This dinner time I took part in the first of five stages of this years Tour of Watopia. This was the flat route race: two laps of Watopia Flat Route, which works out at about 22km and about 110m of climb.
I’d hoped to get this race in at 8:10 this morning, but for a variety of technical reasons, that never happened. Sad times. Would I have done any better on the earlier ride? Maybe. One thing I think that I did wrong today was to eat a bunch of meat right before the race. Not only did this leave me with a bit of a mid-ride stitch, but was also super salty and made me thirstier than usual.
Anyway, that’s the excuses out of the way. Let’s see how I got on.
I managed to get on to this ride with about 10 minutes to go before the start. I did my warm up in the pens, which was very light – maintaining between 100 and 140w at an average of about 85rpm. I’ve been caught out before by doing too hard a warm up, but today, I think I went a little too light.
Right out of the pens we were at 4w/kg+, though this lasted less time than a “usual” Zwift race.
Alarmingly, I was out at the front from the off. That caught me off guard, truth be told.
Unfortunately this race suffered from about 5 fliers. Therefore the front of the pack was showing as 5th position throughout. Interestingly, all 5 were disqualified according to the end of the race rankings.
I was trying my best to preserve myself on the out lap.
From the off, the front group was anything up to about 50 riders. This meant there was plenty of room for a little easing off, without falling off the back of the group. I managed to find several moments of cruising at around 2.5w/kg before I’d fall back far enough that I’d need to get back on to at least 3.3w/kg to keep up.
The concern for me on a ride like this is that I am at my maximum in order to keep up with the pack. There’s no extra that I’m holding back. Clearly, this isn’t the case for a sizable chunk of the pack.
Even so, I was feeling alright mid way around the first lap.
The concerns for me on Watopia’s Flat Route are always the same two places:
- The initial climb after the bridge sprint;
- And the Esses.
As ever, the pack fractured after the bridge sprint and into the first little climb.
I tend to do OK on this climb as it’s short and steady, but importantly all up hill.
Where I do tend to struggle is with the constant peaks and troughs of the Esses.
The same sort of thing repeated today.
I managed to do alright on the first climb, sticking within about 10 places of the leaders, and thanks to being fairly fresh still I did OK too on the peaks and troughs, powering down the hills and then using the momentum to keep me going back up each one.
In truth I was surprised to come out of the esses in decent shape, and heading down into the start of the second lap I was feeling like I might have it in me to stick with this group to the end.
That said, I was highly dubious I’d be in the top 10.
Again, the start of the second lap was fairly laid back. The front runner group had thinned, but the pack behind wasn’t too far back. This was perhaps the first time I’ve experienced this on Zwift, but then, I don’t have a huge number of races where I’ve been with the front group to compare it too.
Problems for me definitely started around the 25 minute mark.
By this point I’d been, by and large, either at threshold or above it for long enough that I was rapidly starting to run out of energy.
I’m not sure what else I could have done here, really. It’s a fitness thing, or a lack there of.
I’d managed to keep with the pack until we were heading down in to the bridge sprint, but then I started to fall off the back.
It’s a horrible feeling when I sense I’m slipping behind.
As the pack has thinned out, there are fewer and fewer riders around who are pushing lower wattages. And that means I’m likely the next, or one of the next to go.
Mentally I was already worrying about the first climb, and seriously dubious about the Esses.
And so sadly, even though I’d managed a fairly strong bridge sprint to get me back on to the back of the pack, by the time we hit that first climb I was dropped.
There was no way I was going to be able to catch the pack, whether because I lack the base fitness to meet the demands of power through the Esses, or whether it is a largely mental issue I need to get over.
Whatever it is, I got dropped here and was left fighting for 32nd.
I’m not super disappointed with this performance today.
Sure, a better finishing position would have been nice.
But what I’m taking away from it are three things primarily:
- A solid workout, no doubt about it;
- I showed up!
- I managed 3.3w/kg average for 25 minutes
Again at this point I think I need to respect my current limitations, and understand that it’s a process of moving towards a longer term goal.
Other than forcing myself to workout at 3.3w/kg averages, I don’t know how I’m going to gain that base fitness required to keep up with the front runners in these races. They are simply currently too strong for me.
The other thing is I really need to get over the “fear” of the Esses. I need a better strategy. Practice, I guess, makes perfect.
I’m looking ahead now to tomorrow, where I will be doing the Tour of Watopia Stage 1 Longer ride. And I think I’ll be doing that first thing tomorrow morning. But at 50km / 2 laps of Watopia Waistband, I’m thinking I may be quite late into work.
Still, I’ve done some long days lately, so I’m not short of spare hours.
All in all, a good way to kick start the Tour of Watopia 2020, and I’m looking forward to the busy schedule that lies ahead.
I was hoping to get a ride in yesterday, but I was so tired from Sunday that I decided to skip it. After this one, I think maybe that was a sound idea.
The journey continues.
