This afternoon’s race was the final event (for me at least) of the Tour of Watopia 2020. This race was one lap of the Yorkshire / Harrogate forward circuit, basically a single lap repeat of Thursday night’s group ride.
I managed to get on about 10 minutes early today. Not really enough time for a proper warm up before a race.
That said, whenever I have done a ride before a race so far, I have had some kind of technical difficulty after the race is over. This can be as trivial as the ride name being wrong when it uploads to Strava / Training Peaks, or worse, like today, Zwift seemed to lose my ride. It had captured, but not fully – so I had to manually upload to Training Peaks. Strava thinks the file is corrupt.
Total fail. I wonder if Zwift have introduced more bugs aside from the known issues in the latest patch with Richmond?
Being a Saturday afternoon ride, this one was fairly well attended. In Category C we had 129 riders. Given the drop off over each event, I’d say 129 was a fairly decent turn out, all things considered. More than I’d expect in a non-Tour race, anyway.
My aim today was, ideally a sub 23 minute lap. This was based on my time over two laps on Thursday (46 minutes 31 seconds), which at a higher intensity for a race, seemed like a solid target.
Let’s see how I got on…
Things started at a ridiculous intensity.
Almost immediately the pack in front of me seem to split into three distinct bunches. There were the few sprinting front runners – good luck to them, I was never in contention for first place, or even the top 20.
There was the pack behind – I’d say about 30 riders, from 10th up to 40th. They were whacking out the watts and trying to keep up with them would have been a bad idea.
Then in front of me was a smaller bunch of 20 riders or so who seemed to be ebbing away from me, and try as I might, I couldn’t seem to catch them.
Fortunately, after the long, grinding uphill slog that makes up the opening portion of the Harrogate forward lap, I was with a small bunch who seemed to be around my ability and keeping me at a jolly old clip (about 3-3.3w/kg).
Unfortunately, the closest guys in front of us were increasing their lead from about 14 seconds, all the way up to about 17 seconds before I stopped monitoring / they disappeared off the right hand HUD box.
This basically set the opening stages out for a “best endevours” 40th place, or so.
Within the first ten minutes or so I’d really thrashed myself. I had a good idea of the map, thanks to the two laps during the group ride, so had a somewhat basic strategy:
- Keep an average of 3.1w/kg or greater
- Go to about 3.4w/kg on the KOM and try to eek out a lead / claw back some places
- Power home up the last hill
As I say, fairly basic.
Heading into the KOM I’d taken a couple of breathers – two small super tucks on the fast descent in to the bridge.
I feel this helped, but only a fraction.
As soon as we hit the bridge I was in the little ring. My theory was spin fast, even if I wasn’t putting out crazy watts. I didn’t keep a huge amount of focus on my watts per kilo here, but did see I started out around 3.9 (far too high), and finished off the final third around 3.4w/kg.
Not a bad effort, and I did come out ahead of the pack.
But all my work was for naught as I was almost immediately swallowed up on the descent, and I was questioning whether my tactics for the final climb would pay off at all.
For what it’s worth, this time up the KOM was a second quicker than my best lap on Thursday, where I managed a 3:36.5.
I’ve read that what you see on your screen is not exactly what others see on theirs.
Maybe this helps explain why my rider always seems to take a wide line into corners, whereas the rest of the pack seem to stay together. It sucks to come out behind everyone.
Again, with a little / less steep climb up to the sprint, I did my best to put in a consistent effort and by the time we hit the sprint, I was still among the pack. I was hoping to remain roughly where I was, and grab some more respite on the descent back towards the start / finish line.
I figured I’d need it, with two small, but steep climbs remaining.
Heading into the sprint I wasn’t sure if anyone was going to go crazy and go for it. Spoiler: they didn’t.
I’m guessing everyone around me was working about as hard as I was. That’s the one disadvantage to Zwift racing – you have no idea how hard / easy the other riders are taking it.
With about a kilometer to go, the first of the pack seemed to make their move. I was worried that if I tried to follow suit I’d be completely spent by the time I hit the bottom of the climb up to the start / finish line.
Instead, I did my best to cling on to the wheel in front of me, hoping to coast it a little while longer. My plan was to go at ~400m left, though in my mind all I could think was how far 400m felt on the running track, back in my school days.
Hitting the bottom of the start / finish grind-climb, I did manage to grab a cheeky screenshot but to be very honest, I was really, really pushing hard to the line.
What worked for me on Thursday night was to stay in the saddle but spin hard, and fast. And I repeated that today.
I remember getting pipped at the line by a rider who had burst into a sprint with 200m or so left to go. There was no way my legs were up for sprinting. I’d eased off before I hit the finish line, and by the time I passed it I was absolutely exhausted.
I’m honestly super pleased with 36th.
I didn’t break 23 minutes, but I gave it my all, and am very happy with how hard I worked today.
It feels like a great end to the Tour, and also a testament to how much consistent racing pushes your fitness in the right direction.
For whatever reason, my top 10 screenshot for category C did not work today. No idea why. I usually take multiple screenshots of the results, along with giving many people a ride on. Seems weird it didn’t work today.
Interestingly I tied exactly with the top of D. Now, I don’t actually believe if I had ridden in D that I would have been contending for first, because I definitely gained from riding with the pack. But it’s interesting to me all the same.
I can’t help but feel that races are just FTP tests with a bit more glamour. They are absolutely exhausting.
That said, I am really keen to keep up the consistent racing schedule moving forwards. I have yet to try Crit City, so maybe this could become a weekly event for me? One to consider.
The big shiny unlock for completing the Tour de Zwift 2020 appears to be that we get to keep the kit.
Whoop-ti-do.
A bike skin would have been nice.
Still, forgetting about virtual tat, the 14 workouts have been absolutely brilliant. No complaints there.
Definitely lacking in consistency on that graph today. But for ~27 minutes, I’ll take 340 calories burned. That’s better than a session with Emily, I believe.
OK, so all done. Shame about Strava not taking the ride – so no stats from there today.
All being well I’m going to do the 8.30am GMT Vätternrundan group ride tomorrow morning. Bit crazy, it’s 105 minutes at 2-2.5w/kg average. That seems like a recovery session to me at this point.
My, how times change.
Have you been riding the Tour? How have you found it? Leave a comment, I’d love to know how you got on.