- A couple of weeks ago, I was given the chance
to come out to Alpe d'Huez, so of course,
I jumped at the opportunity.
They later told me it would be at the end of the ski season,
nonetheless, I thought it would be a really cool idea.
I mean, literally, a really cool idea,
'cause it is snowing right now.
Anyway, today, I am going to be comparing Alpe d'Huez
and Alpe du Zwift to see what the differences really are.
[electronic Music]
[Electronic Music]
- Back in the spring of 2018,
Zwift launched a major new course extension,
Alpe du Zwift, the longest, toughest climb on the Zwift,
and modeled on the iconic Alpe d'Huez,
the famous mountaintop finish in the Tour de France.
The length: 12.5 kilometers.
The gradient: 8.5%.
And how many hairpins does it have?
Well, it's got 21, just like the real climb.
Apparently, Zwift took GPS data from the actual climb
and modeled Alpe du Zwift around that.
The idea behind it was to give Zwifters
a super tough climbing challenge
and a target to aim for as you need to be at level 12
or above to unlock it.
But also, to extend on the training element of Zwift,
as who doesn't get super fit
by riding up super tough mountains.
And some of us may need to practice
for a sportif or Gran Fondo that we've booked
in the mountains, even though we don't live near any.
Having never ridden Alpe du Zwift or Alpe d'Huez,
I thought I was the perfect candidate
to see how the two really compare.
Hence, why I was riding it in the snow,
while it was still ski season.
[Dramatic Electronic Music]
The first obvious difference is I'm wearing
a lot more clothing out here,
and that's because cycling season doesn't really get going
until around mid-May, over here at Alpe d'Huez,
and then it continues until October time.
And the rest of the year, if you haven't already guessed,
Alpe d'Huez is actually a ski resort,
which means when I get to the top in a minute,
it's gonna be pretty fresh.
How about we check in with indoor Chris
and see how he's looking?
Right. That is 6.9 of my seven kilometer warm-up
and I am good to go.
Right. Well if you're ready, I'm ready.
Three.
Two.
One. Go!
[Electronic Music]
You certainly notice on the corners,
it really backs off, just like in real life.
You get these brief moments of respite
where you either have to change gears
to keep up with your cadence,
or you can back up and have,
as I said, a little bit of respite.
Which will really help me in real life.
So, I've actually changed one of the settings in Zwift.
Which isn't something I'd normally do.
What I've done is up the gradient effect 100%,
and that will replicate my body weight
almost exactly going uphill,
and it will mean the Y to keep incline
will be controlled to really mimic that gradient
that you'll be feeling in real life.
And I have to say,
I'm changing gear quite a lot because of it.
And, you know, you can tell I'm out of breath.
[Electronic Music]
(coughs)
Right, I'm a fair way up the climb now.
I'm starting to find it pretty hard, to be honest.
There's a few things I'm interested in though,
indoors versus outdoors, seated versus standing.
Outside, I'm in the saddle and out of the saddle,
finding it hard to find that rhythm that I'm looking for.
And I'm in first, second, and third gear,
so is that the same indoors?
The altitude's starting to take its toll a little bit.
I find it a little bit harder to breathe out here.
And then there's the cool thing as well,
I'm actually slightly overdressed.
And, well indoors, I can just crank the fan up.
Anyway, let's find out how it's going back at the studio.
[Electronic Music]
So I'm about 20 minutes in now,
21 minutes, to be exact,
and I've averaged, within one watt
of what I've managed to maintain outside.
On the day outside, I actually thought I was
a little bit ambitious at the time.
But, three two nine indoors,
three two eight outside, after 20 minutes,
is right where you want to be, really,
for me, for this effort to make it repeatable.
One thing I'm noticing, as I mentioned before,
is the differences in the corners.
You know, just like in real life,
you build off a bit of momentum, slingshot yourself
into the next bit of gradient,
and just like in real life,
talking is getting really hard.
Except here, it's because of the effort,
I'm building up a bit of heat
and outside it's because of the altitude.
But, that makes it really quite comparable, actually.
That's something I didn't expect.
I actually thought it'd be easier.
It's not easier at all.
[Electronic Music]
Right. I mentioned a couple of corners ago,
that I was starting to feel nice and warm,
and that's still the case.
It has just started snowing,
although that's eased off again a little bit,
which means I'm really not looking forward
to the descent anymore,
so I think I'll be jumping into our hired car.
What the snowstorm did do, was add to the epic atmosphere
that this mountain has.
LeMond, Hinault, Pantani, Armstrong,
even Geraint Thomas last year,
it's a phenomenal mountain if you're a cycling fan.
You may not get that on Zwift,
but what you do get is perfectly controlled temperature.
Something that, right now, I quite enjoy.
