Tour of Makuri Islands: Stage 2 - Chain Chomper Race (B)

Short, sharp, and more sweat than sweet today. I’d done my pre-ride prep – giving the route a once over via Whats On Zwift, but would that prove to be of any use whatsoever once the pedalling began?

As this one started at 12:10 I decided to get on at around 11:50 so I could spend a decent amount of time doing a pre-race warm up with the C-class group ride. I think this went alright.

Not wanting to take any chances I jumped over to the main event with ~4 minutes to spare today. When I got in there were already about 45 people in the pens, and the app had said only 49 would be taking part. There’s always some late joiners, but most were there.

Worryingly I noticed my avatar wasn’t responding to my movements. However, the wattage / cadence and HR were all showing the right values so I figured I’d be OK once underway. It would have been gutting to get everything right and then to be left idle when everyone else bolted.

Fortunately my mind was put at ease with about 30 seconds to go as I stopped pedalling to tighten up my laces / twist the boa knobs. After that my Zwift man was suddenly working correctly once more.

With only 45 or so in this one I knew I needed to get up with the front group from the off. I figured there’s likely end up with two big blobs, stragglers in between and some off the back. My intention was to stick with the front group until I inevitably got kicked out the back.

In my experience Zwift races always start hard. Not necessarily a sprint, but easily into VO2 Max.

Today didn’t start as hard as I expected and I was not only able to get with the front runners but ease off a touch every now and then, rather than maxing myself just to keep up.

From the route recon I knew a few things:

The race would be split into two halves – all up hill to the half way point, then all down hill to the finish line;
We’d be hitting the Castle and Temple KOMs – one immediately after the other;
And we might see some of the more unusual power ups (anvil being new to me).

Early doors the pack seemed settled. There was one guy who charged off the front but he was quickly drawn back in and the pace seemed dare I say comfortable well past the lead in.

At just ~14km though, this one was always going to be explosive. It was quite obvious that the pack would fracture as soon as we hit the first KOM.

As luck would have it, I picked up a Feather going through the Country Sprint arch, but with a serious lack of Makuri route knowledge I wasn’t sure where best to use this on the Castle KOM.

My mistake was to use the feather about mid way up – around some 4-5% gradients. Worse was to come further up as it seemed to get steepest nearest the top. The climb up to the pagoda was where I should have used my feather, and clearly the more practised riders used that to their advantage.

I wasn’t the only one to misjudge this however. That final 6-7% part of the Castle KOM split the front group. I was able to hold on to ~25th at best, struggling to get the heart rate down once we hit the flat stuff to the KOM arch.

Fortunately(?) I knew I had yet another KOM to come immediately after, so I did whatever I could to get my breath back – even if it meant falling off the pace a touch.

A pack of four or five riders formed around me on the hop between the top of the Castle KOM and the bottom of the Temple KOM.

I’m fairly sure this must have been the reverse or ‘other side’ of the Temple KOM as this didn’t look like the Temple KOM I’d hit during Chasing The Sun.

Again though, even our little pack of 5 couldn’t hang together for the 1.9km of fun ahead.

I got my head down, found a fairly easy gear (little ring baby!) and did whatever I could to push through it. Quick maths was done the second I passed the red marker to indicate the bottom of the KOM segment telling me exactly how many kilometres would be on the click once I hit the top.

I actually did pretty well on the Temple KOM. I’d hit the bottom in 28th and come out the top in 25th spot.

One thing that got me was when I’d managed to ‘recover’ enough to look back up at the screen more thoroughly I spotted I had a feather power up. I remember cursing loudly, thinking I must have had that the whole way up and not used it.

Man, that would have been a fail.

But no, I must have accumulated that on passing through the arch.

Pretty useless really, as it was all down hill to the line.

One guy was on my wheel as I made the descent. Behind a pack of 3 sat six seconds back. The one on my wheel was drafting me hard and any time I eased off he went into the super tuck. There was only so much of that I was going to put up with and decided to stop working for it and let the group behind catch us up.

After easing off I got maybe 5 seconds of coasting before the three behind quickly nipped passed. It shouldn’t have done, but it caught me off guard forcing me to stamp back down to keep up. Getting dropped would have been appalling.

With such a short race and a fast pace down hill we were quickly approaching the line.

At one kilometre to go I kinda fudged up.

There was a solo rider ahead. Alone. Isolated. Easy prey.

Well, in my head I figured lets eat him up. An extra place is always nice. However I think I sent the signal I was attacking from 1km out! Whoops.

My intention was to catch him then ease off until ~300m to go. Unfortunately the boys around me had other ideas – they didn’t want me to get the jump so they ploughed on, too.

That meant the finish of this one ended up as a staggered ramp.

I went for it with 200m or so to go, but my sprint was late… and not strong. Two of the guys from my bunch beat me over the line, and annoyingly the one at the front of our group was the guy who’d been drafting me so cunningly on the earlier part of the descent.

All part of the game though.

All in, a fun and fast race. I kinda like the 50/50 type routes, though perhaps less so whilst I’m on the 50% that’s up hill.

I’m enjoying these Makuri Island routes, though definitely wish I’d had more practice on them to know when best to deploy power ups or give a push here and there. However I think partly why I’m enjoying these routes is that I don’t know them, so it’s all new and interesting.

Coming over the line today I was reading 26th on the in-ride leaderboard, and then 39th on the end of ride leaderboard. Confusing. Unfortunately Zwift Power is down right now for maintainence, but the Zwift App is showing me at 26th… so 😕😕😕