[AoC Day #16] Zwift Race (B): Rhino Racing Crit City on Downtown Dolphin

Knackered.

And that was before I set off today.

Well, knackered… I mean fatigued. This likely didn’t help me in any way with regards to recovery. But as far as an intensive 30 minute workout goes, I don’t think I could have done much better.

Yes, today I took on a new route – Downtown Dolphin – on Zwift’s Crit City map. I’ve done a couple of races previously on Crit City, one in C Category, and one in B Category. Both of those were on the Bell Lap.

What’s the difference between Bell Lap and Downtown Dolphin? Well, aside from the names (smart arse), one is the forward variant (Bell Lap), and the other is the same route but in reverse (Downtown Dolphin). Not entirely sure where the names come from, but there you go.

Warm up wise, today was pretty much non existent. I got in a very brief, very low intensity ~5 minutes or so as a free ride on Tempus Fugit, but was pretty much time crunched due to work commitments, so the true warm up happened on Lap 1.

My plan for this ride was to glue myself to the front pack early doors, then just hold on. I knew if I could hang on to the end I’d get hammered at the finish, but hanging on for 8 laps would, in itself, be a small victory.

It’s ages since I have race on Crit City. And by ages I mean over two and a half years ago.

As above, that was on the Bell Lap, which throws you straight into the rollers, after which there’s a sort of false flat before the longest (only?) descent of the lap. On that route the attacks come early each lap.

Being that Downtown Dolphin is the reverse, the opposite is therefore true.

The long descent becomes an attacking climb, and that false flat becomes a little descent into those rollers, before the lap restarts and everyone recovers.

The first lap, as is to be expected, was frantic.

I was unprepared for the first climb, but because I’d over cooked it on there I managed to carry a decent amount of speed into the rollers. This then fooled me into thinking they were easier than they actually were, which came back to bite me on the following laps.

The challenge with this route is really one of positioning.

Aside from staying with the pack and having enough in the tank to repeat 8 short, sharp race pace climbs, it really, really helps to stick in the middle-ish of the bunch.

So much so that if you can crest the climb in the bunch, the rollers almost feel non-existent.

However, if you are off the back, the first of the four little lumps will be very evident in the calves.

I was very fortunate to drop, I think, four feather power ups. At one point I thought about hanging on to the feather until the last lap… but as soon as I hit the climb that lap, such silly thoughts went right out of the window.

In fact I was at my limit just coming out the top staying in touch with the bunch, let alone the leaders.

As the laps went on, the recovery pace between the start / finish line and the bottom of the hill definitely decreased. I was able to get by around 2.7w/kg on some laps by sitting in the bunch. Again, tactics really.

For me there was really three phases of the race.

The start, where whilst I wasn’t prepared I was nevertheless fresh enough to hold on. I burned hard to keep up with the front group but managed to cling on long enough to make it to the middle section of the race.

Around laps five and six it became a challenge of getting up the climb. Each time through the start / finish banner I’d know I’d have ~1km of recovery and then it was back on the gas. At least the short number of laps kept that from being an absolute mental killer. Even so, my legs were tired after each climb and I fell off the biggest part of the bunch on a few laps, forcing me to really dig on the rollers. That hurt.

And then on the final seventh lap it became about making it to the top with them for sure, even though I was really starting to struggle. I knew if I fell off here it was game over. Amazingly I was able to cling on right to the final lap.

Coming into the final lap I dropped yet another feather.

However, even with the climbing aid and a massive push up that final effort I came out flat and with no chance of making it back on to the group. Well, I say group, by this point it had become more of a snake.

By the time I hit the entrance to the rollers section – which I had begun calling “the cemetery” – for the final time I had fallen off the pace big time and dropped three places.

At that point it was head down, dig as deep as I could, and get the damn thing over with.

Looking at the screenshots I somehow gained back two places in there… I had no idea until this very moment that that had happened.