(panting)
[Electronic Music]
So at this point in the video,
I've been planning to tell you
about why Alpe d'Huez
is such a bucket list climb, if you will.
But to be really honest,
I'm gonna do that in a minute when I've caught my breath
because this is seriously hard.
Alpe d'Huez is a bucket list climb,
but what does that make Alpe du Zwift?
Well, it doesn't have the history,
but the effort is so similar
you definitely get the sense
that you're achieving something by riding up it.
I think part of what makes
Alpe d'Huez a bucket list climb
is because of how much effort it takes to get there.
If you live in Grenoble, just down the road,
you probably take it for granted,
whereas it took me 10 hours to get there.
Alpe du Zwift, meanwhile, once you've reached level 12,
which takes a little bit of commitment on Zwift,
is then on your virtual doorstep
meaning you have access to it whenever you please.
So would it be good for you?
Undoubtedly, yes.
Sustained efforts like this one,
which might take between 45 minutes and an hour and a half,
depending on your fitness level, are incredibly potent.
All right, I'm in the final kilometer now,
and just like in the real one, I'm falling apart.
Like, properly falling apart.
Heart rate: 191.
I started to question if I'd ever make it to the top,
or at least from here, I know I should be able to
because I've done it once in real life.
[Electronic Music]
(panting)
And finally, I've made it to the top of Alpe d'Huez.
I've had a few minutes now to catch my breath
and recover from the effort
because it was genuinely really, really hard.
I paced it a little bit ambitiously
and with the altitude, I really started to suffer
in that final 15 minutes.
But I'm gonna let you in on a little secret,
I've actually come a little bit further up the climb
than where Alpe du Zwift finishes,
but I'm only gonna get one chance to come here
and ride in the winter and I wanted to see
what the real finish was like
where the Tour de France goes to.
Anyway, how about we find out how I've gotten on
back in the studio?
All right.
As you see, I've made it to the top
and one thing I noticed was
the perception of time.
On the left-hand side of the screen,
I've got all the corners being ticked off in front of me.
Whereas, when I rode it blind in real life,
I had no idea how much further it was to the next corner.
Now, that's all great,
at one point I came undone,
because I was like, oh, 500 meters,
I can do 500 meters,
forgetting that 500 meters after 45 minutes flat out
up a mountain, it doesn't last the short amount of time
that flat sprint does,
so I ended up really clinging on for grim death,
got my heart rate right up to 200,
which is higher than I had outside,
however, outside there's less oxygen
and I know from personal experience
I can't quite push that high in high altitude.
I need to recover now and then we're gonna update you
on some of the stats from inside versus outside.
So the power numbers, cadence, heart rate,
and you'll see which one was fastest.
(sighs)
I'm now showered and changed but what have I learned?
Well, the difference in my heart rate
was only one beat per minute on the average.
So 174 outside versus 173 indoors.
Although, weirdly, my heart rate indoors did creep up
a little higher towards the end.
That's mainly because, despite our best efforts
with the air conditioning,
it didn't want to play with us at all.
So we set it to 17 degrees but by the end of Alpe du Zwift,
my temperature indoors was actually 24 degrees
and I'm not a big fan of the heat.
When we look at power numbers then,
they again, near on identical,
328 outdoors and 327 indoors,
which shows that the effort was basically exactly the same,
the only difference, though, did come from cadence.
So I had 83 indoors and I had 76 outside.
When I'm indoors, I do tend to pedal that little bit faster
and I'm a little bit smoother,
but when I'm outside, I often shift it into the big ring,
especially out in some of those corners,
drop it down a couple of cogs on the back
and then stand up for about 30 to 60 seconds,
mainly to give my muscles a bit of a rest.
There was one difference though, and that was the speed
that it took to actually climb Alpe du Zwift
versus Alpe d'Huez.
Indoors it took 47 minutes and 30 seconds
whereas, outside it was closer to 52 minutes.
Now there are loads of reasons for this,
not least the wind direction, the air density,
the wind speed, and the fact that it was actually
a lot colder outside, so therefore I had on
loads more clothing. I had a bottle on my bike
so that would make my bike heavier
than my virtual bike which was,
actually, if anything a little lighter
than my real world one.
But to answer a question that I briefly touched on earlier,
if I was heading out to Alpe d'Huez in the summer
and I only had Alpe du Zwift to train on,
would it be a suitable method for me to get fit
for Alpe d'Huez?
Well, absolutely.
The demands are exactly the same.
The only difference being that you don't lose oxygen
on Alpe du Zwift.
The physical exertion was, again,
exactly the same.
The experience and the feeling in my legs
was identical.
The only difference being
I could get straight off my bike
and go and have a nice warm shower from Alpe du Zwift.
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