Let’s get the excuses out of the way up front:
- A terrible nights sleep. No kidding. I was up every two hours, 11, 1, 3, 5, and finally 7, when I decided to get out of bed. No idea what is up with my sleeping pattern lately, but it sucks.
- No nutrition. A cup of coffee, a cup of tea, and a cup of decaf, combined with 1 slice of toast is (afaik) not how the pros do it.
- No warm up.
On the no warm up front, I have a pretty good reason. Basically I’ve struggled to find suitable race times. I could get involved in either the 12:05 race, the 13:35 race, or skip yet another day of racing.
My plan was to hit the 13:35 Crit City race, or if my morning meeting ran short, I could – in theory – get downstairs, undressed, redressed, and on the bike in ~5 minutes. Welp, my meeting did run short, so I went racing.
The race I took part in today was the 3R Gotham Grind Flat Race – 2 Laps (18.5km/11.6mi 58m), and I entered in Category C. I’m not entirely sure what the 58m refers to in the race title. According to Zwift Insider / VeloViewer, the climbing for this one is 86m per lap.
Zwift didn’t make it overly clear how many people were riding in Cat C today. Maybe that figure was shown clearly in the app. To be honest I was in such a rush to get online this afternoon that I may very well have missed that info. However, after the fact I could see from the app that there were 36 riders in Cat C today.
By the time I got on the bike, into Zwift, and ready to race, there was less than 2 minutes remaining on the countdown clock. By the time I’d got my app open and it had realised I was in game, I was down to 6 seconds remaining. The big mistake today was not starting the fan… I really need to get one of these Alexa / OK Google things sorted out, ASAP. Fortunately, I had my wife just a distressed shout away.
The start was typical Zwift racing. Right out of the gate I was well above FTP, fighting to find a pack who appeared to be at or around my own fitness level. Within a couple of kilometers things had settled down and I seemed to be grouped with a small bunch of between 10 and 20 riders who were all pushing between high twos, and mid to high threes. Given that this one was only 18km, I figured I’d be alright here till the end.
Unfortunately, here was way back in 75-85th position, depending on my movement around the group. Again, without knowing the exact numbers in my Category, it was hard to try to work out where this would see me finish. Also, being mixed in with every other Category of riders and Zwift’s fairly basic UI, meant any conclusions I came too about potential finishing positions would be at best, a total guess.
The most challenging part of Gotham Grind Flat, for me, is the small part of the lap that is anything but flat. About 5km in, there’s a hill that hits over 10%, admittedly for only a brief time, but it’s enough to destroy legs, break rhythms, and fracture packs. Today was no different, but on the first lap I managed to weather the first storm well enough by getting into a spinny gear and powering on through.
Coming out of that first section I found myself on the front of the pack a few times and had to reign myself back in to ensure I wasn’t burning myself too quickly. There was no way I was going to be breaking away from the riders around me, so it made most sense to take advantage of the draft. Besides, other stronger riders seemed more than comfortable to sit at the front.
As we rounded off the first lap I made a mental note of a few things:
- There was about 1.5km of gradual climb (1-4% variance) heading towards the finish line;
- We would be finishing on a long, meandering descent;
- To attack the finish line I’d need to be in a very low gear to counter the lack of resistance downhill.
Heading into the start of the second lap the pacing had definitely eased off a touch. Not a huge amount, but I was seeing more patches of green on my time line than I had been for the first 15 minutes or so. Our little pack had thinned considerably, and I’d realised whilst I wasn’t in danger of being the last wheel, I couldn’t slack off or I’d very quickly fall off the back. I did experiment slightly here, and managed to save a few watts in the process. Every little helps.
It wasn’t overly surprising to see my second sprint time was just shy of half a second down on my first lap’s effort. If anything I was surprised it was only half a second, as by this point I felt like I’d eased off by considerably more. On the plus side at this point, our little pack was about the swallow up several riders up the road. This was good as it gave further possibility of a better finishing position.
With about 5km left to go, everything seemed to be going smoothly until the second edition of the little ~10% climb.
For whatever reason, and without really meaning too, I made a real hash of this second climb and fell off the back off the pack I was with. Disaster.
My options here appeared to be either accepting this as my new best possible finishing position, or step on it, and catch them back up. I opted for the latter.
I can’t honestly remember bridging a gap in a race at any previous point in my Zwifting career. At least, not in a true race. Boy howdy, this was hard.
I guess I was very fortunate that the pack in front of me appeared to be easing off – slowing to an average of between 2.6-2.8w/kg, as I was putting down as high as 4.5, but averaging about 3.5 to catch them up. I was deeply aware that I’d very likely burn everything I had in this effort, and then either get dropped again as soon as I caught them, or have little to nothing left in the final sprint.
By the time I caught them I was equal parts amazed, elated, and relieved. My first(?) successful bridge! Woo. I’d killed myself to get there, at one point pushing 192bpm. My lungs were hurting. My throat, already full of a cold, was very sore. And my legs? Well, thrashed. I gave myself a chance of a breather for a few seconds, but had to keep on the gas to stick with them.
We had just shy of 2km to go at this point, but things weren’t quite going as I’d expected.
Maybe I’d caught them because they were suddenly going considerably slower than they had been. It was deeply frustrating to me having just made my big push, but now the pack was staying around mid to high 2’s, and the riders behind us who had been several seconds away were quickly catching us. If I’d have stuck with them, instead of burning all my fuel, I could have achieved the same result significantly more efficiently.
When they finally did catch up, I was gutted. At this point we had just over a kilometer to go, and I was frustrated at what had happened. It was hard to shake it off. I was struggling to recover, willing my heart rate back below 180bpm, just to try and refocus. But I wasn’t managing it.
In a bid to give my little pack a kick back into life, I faked a push, taking the lead of the pack and hitting back up to 3.3w/kg, waiting for one of them to come with me. We had less than a kilometer to go at this point, so the outcome might go against me, but I figured if I could get the speed of the pack up a touch, I might be able to find something in the legs at the end to try and nick some places.
With about 400m to go, and knowing we either had a flat or a steady descent ahead, I went for it. And of course, by “went for it” I mean I gave my best effort but had definitely burned most of my energy in the earlier bridging. Plenty of others went with me, and I can’t say I was that present in that last push. It was an all out effort of whatever I had left. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t much.
Over the line, I managed 66th of about 150 overall. In Cat C I managed 11th of 36, which I think is my best ever finish in a Zwift race, by percentages. Really gutted not to have made the top 10, but it wasn’t through lack of trying. Looking back at the stats, I managed to top out my bridging effort heart rate by a single bpm in the final sprint, hitting 193bpm… call the ambulance.
Congrats to all who took part, I really enjoyed this race.
The one thing I will say about today’s ride was that it was on the short side. At just 20km covered and 31 minutes done, that’s a short day by my standards. However, unlike some 30 minute workouts this one is still being felt in my legs several hours later. And I’ll make up the time and distance as the week goes on, no doubt.
I’m happy with the effort today. Apparently I was just 2w off my overall best 20 minute effort, so I’ll take that. I’ve also just passed over 200 hours on Zwift. Crazy.
Really pleased to have started the week off with a race. Happy with how I performed, and I am definitely noticing a continued improvement at the moment. I put a lot of this down to racing. I’m wondering if I’ll manage to get another race in later this week? Possibly. I do have some other things I’d like to do on Zwift this week – mainly working towards the elusive Tron Bike unlock.
Anyway, a great way to spend a dinner hour.
