For today’s ride I picked MyWhoosh’s How Long Can you Hang Challenge.
The blurb for this one is interesting:
Hang on to the bots for the ultimate last rider riding challenge. Bots will ride at 2w/kg, 3w/kg, 4w/kg and 5w/kg. How long can you hang on in this unique and challenging discipline?
Going into this one then I was anticipating a racing environment, but rather than racing against real people, I would be racing against pace bots.
The map overview said 3 laps of Yas Marina Circuit. That’s 15.4km total over 3 laps. Only 54m of climb, but check out the elevation profile for the route – it all comes in one small kicker right at the end of each lap. Lovely.
Prior to getting underway I did a short stint with the MyBunch pace bots, just to wake up the legs. I didn’t have a huge amount of time because I caught this one with 14 minutes to spare, so it was all very last minute. Before I knew it, I was in the pens and only had 14 seconds to go before the race got under way. I wasn’t even clipped in, having just nipped to the toilet… pre race nerves.
When you join a MyWhoosh race, there is a little preview thing. Hard to explain. It’s kinda like Zwift, but a little more cinematic. It was when I closed that down I saw I had only 14 seconds left.
In the top left of the opening screen you can see a rider count – it said 10 were in the session.
Once we got underway, that dropped to 9.
All looked human. And rather unexpectedly, there was not a hot start. I’m so used to Zwift races where if you’re not doing 5w/kg out of the gate you are going to get dropped. As such I found myself on the front… which was disconcerting.
Within the first kilometre or so, a small breakaway was already established… and my word, I was in it. How long could it last?
And more importantly, where were the bots?
Well, I figured the bots might come in on Lap 2… or something. But no, it looks like a bug meant the bots did not load.
So I came up with a new challenge. Ride with the front two for as long as I could. That was, after all, the original intention. Who cares if I’m trying to stick with humans or bots, so long as the pace is challenging.
And it was challenging. Very much so.
I definitely felt like I was the weakest of the three in the bunch. This was confirmed with the figures at the end of the ride.
My plan became hanging on to them, just for a lap. Then two. And by the start of the third and final lap I was thinking they would be dropping me soon enough as I had left nothing in the tank and was consistently on the back.
Well, sadly, I did get dropped.
Fortunately I made it pretty much to the final kilometre before that happened.
And actually, it wasn’t entirely my fault. Twice during the ride I had a brief connection drop out. where my wattage dropped to zero. The first time I was able to get back on, but the second time – whilst only lasting 2 seconds looking at the graphs – was enough to see me out the back and dropped for good.
However I was good and cooked by then anyway.
So amazingly, I finished third.
That’s easily my best all time racing position… ever.
I think I once came 2nd at school sports day, and won a 4 person relay race in highschool – but I was the second runner in that one, if memory serves, and the last leg was where the fast lad from my form won it for us.
Still, it was brilliant to do a race. I’ve missed that format so much since leaving Zwift. That’s the one thing I do really miss and have been looking for some kind of replacement. Obviously MyWhoosh has about 1/10th of the riders compared to Zwift, so finding events that have real people on my time zone is far more challenging. But this was a good one to get involved with.
My only regret today is I only did about 40 minutes of exercise. Combine that with the 30 or so yesterday and I’m quite down these last few days. You would never know though, based on how my legs feel.
