Rouvy Indoor Cycling Cheddar Gorge

Jan 8/2024

Here is a lovely, little climb called Cheddar Gorge! Many of you know it from riding it probably as a race/challenge event back in 2021. It’s time to go back and ignite a fire under this one. Join us Sunday Jan 14/2024 for Team GRC’s weekly Sunday Short race. All riders are welcome to our race/ride events. These are selected to give you a bit of a challenge, go as easy or as hard as you want. Best thing is that you won’t be on the bike all day, or laying on the couch napping for hours. Short and Intense, let’s set some personal power records!!!!!

Here is the race link:
https://my.rouvy.com/onlinerace/live/143904

It’s going to be an epic battle of lightweight climbers trying to outpace the bigger riders up top on the flats.

Hey Riders let’s get right after it today going to do a little virtual partner racing here you can see I’ve set up seven virtual Partners to uh take on this hill with me here today I’ve returned to Cheddar Gorge this is a little bit of a promo

Video for a race we’re going to run uh January 14th uh you can check for your local time it’s a team GRC short Sunday race runs every week no matter what uh we’re off to the races here so what I’ve done here is selected a lot of Discord

Members that I could find that have done this before so we’re doing uh cheddar Gorge fantastic part of the world west coast of England outside of Somerset uh 5.4 km with I believe 22 M of climbing it’s going to start off relatively flat uh false flat to start

And then it’s going to kick super hard for about a kilometer as you can see here I’ve raced my way to the front right away wasn’t sure what to expect today but I thought you know what I just want to see how good my legs feel uh

Going up this climb again this was my 11th ever ride here we go cheddar Gorge 5.4k 202 met of elevation again this is my 11th ever ride I did on Ruby way back in 2021 in April and so what I did was the Discord members I pulled off the group

As well this is all old rides for them too and what I’ve done here today you can just see on the handlebars I’m riding the CLL S5 yeah at this point here just smash yourself into Oblivion because you’ve only really got a kilometer of climbing to do

Here uh so you can push very hard get over the top and then just kind of hold on for dear life over the false flat finish it this is so short I believe anyone could ride this no problem even though it’s steep because even if it

Takes you a little bit it’s really not going to be that long of time okay so let’s just jump back again to bike selections critical here when we all rode this in the past and I know for a fact jills Roger bashak when they all

Rode this in the past we all had the old bikes we didn’t have the fast bikes we didn’t have the CLL S5 we didn’t have the fesa super lightweight climbing bike uh we definitely didn’t have the giant Propel so what I did on this one you can

See on the handlebars like I was trying to say earlier on the CLL S5 knowing okay it’s not the fastest uphill but I want super arrow for the final part of the ride you know we’re looking at probably 70% of this ride is in the zone

I want to be in that little 2 to 3% false flat stuff so yeah just smash your way up the hill uh you can see here Rogers trailing me not by very far and Roger and jills did ride this very strongly in the past I think they both have uh 3.1 Watt kilo

Average rides but the bike’s going to make a huge difference I rode this way way back like I said earlier in 2021 and uh I think I have a time of like 17 minutes and 40 seconds that’s going to change a lot today uh maybe I pushed a bit harder

Here I think a lot of it’s got to do with the bike once you get over the top you’re really going to be able to hammer hard uh so yeah cheddar Gorge Super Famous part of England gets tons of tourists all these cars you can see

Parked on the side of the road are people exploring all the cave system there uh this Gorge is formed by the erosion of all the underlying Limestone uh there’s caves everywhere here there’s a town at the very bottom uh I guess it’s a place where you

Can go check out all the Stag ties and stalagmites that grow in the caves I believe I read somewhere too that the oldest complete skeleton uh human skeleton uh was found in the cheddar caves and themselves but remember complete skeleton I’m not talking about bone fragments or things

Like that um so I think I think they call it cheddar man from what I believe uh so you can see on the climb here 2 you are going to get little sections where it’s going to get easier like I’m at 16% gradient now but you do get these

Little segments where it’s going of probably dip back down to 10 uh I believe we’re going to jump into a map mode here at some point where we can see everyone behind us uh so uh you know behind us yeah here we go here’s the map mode so I’m just creeping ahead

Of them don’t have much of a lead in fact there’s someone chasing me hard right now this uh Sebastian Antoine uh they went out like a demon at the start I think they were pushing 10 watts per kilo at the very beginning I didn’t really go crazy at the start and I think

A lot of people are probably going to do that at the race this weekend so again uh for the race this weekend if you know us just join the event if you don’t know us I’m going to put a link here at the end of the video that will give you an

Invite to the race I did also just put a brand new Discord Channel invite in at the top of the page uh recent subscriber uh Anthony uh pointed out to me the Discord link wasn’t working anymore they only stay active for a week and you got to refresh them anyways thank you Anthony

For doing that Anthony also just joined the Discord group so great to have him on board so we’re going to have another hard kick here at the end I know the ends right around the corner we’re at uh 11% 133% gradient here my simulator does go up to 25 so yeah

This really crunches down hard so here we at uh 16% and I think it’s going to get a little bit worse here as well yeah getting worse getting worse crunching down you look at me now I’m I’m in the 50s and 60s RPMs 22% gradient here so I think the

