The first of December’s racing series kicked off for me today, with this series entitled “Best Of” ZRacing.
Best Of is subjective, I feel.
Sand and Sequoias is certainly a nice looking route, after all it has a dinosaur. But it’s not one I’d put in my Best Of list.
A pretty typical field then today.
49 riders, not a bad turn out for a Thursday lunch.
After yesterday I was feeling pretty thrashed. I mean, I was driving for so long I got a blister on my heel. That is nuts. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the best of places mentally to tackle this one.
A longer warm up would have been nice, but there’s a pressing deadline to hit at work, so this one was what it was. Besides, warm up or not, I wouldn’t be top tenning this… or any race.
Fresh out of the pens we hit a decent clip, but it did kind of slow down as we progressed the “Sand” part of the route.
I was expecting to get dropped as we climbed out of the Sand and into the Sequoias.
That didn’t happen.
I managed to hang on up the little climb, largely thanks to a lovely feather power up.
However I was dropped in fairly short order after that.
After this I ended up in the second split. Hovering around the 30th position marker.
Nothing I did here seemed to help see me break away from the little bunch I was with. I put in a solid stint on the KOM, coming in under 5 minutes. A decent effort for me. Not a PB, however. Not even good enough for a medal on Strava.
I was also quite concious of going crazy up the climb, and then getting dropped on the descent. That has happened to me several times.
But not today.
I did get an Anvil power up for the descent, but misjudged the timing and didn’t maximise it.
However I clung on and was feeling alright with a couple of kilometres to go.
At around the 1km marker I put on a bit of pressure, expecting the bunch to react.
Only a few did.
Then with 400m to go I put on my sprint.
Amazingly I held it, and was rewarded by nicking a spot off someone just on the line. Lovely.
So overall a decent race with a small uptick in points on Zwift Racing App.
Pretty pleased overall, especially with the sprint.
As yesterday was such a write off, I don’t know whether to try to get a walk in tomorrow lunch time, just to make up the difference.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Have to see how I feel.
Anyway, not a bad outing, all things considered.
