Virtual Active: Chilean Patagonia

    Chilean Patagonia Bike is part of Virtual Active’s new Bike Series 2. All the Bike Series 2 DVD’s feature one 55-minute ride and you have the option of doing it guided or unguided. Chilean Patagonia is led by Caroline Jordan (who also led the New Zealand ride in Bike Series 1), who I like a lot. She has a calm voice and a good sense of humour—I love it when she talks to the guanacos (which are like alpacas) because that's something I would totally do. 

 Length: 55 minutes

Format: Caroline calls Chilean Patagonia an “endurance ride”. Caroline defines this as a "level of training where you don't work too hard or too easy" and says that most of a cyclist's training time should be dedicated to endurance rides as it builds your "aerobic base" and helps you "move oxygen more effectively to your muscles so that you can train at higher intensities more often".  Your heart rate is elevated and it stays relatively steady throughout an endurance ride. The profile of Chilean Patagonia is mostly uphill—some of these hills you do seated and some you do standing. Chilean Patagonia features a lot of “tempo rides". Tempo rides are when you’re working at a pace that’s  slightly uncomfortable but one that you can sustain for a while. So you’re pushing hard but not going all-out. Most of the ride has you in a moderate to high gear at a quick but not all-out speed. Like all 55-minute VA workouts, Chilean Patagonia is divided into 11 5-minute stages and you always have the option of choosing to do the ride unguided.  

           

Music: the music is all instrumental and it seemed to have more of a driving beat than the music in the Costa Rica ride. Like the Costa Rica ride, I didn’t notice the music a lot of the time but whenever I made a conscious effort to pay attention to it, I liked what I heard.

Footage: Chilean Patagonia is stark but beautiful. The scenery is what you would expect when you’re riding through the Andes—lots of mountains, deserted dirt roads, lakes and rivers. My favourite footage features in Stage 5, when you ride through a gorgeous valley. 

        As stunning as the footage is, it sometimes feels repetitive. A great deal of your time is spent riding on various deserted roads, mountains in the distance and a lake to your right or left. So you see scenes like this a lot: 

      This isn’t necessarily a negative as it’s beautiful and it's the nature of the Patagonian terrain. But if you prefer the scenery to change every stage as it does in most VA workouts, then Chilean Patagonia may not be the best choice for you.

Difficulty: although Chilean Patagonia is challenging, I didn’t find is quite as tough as the Costa Rica ride. This is most likely because the 8 minutes of sprints that nearly killed me were missing. The challenge in Chilean Patagonia comes from the fact that there is very little rest or recovery time and you’re usually working in a moderate to hard gear. The drills I found to be the most challenging is when you increase your gear but keep your cadence the same. And then you increase your gear again but keep your cadence the same…and repeat. If you follow Caroline’s instructions, Chilean Patagonia scores 8/10 for difficulty. 

Other Random Thoughts: as much as I really like Caroline and see the value of endurance rides, I prefer rides with more variety. I missed having intervals where you go all-out and I missed sprinting--although not for 8 minutes. (There are times in Chilean Patagonia where you increase your cadence but not enough for me to consider them sprints). I also wish there was more standing work. The repetitive scenery is another slight drawback—I think Chilean Patagonia would work better as a 35-minute ride. But these are my personal nitpicks. People looking to “build their base” and who don’t mind a lof of the stages looking similar will love Chilean Patagonia. I don’t see reaching for this one on a regular basis but I still got a great workout. 7.5/10.

I leave you with a scene from the cool down. Guanacos feature prominently in the ride :)