Max gradient found on this course is uh 24% uh I don’t remember seeing oh there it is right there what’s funny is you could see how the camera that was taking this video kind of veered across the road trying to level out the course I think that’s what we’re seeing there so

This must have been filmed by a cyclist with a really good stabilization and they were going across the road like you see Pros do or anyone do to make it less steep okay here we go I can see Flats coming up I’ve got my CLL S5 I think I

Just changed gears there I saw the power changing gear right here that’s where I changed it uh it’s time to get on the flats and into the big ring my favorite place to be so you crushed yourself uh where we at it took me like seven 7 minutes and

45 seconds to get to that point but you’re going to be so fresh at the beginning I think a lot of people doesn’t matter what your level is you’re riding at whether you’re a 1 2 3 four five wat per kilo Rider everyone can push hard up that first start and you

Know let’s all override we’re going to push way above our our the intensity factor get above your FTP because it’s not that long to the Finish now all you got to do now is Ride 3 and 1 12 km or something like that yep just under 3.5 km and your effort’s

Over uh you can see here I’m trying to hold around 3 watts per kilo if it gets too flat I struggle to do that find it’s a lot easier for me to push against a bit of gradient I know you’ve heard me say that before yeah again fantastic

Scenery here uh I did was doing some reading on the area I hear this place can get uh shut down quite a bit when they have heavy rainfall the water just comes gushing down this road and in fact the town at the bottom which I forget

The name of right now um gets flooded quite a bit due to runoff here I mean it’s even worse too that there’s a paved road going right down the middle of this erosional feature um where the water wants to go in the first place and then you put a

Road down the middle of it it’s just going to come screaming down that road so so I’m sure they get lots of uh little flood warnings here uh during the Rainy Seasons which it’s England so it’s probably rainy all the time again just staying hard on the gears here if I can

Uh you can see here we’re pushing downhill now and uh my power’s going to drop more tourists just parked on the side of the road so what’s interesting here you can see that like uh Gil sorry jills Gil borca is only uh looks like 450 M behind me but you’re really going

To notice that the cell has a distinct Advantage here I know what jills rode this race at I believe he averaged 3.1 I and I’m just assuming he wrote it as a race in the past so you can see they’re well behind me now on the

Curves and don’t forget you can do this right in the middle of the ride some people weren’t aware of this there’s a little map feature in the top leftand Corner it’ll either show a map the blue map look at sorry top right corner uh click on that it’s in if you

Click on that now you go to map mode obviously when you’re in map mode it’s going to show a little camera click that to get back to your video If you hit the lap button beside it don’t panic it just sets up a lap timer that’s going to record some data for

You uh so I know they wrote the strong but I think you’re going to see me starting to pull away so it looks at this point jills has pulled back some Gap we got Sebastian Antoine uh another Rider I’m not sure I see Roger right there uh cjf andelle I threw that Rider

On because they’ve been appearing at a lot of erases and I really appreciate that so I want to get them in some of these little staged fake races that I do so obviously I did this ride um this was yesterday uh January 7th I believe and all the avatars you see on

Here are from somewhere in the past they may have done this race ride on the same day uh a lot of people were doing that because I remember this being a race event way back when I think someone earlier mentioned the cup of tea challenge back in 2021 I

Believe that was bashak part of the Discord thank you and uh there was probably races going on up here at the time so they might have been racing at the time against each other in fact possibly even during the same race so it looks like at this point

Jills is still riding 3.1 watts per kilo like very close to what I’m doing in fact I’m doing a little bit less and I’m slowly starting to pull away here maybe I’m on a little bit more flat section of the course but look we’re out to 400 m

Now now I think this is the CLL coming through here and so what’s really cool is this weekend January 14th everyone’s going to jump back on with their fast and flashy bikes I’m sure we’re going to see a lot of cell S5s uh perhaps even a giant Propel uh

Maybe someone might take the fesa super lightweight climbing bike and try to get away on the hill that’s one strategy I could see maybe working but maybe some of the lightweight climbers are going to have to try to do that because I think they’re going to struggle on the flats

To keep up with the uh the big fast aerrow bikes so yeah like take a look now my distance back to jills now is uh out over 600 M and again we’re roughly riding the same kind of workload this just proves to me that how much faster this bike is than the

Original Ruby bikes way back in the day and I think in back in 2021 I don’t think there even was an official Ruby bike there was like I think three bikes you selected from uh hopefully one of the Discord riders or someone else seeing this can throw that into the comments down

Below uh but now there’s so many more bikes so you got a lot to choose from but to get them you’re going to have to work hard and save up your coins do you buy a bike early on just to get something a little bit better or do you

Wait and save up that 50,000 gold coins to get a giant Propel or CLL S5 heard there’s another new bike in on the rout soon uh I think we’ll be seeing the appearance of a track pretty quick looks like a sweet little bike so yeah you can see here I’m slowly

Working my out my way out to about 700 meters lead over jills and Rogers right there at 900 M so yeah it was nice taking this course as a little uh I guess a rerun kind of a test preview I’m hoping this can show everyone everyone that’s signed up so

Far everyone that’s considering signing up like this is it it’s really not a hard effort anyone can do this ride whether you’re five six watts per kilo or one watt per kilo it’s not going to take you all day uh we’re not going to be out there climbing for an hour so

Thanks for watching there’s rides coming to an end real quick I’ll get this up today we’ll see you again real soon