November’s new ZRacing series kicks off with Stage 1, two laps of the Sleepless City route. That’s 19km of racing for about 85m of elevation.
In other words, flat and fast.
In fact, all the races in the Neokyo Nights series look to be this way. Will that help me in any way? Well, we will have to wait and see how it plays out for the rest of the month, but if today’s race is anything to go by, then yes… hopefully!
For once I managed to get on the bike about 15 minutes prior to the race. That gave me a decent easy pedal warm up on one of the pace partner rides before making the transition to the pens for the race with about 5 minutes to spare.
Even so, by the time I’d got my fan on, had a toilet break, found some music, and got the app ready to take screenshots, I had about 30 seconds left before we were off.
I was expecting a fast start, with the course being flat I thought the bunch would try a move from the off. As such I wasn’t caught out by the opening pace, but I was glad when that pace settled down a little about a kilometre in.
From there it was pretty much a case of being at or over threshold for the majority of the time. Pretty standard. Pretty tiring also.
Being a flat route it’s important when racing to rise the pace more than usual on any of the inclines, and that was no different today. A couple of times I found myself drifting towards the rear of the bunch and had to up the revolutions promptly.
Also during this one, there were several attempts at a breakaway. That’s fairly unusual in my experience, but today I think the same two or three riders must have tried at least three times. Of course it was not my place to go chasing the breakaway. Hell, I have to go at threshold just to keep up with the bunch on the early laps. No heroics here.
Mostly, however, this one was uneventful for the first three quarters of the race.
It was only as we go to around that 4km to go marker that the front of the front bunch suddenly stepped up a gear and split the pack.
Over the next half a kilometre (it sounds more than 500m when I say it like that), I was pushed into the red after which time I was truly feeling it. I got to the point where I was ready to give up. The bunch were seeming to pull away, and no one looked to be easing off any time soon.
And then they did.
It took two surges to get back on. The first was a big effort that didn’t seem to move the needle – I just remained about the same distance from them. But whilst gasping for air and contemplating my Thursday afternoon life choices, I had a feeling they were easing off and so a second push managed to get me back on. Also, I should say, with the help of some other riders for the draft.
I was absolutely smashed after this and needed a ton of time to recover. If the bunch had moved significantly again, I was a goner.
But they didn’t.
In fact, the pack practically coasted for about 2km… all the way to the 1km marker, and then all freshened up, off they went again.
My plan was simple: hang on.
Now, 1km sounds like no distance at all in the grand scheme of things. But in reality it’s still a 2 minute effort, if not more. In fact, definitely probably more.
I went for it anyway. I think I might have been out of the saddle… I can’t remember, it’s a bit of a blur.
What I do know is I was aiming for about 350w, which – not coincidentally – is where I was at on Tuesday. It was exactly that workout in my mind – the thought was if I could do a 2 minute effort then, they why couldn’t I do it again today?
Well, maybe I felt like I had something to prove to myself.
Anyway I kept it up all the way to the line and, I think, earned myself my best Zwift Racing finish yet at 21st, if you count Zwift’s official race results, or 18th if you go off ZwiftRacing.app.
Whatever the result, I will take it. I put in a shift and was able to keep it up until the end. The truth of it is, this was probably largely down to the others taking it easier than usual. But the result counts.
Hoorah, an actual positive race report for once.
