do that every time just because I don't want to do super hard rides every time, but given the choice, I like the big climbs because I'm just locked in and alone for most of the ride. But I think there is something else, too: last Friday, I was having dinner with a couple of friends and we were talking about racing and riding. At one point, we were talking about how to train for events out west if you live here, the problem being that in CO and other western states, you have these climbs that go on forever and it's really hard to find similar hills here. There just simply aren't any climbs that go on and on. I know it's not exactly the same, but Zwift lets you climb like that if you want to. It took me about 30 minutes to climb the mountain yesterday. I don't know of any actual 30 minute climbs in this area, so it serves that purpose to a degree. Of course, you do need to "adjust" your ride - I climbed the whole thing in my big ring, even the extended 14 degree section on the very top of the mountain. That would never happen in reality, but I think the added difficulty over the entire length of the climb did feel real becasue it compensates for the lack of wind and whatever else to a degree. And I think it helps with actual riding, too. Despite not having ridden outside for a while, I felt pretty good climbing the short punchy stuff at Wiss these last few days that I was out there.
