Hi, This may have already been asked, but does any one know why the ‘Old Willunga Hill’ course (portal) is being taken off from today. It’s a great training ride and an iconic Hill especially in the Tour Down Under. It would be great to keep it there.
Maybe because the tour down under has finished?
However as zwift team have gone to the trouble of mapping the hill/ generating the route, why not leave it available?
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Because it’s the climb of the month and it’s the end of the month. It’s had a good run, considering that January - at least here in the UK - seems to last for 137 days.
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It has finished in the rotation.
To be honest the rotations are a bit annoying, it would be nicer if we could just choose whatever portal climb we want. Of someone will make a snarky reply to why that’s totally unreasonable.
I mean we have free run of all the other worlds via workouts or club events whenever we want, so why not allow the same for climb portals?
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I suppose we will have to hope there is another rotation of it. Old Willunga Hill is about 4km from where we live, having it on Zwift is great, (don’t have to get properly dressed on the trainer. lol) it’s quite a busy road, so also a lot safer in the virtual world.
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Were the gradients realistic?
Zwift’s theory is that the options should be restricted so there’s a lot of riders on the road. It’s the same reason why the worlds other than Watopia are scheduled.
The gradients were realistic and the turns too. Fingers crossed it will be back. 
Sent on the go with Vodafone
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Seems to be but I have not gone to Adelaide for TDU.
The restrictions on worlds then should also apply to workouts as well then if it’s so important.
As it is, I can create an event whenever I want on any world or route so it makes the restrictions fairly silly.
Bologna and Crit City
They were pretty close. Did both the Climb Portal and real life climb within a few days of each other. If I get the time I’ll put a video up showing both… as well as a review of the power/gearing/times.
In short: Zwift was a little faster. I think that’s the same conclusion as with all ‘Zwift vs IRL’ climb comparisons. Likely due to the perfect conditions Zwift has (no wind, excellent rolling resistance, maybe super light bike weight simulations… etc).
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The other thing IRL that slows you down are those dead road surfaces that seem to be notorious in my area of Australia. They just sap your energy. I’m very fortunate to have a uber-light super-illegal Canyon Ultimate CF Evo so I at least have some benefit there.
Some of the portal climbs I’m less convinced of - I’ve ridden a few of the others IRL (the French ones).
Time is most strongly correlated with total climbing, assuming there’s no substantial flat or descending portions, where Zwift’s highly optimistic CdA numbers and lack of corner braking give it an advantage versus IRL. But even on moderate grade climbs, CdA is an issue – for example, if wind resistance is 90% of power on the flat, but you’re climbing at half of your speed on the flat, then wind resistance is around 90% / 8 = 11% of power… so easy to shave a few % off needed power with your pro-level-skinsuit simulation on Zwift. So a 1/3 reduction in CdA (reasonable for most people with floppy clothing, etc) is around 4% power reduction when climbing @ 50% speed-on-the-flats, which is around 1 minute saved per half hour.
But for the feel of the climb, and for pacing, gradient details matter as well, and Old La Honda felt wrong to me, having ridden it many times IRL. But it comes down to the quality of the source data, and for Walunga, they likely had good data.