How Zwift helps train for 6Points Ibiza and Formentera

The 3-day 6Points Ibiza and Formentera is held on October 7/8/9th this year, and as usual, Zwift offers great preparation for this event.

6Points meets Formentera Faro lighthouse — **6Points riders at the Faro de Formentera lighthouse in October 2019**

6Points Challenges provides 6Points Zwift Training on Thursdays at 9.55am BST and on Sundays at 11.40 BST, and for the more competitively-minded, Zwift races on Wednesdays at 20.10 BST.

Our Zwift presence

Since 2019, http s://6pointschallenges.com, has organised weekly Zwift group rides, led by a “beacon” leader, including the UK’s record breaking Olympic cyclist, Dame Sarah Storey. Sarah and her Storey Racing team members all use Zwift for their training, as do many professional teams.

Several thousand individual participants have ridden over 50,000 6Points group rides, and over 10,000 6Points races over 3 years. Riding and chatting with other riders, via a headset or texting on screen, Zwift offers a highly developed, shared and engaging way to train, with like-minded others, if road or track riding isn’t possible.

The Zwift rides

Our Zwift rides are over a variety of courses, some hillier than others, including one or more from each of the Zwift “worlds” – Watopia (a virtual world and the most developed of Zwift’s worlds); Richmond’s UCI race circuit; London, inspired by the Prudential RideLondon 100; New York; Innsbruck’s UCI race circuit (the InnsbruckRing); the Yorkshire UCI circuit; Japan’s Makuri Islands; France, including Mont Ventoux, and Paris, emulating the final day circuit of the Tour de France.

Ride participation

Even for our first 6Points Mallorca ride, the numbers were extraordinary, with 98 riding.

In the image below we can see that I was “leading” from 41st position, with the yellow beacon chevron highlighting me for the other riders, in a peloton of 98.

**I should know how to spell “booked”! I was thinking of South Africa maybe!**

Motivation

More screenshots from the ride show what a great job Zwift have made of the virtual world scenery for the Jungle Circuit ride, which very much helps with training interest and motivation. You can choose and move around 8 perspectives at any time.

**Game graphics, seen from different perspectives.**

After I led this first Zwift ride for 6Points Mallorca in 2019, with its very high participation numbers, we saw huge growth in the series, with nearly 500 people on winter rides. Zwifting has kept me fit, even at my age, for the many 6Points events I have done.

We have already nearly filled this year’s 35 places for the upcoming 6Points Ibiza/Formentera on October 7/8/9th.

How Zwift helps me on 6Points Challenges

I gave up road riding in the UK in December 2016 for family reasons, my only road riding for the last 6 years being 6Points Mallorca, 6Points Ibiza/Formentera and the RideLondon 100.

On real-life 6Points Challenges, we ride up to 100kms and 100 miles each day, over a 3 day weekend. I found that my Zwift schedule of 50kms per day, 4 days a week, kept me fit for those 6Points weekends, never “hitting the wall” even at 70+ years old.

6Points Ibiza and Formentera preview

Looking back at our 6Points rides on both Formentera and Ibiza over the weekend of 4/5/6th October 2019 helps preview the 220 kms October 7/8/9th event this year:

**The lighthouse Faro de Formentera, at the East point of Formentera**

Ibiza has one or two quite stiff climbs, for example the one out of our lunch stop at Portinatx, and quite a bit more elevation than Formentera overall.