Last night was CMC Southern African Winter Series – Stage 2 (C). One lap. 25km. Legends and Lava. And about four minutes in, my legs handed in their resignation letter without so much as a notice period. 😅
I’m not going to pretend this was some heroic underdog story where I dropped the whole pack and sailed off into the sunset. It wasn’t. It was 42 minutes of me quietly negotiating with my own quads while everyone else disappeared up the road like they’d heard there was cake at the top.
But here’s the thing — I finished. I got a new PR. I even nabbed a jersey. And by the time I got off the bike, I had a pretty honest answer for why my legs staged that mutiny in the first place. Which, if I’m honest, is the more useful part of this whole story.
The Route: Legends and Lava, Watopia’s Prettiest Trap
If you haven’t ridden it before, Legends and Lava starts innocently enough at the Fuego Flats pens before luring you into Titans Grove for a twisty little rollercoaster warm-up — the kind of road that looks flat on the map and is absolutely, categorically not flat in your legs. This route was originally built for Zwift Academy Road back in 2021, designed specifically to test three different systems in one single lap: your sprint, your VO2 max, and your threshold. Which is a very polite way of saying it’s engineered to hurt you in three completely different ways before you’ve even seen the volcano.
One lap is 24.6km with roughly 352m of climbing, and it officially ends right at the top of the Volcano KOM — no cheeky flat run-in to recover on, no long descent to hide in and pretend you meant to go that slowly. You do the work, and then you’re done. Or in my case: you do the work, question several recent life choices, and then you’re done.
How Stage 2 Actually Went (Spoiler: I Survived)
I finished 21st out of 40 in my category, 2:34.90 behind the winner, in a total time of 42:08. My average heart rate for the ride was 160bpm, so no — I was not “just cruising” out there, whatever my finishing position might suggest. My legs were very much in the office; they just weren’t doing overtime.
And here’s the bit I’m genuinely chuffed about: on the Titans Grove QOM Reverse segment, deep in that twisty warm-up section, I clocked a time of 2:06.9 — good enough for 2nd female and an actual jersey. I was 2.9 seconds off top spot. Two. Point. Nine. Seconds. So close I could taste it — which, given how the rest of the ride went, is either extremely motivating or mildly cruel; I haven’t decided yet.
The Volcano Nearly Took My Actual Lifeforce
On the final climb, I was sitting on 351m of elevation gained, staring down a 4.1% gradient that felt, at that particular moment, like a personal attack. Gear 9, cadence hanging at 86rpm, heart rate still stubbornly at 169 bpm, power dropped to 200W and dropping further, speed down to a genuinely humbling 17km/h. This is the point in the race where you start bargaining with the volcano itself.
And then, right as I was fully prepared to hand over my lifeforce to the mountain, a message popped up from Etienne Malan: “You will get there…!! 🤙🤙🤛” Honestly, nothing has ever hit different quite like a random fist-bump emoji from a teammate at the exact moment your soul is leaving your body. I did, in fact, get there. Slowly. Loudly. But there.
🚴♀️ New to Indoor Cycling or Zwift? Start Here
If Stage 2 taught me anything, it’s that having your indoor cycling basics properly sorted makes a massive difference to how consistently you can actually train — which, spoiler alert, is the real secret to surviving volcanoes. I’ve put together an honest, no-fluff Indoor Cycling Starter Pack covering exactly what you need (and what you can skip) to get pedalling without spending a fortune.
The Honest Diagnosis: Why My Endurance Went AWOL
Here’s the truth, no sugar-coating: I don’t ride as much as I used to. Life happens, weeks get busy, and the trainer sits there judging me quietly from the corner. And the thing about endurance is that it’s not something you earn once and keep forever — it’s a subscription, not a purchase. Skip enough payments, and the pack rides away from you, politely, at the base of every single climb.
This isn’t a “Liz has suddenly become unfit” problem. It’s a consistency problem, and consistency problems are actually the easiest ones to fix — which is the one genuinely good news item in this article.
The Comeback Plan: Getting Back to Climbing Without Dying
1. Rebuild the aerobic base first (yes, boring rides count)
Most of my riding time needs to be at Zone 2 — roughly 55–75% of FTP, or a pace where you can still hold a conversation without gasping. It feels almost insultingly easy while you’re doing it, but this is the effort that builds the aerobic engine everything else sits on top of. Skip it, and you’re basically building a house with no foundation and wondering why it wobbles on every hill.
The good news for time-crunched humans: you don’t need four-hour epics. Consistent 45–75 minute Zone 2 rides, done regularly, do the job — it’s the accumulated time at that effort over weeks that counts, not one heroic Sunday ride.
2. Stop attacking the bottom of every climb
This one is basically autobiographical. Going out too hard at the base of a climb is the single most common way to blow up before the top — on the Volcano, in life, in general. Settle into a steady, sustainable effort from the first pedal stroke, and save something for the steeper pitches instead of spending it all on main character energy at the bottom.
3. Keep your cadence up, gear down early
Shift into an easier gear before the climb actually demands it, and aim to keep spinning somewhere around 80–90rpm rather than grinding a big gear at 50rpm and wondering why your legs feel like they’re filled with wet cement. A quicker, lighter cadence is more efficient and leaves you room to manoeuvre if the gradient decides to get worse, which — on the Volcano — it absolutely will.
4. Actually practise climbing
Specificity is annoyingly non-negotiable — if you want to get better at climbing, you need to climb. Regular hill repeats (even short ones) build the muscular strength and lactate tolerance that flat Zone 2 riding alone won’t give you. On Zwift that’s as simple as picking a route with a proper climb in it and riding it more than once — Legends and Lava will happily oblige.
Put plainly: more consistent Zone 2 base, fewer heroics at the bottom of climbs, a sensible cadence, and regular exposure to actual hills. None of it is glamorous. All of it works.
Turns out the Volcano didn’t steal my lifeforce. It just showed me exactly where the gaps in my training were hiding. 🌋💗
Stage 3 is coming whether my legs are ready or not, and this time I’m showing up with an actual base under me. Same jersey ambitions, hopefully slightly less begging the mountain for mercy. 😅🩷
🩷The Endurance Diaries🩷
