Is 60 Minutes a Good Alpe du Zwift Time?

Short answer: yes. 60 minutes is a good time. You can stop reading, close the tab, and go and feel pleased with yourself.

Still here? Good — because "good" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, and you clearly want the longer, more honest version. The kind where I tell you where your hour actually sits, who is quietly beating you, and what it would take to join them. Pour a recovery drink. This climb is 12.2 km and 1,036 m of relentless gradient, so we may as well do the full ascent together.

So is 60 minutes actually good?

Here is the thing the calculator has been trying to tell you all along: your Alpe du Zwift time isn't really about your time. It is about your w/kg — your power-to-weight ratio — because that is the number that drags your particular bundle of flesh and ambition up 21 hairpins.

A 60-minute ascent lands at roughly 3.2 w/kg. To put that in plain English: you are fitter than most of the people who attempt this climb, you have clearly done some actual training rather than just owning Lycra, and you are nowhere near a professional. Which is a wonderful place to be. You get all the satisfaction of being good without any of the pressure of having to defend a podium.

For reference, around 3.0 w/kg gets you to the top in about 63 minutes, and nudging up to 3.2 w/kg shaves you down to the magic 60 minutes. So if you cracked the hour, you weren't far off 3.2 — and you should be quietly chuffed.

The brutal honesty bit: where you really sit

Every "good time" question is really the same question wearing a different jersey: am I better than the next person? The answer depends entirely on which next person. Here is the unflinching league table, generated straight from the same model that powers the calculator — so no one can accuse me of being generous:

Read that table and find yourself in it. It does not care about your excuses, your sketchy trainer calibration, or that one Tuesday you definitely could have gone harder. It is the same number for everyone, which is exactly why it is so satisfying to beat.

The verdict by rider type

The Sunday spinner (~2.0 w/kg, ~90 min). Honestly? Brilliant. You finished. You did all 21 hairpins and the full 1,036 m without getting off and pretending the doorbell rang. Anyone who sneers at this has forgotten that the hardest Alpe time is the first one. This is a genuinely good time for a real human being.

The committed enthusiast (~3.0–3.2 w/kg, ~60–63 min). This is the sweet spot — the "yes, it's a good time" answer this whole page is built around. You have trained, you have suffered, you have earned your hour. Frame it.

The strong club rider (~4.0 w/kg, ~49 min). Now you are showing off, and rightly so. Sub-50 minutes is a time you can drop into conversation at the café and watch people quietly recalculate their own.

The genuinely fast (~5.0 w/kg, ~40 min). A sub-40 ascent. You are not reading this page for reassurance — you are reading it to confirm you are better than everyone above. You are. Now go and lie down before your legs file a complaint.

What it would take to go faster

Because w/kg is the lever, there are only ever two ways to climb faster: put out more watts, or weigh less. That is it. That is the whole sport. Anyone selling you a third option is selling you something.

The unglamorous truth is that knocking minutes off your Alpe time is mostly threshold work, patience, and not eating the entire fridge after every session. The 12.2 km doesn't get shorter and the 8.5% average gradient never softens — but your number can climb, and when it does, the clock falls. Go and play with the time calculator to see exactly how many watts a faster time would cost you. Brace yourself.

Want me to actually email you something useful?

Here is the deal. I can email you the occasional genuinely helpful thing — pacing tips, training that nudges your w/kg up, and the odd bit of Alpe du Zwift nonsense — without flooding your inbox or selling your address to a Lithuanian saddle-cream conglomerate. No spam, no daily nagging, and an unsubscribe link that actually works.

If that sounds like your sort of thing, pop your email in below and I'll send the good stuff your way. If it doesn't, that's completely fine too — go and find another hairpin to conquer.

Double opt-in, because consent matters and so does your inbox. You'll get one email asking you to confirm — ignore it and nothing happens.