This evening I took part in the Team Dimension Data Zwift Academy Race: Circuit. This was on the New York LaGuardia loop, which is a short one at just 2.8km.
We covered 6 laps. This also included a 1km lead in from the start line.
I think about 200 riders attended. The start time was 6pm GMT.
In truth, I wasn’t sure I was up for this ride.
All day at work I was concerned about the cramping problem occurring during this race. This was really off-putting, and made me apprehensive about taking part.
As I got home fairly early – even with the terrible weather and bad motorway traffic – I almost backed out and attended the 5:10pm Zwift Academy workout instead.
I even considered not doing anything, and going to drink a beer in the bath.
As the race started at 6pm, I was dressed and on the bike with about 20 minutes to spare. This was great as I simply sat spinning in the start pen for a good long while, loosening up the legs.
I’d also taken the precaution at work to have 1 cup of coffee less than usual, and to drink plenty of water throughout the day.
Zwift races are known for starting fast, and this was no different. If anything, I went too hard, too soon.
I was at or above my FTP for the first five minutes which was unsustainable.
I was also out on my own for about the first ~7km / 2 laps. Riding with a pack was definitely preferable, but as I was head down, sweating my way to an early grave, I didn’t notice the bunch behind me until they were literally upon me.
Perhaps over estimating the front runners, I initially thought this bunch was lapping me. Yikes.
When they caught up with me, and didn’t immediately drop me, I figured heck, they must be C’s and D’s like me. And checking the HUD, they were. That was good. I figured I’d do my best to stick with them as long as I could. This proved a good plan.
Whilst I didn’t get many screenshots on this ride – for reasons of working myself to the bone – what I tried to capture was that on each lap, a pattern emerged. Generally it was fairly flat – at about 30m of climbing per lap.
The biggest climb of the lap came at the very end. And I was consistently able to leave the pack at this point, and then “sprint” the down hill bit to the start / finish line, where I could gather a bit of respite as the pack swallowed me back up.
This pattern repeated every lap from 2 onwards. Therefore I figured I could use this to my advantage on the last lap.
And so I did.
The pack were definitely working harder on the final lap, but still I managed to grind out a finish that pulled away from the bunch up that little incline and then sprinted (as best I could manage) to the finish line.
Unfortunately another rider pipped me to the post. And even more unfortunately, in my 200bpm heart rate haze, I somehow managed to close the results page without getting a screenshot. Fail.
I actually didn’t realise my heart rate had hit 200bpm until I saw the stats at the end. This really concerns me honestly. Having spoken with my brother (the only other person in my family to exercise regularly) he suggested seeing the GP, though wasn’t aware of his max heart rate. This is now the second time I’ve hit 200bpm, and it genuinely concerns me.
I did a short cool down, still not knowing my position in the race.
I knew I had given it my all, however. So whatever position I achieved, I can hold my head high and say this was probably my strongest ever Zwift performance (imo).
As ever with these things, during the ride it’s easy to want to give up.
I had to fight to stay with that pack. I really did. There were times particularly on laps 3 and 4 where I felt like I might fall back to the pack behind. But I didn’t. I really pushed myself to stick with them, often being at the front of the bunch for short periods even.
I don’t know that I captured it as a screenshot, but I hit 10km in just ~15 minutes on this ride. Another first and a great sign of a strong performance. Of course, riding with a fast pack was a massive part of this, but still, I’ll take it.
410 calories in just 33 minutes, that’s a proper effort. Again, I’ll take this any day of the week. Especially on a Friday night.
And so onto the results.
Fortunately they show up in the Zwift Companion App.
I managed 41st in Category C. Really pleased with this. This was out of 54 rides in this category. For my first ride in Category C, I couldn’t have asked for better really.
Had I ridden in Category D, this would have put me in the top 15.
However, just to point out that Category D is basically junk. The first place rider in Category D came in just 2 minutes behind the winner of the race. What an absolute farce.
Zwift should categorise automatically imo.
Anyway, all things considered I’m doing alright with this Zwift Academy 2019 thing.
At the end of this ride – and again something I didn’t managed to get a screenshot of – I got an guesstimated FTP boost to 198w.
I don’t buy it. I will only accept the actual FTP score I get now from doing a test. The reason this came out higher than my previous 195w was simply because I was out of the saddle for every climb in this race.
But I will take the acknowledgement by the cold hearted robot that runs Zwift that I put in a shift on this one.
