K.O.M. or King of the Mountains is an honour bestowed on the rider in the Tour de France who is the best climber. Points are awarded for each summit and the highest scorer gets to wear the coveted Polka Dot jersey.
As The Tour is currently happening across the channel, Zwift have put on a few tour themed challenges. The one I’ve been pursuing for th least couple of weeks or so is the Climb Portal challenge featuring climbs from this year’s tour.
I have already climbed three of the four leaving just the Col de la Madeleine to conquer.
Donning the Didi the Devil kit which I’d got from the Hautacam, I set out on the final ascent.
There is a gentle, two kilometre, lead in before the climb proper.
Instead of the usual, rice, scenery the climb was just the road stretching ahead (and above) with colours denoting the gradient. From a gentle blue (not much) through yellow, orange and red.
This climb is a tad longer than the Hautacam so I was expecting it to take about the same time, namely two and a half hours.
I settled in, pacing myself in zone three (tempo) most of the time, or at least I tried.
Coming up to the half way point, I was joined by a fellow rider who raced up to me and then slowed right down to match my speed. As I sped up so did he and if I stopped he would also.
At first I thought that he was using me to mentally drag him up but occasionally, he would put out big watts, accelerate away and then fall back.
Perhaps he was trying to draft me but at around 6kph there wouldn’t be much effect, if any.
I did try to slipstream him but whenever I got behind, he would slow down forcing me to pass.
Using my steering, I moved to the centre of the road to prevent him drafting but he just carried on doing what he was doing. He was, and I don’t know why, really annoying me.
Eventually, even he got fed up and shot on up the mountain at around 4Wkg !
Without my ‘companion’ I continued the slog, finally reaching the summit two hours and twenty minutes.
I had ridden longer and climbed higher than my last mountain but in less time so I was quite happy.
At the top, I did a one eighty and started a rapid descent just turning over the legs as a cool down.
It took me about twelve minutes to come down, reaching a maximum speed of 78kph.
As well as the XP and kudos of scaling the mountain, I unlocked the Didi the Devil hat to compliment the jersey.
My next K.O.M. challenge may have to be the L’alp du Zwift which is 19km long with 1,144 metres of ascent and is supposed to be very similar to the real world Alpe d’Huez.
We’ll see.
