World Bicycle Day: Racing the Sun

This morning I took part in Zwift’s World Bicycle Day: Racing the Sun event. Starting at 9am, there were over 200 riders who took part for a really great cause I would have otherwise had no idea about.

This ride lasted 60 minutes, and was led by a group leader who was marked with a yellow beacon hovering above his in-game avatar.

Over the course of the day, I believe 24 such rides were to take place, one starting each hour.

In our case, the ride leader was R. Noble, and he did a really good job. He paced the ride really well, and most everyone followed his instructions.

Built for big loads on tough roads: the Buffalo Bike.

I thought it was a really nice touch how everyone on the ride was using the Buffalo bike.

This thing felt heavy. As I’ve only really ridden the Specialized Allez zwift bike, I have no other experience to compare against. But it felt harder than usual to get some power down.

With the disappointment of yesterday’s failed group ride (Zwift support are currently investigating what the heck went wrong) I was really looking forward to getting stuck into another big pack ride.

This one didn’t disappoint.

With a solid week of riding (by my standards) under my belt, my legs were far from fresh for this ride. I felt like the going could be tough for me, and that as this was paced as a Category D ride, I might end up getting dropped if I couldn’t hold ~2w/kg avg for the duration.

Straight out of the gate, I was doubting my ability to keep up.

Even though Zwift state this would not be a race, as ever most people bolt out of the gate. You can see above how far I have already been dropped behind the yellow hovering marker.

I thought at this point, there is no way I am going to be able to stick with the group for this ride. My legs just didn’t want to know.

Fortunately, the group ride leader pulled the pack into a nice big blob at around ~2w/kg, and I managed to catch up.

Without a group to ride with this morning, I wonder if I would have taken a rest day?

I had hit my weekly goals already of riding for 3 or more hours, and riding for 100km or greater.

As it stood, this ride added another 38.3km onto the total for the week, and whilst it wasn’t a super easy ride for me by any means (there was sweat!) I am really grateful for having the group around me, to keep me pushing, mentally occupied, and ultimately, motivated.

Along the ride, Mr. R. Noble told us a bunch of interesting things about what the ride was about, and why these bikes are so important to the people of Africa. I really liked this.

Generally I think I had to hold around 160w average for the duration of this ride. I was really grateful it wasn’t higher, as I think that would have absolutely thrashed me.

As it was, this was a solid workout for me.

The vast majority of the group stayed in a huge ball. This was really cool. Totally different to the Tour of Watopia, the other comparably sized group ride event I’ve taken part in.

Our group leader gave really good instruction which most everyone seemed to pay attention too, and we all managed to stick together even on the couple of short climbs in each lap.

Seeing all the riders around me come out of their saddles as one was really cool.

At a couple of points in this ride I found myself falling back, dropping to easier gears and spinning fast but for low watts. This had the effect of dropping me off the back of the main pack, typically requiring a bit of an out-of-the-saddle effort to get back into the ball.

With the benefit of a huge pack draft we’d covered well over 10km by the time 20 minutes of riding came around. I don’t fully understand the drafting physics in Zwift, but they must be mega to have given us that much of a speed boost.

This ride took place on Zwift’s Tick Tock circuit, which covers the deserts / Fuego Flats, along with some of Watopia’s greener / wetter pastures.

It was a decent circuit, and I was happy to ride on more than just the desert.

I was also happy there was very little climb involved. My poor tired legs have earned a rest.

Easily the first 30 minutes of this ride felt harder / more taxing than the second half of the ride.

I’m not entirely sure why this is. Maybe as my legs warm up, they get into a rhythm of spinning the pedals and it becomes somehow easier. I really don’t know. Around the half way mark I remember feeling like things were becoming steadier, and smoother.

But make no mistake, I was still knackered.

I think in total we managed two fully circuits and then some. I did a little experimenting when inside the big pack, seeing how much I could ease off before I’d get dropped, before having to get back into the ball.

This was a decent mini-exercise / workout in itself.

I had my little girl sat next to me during the second half of this ride, and we were enjoying some fine tunes together. The ride itself was making me really happy, and having her next to me, enjoying herself was really nice.

Also my wife was up and out of bed, so the volume of the tunes could be turned up to loud.

It’s a pity that some of these shots do not do the justice that riding in a big group in Zwift truly deserves. Its really cool to watch a huge blob corner at a pace, a bit like watching race cars zip past. Only, not quite as fast 🙂

After missing out on the group workout yesterday, this morning’s ride more than made up for it. It was not only a great work out, but a great cause and I’m really glad I found out about it. Thanks for the heads up, A. Gibbs 🙂

A bunch of people dropped off the ride a few minutes early in order to get onto the next hour’s Racing The Sun ride. Madness. One hour was enough of a workout for me.

Loads of people were spamming out Ride On’s on this one. It’s really hard to do this during an event. One cool thing was when the event finished, we just appeared on Fuego Flats. At that point I could smash the Ride On button in the Zwift App and give as many as I could. I’d tried my best during the ride, but doing individual ride on’s for 200+ people is hard work.

As a reward for the ride, we got a new kit. Cool stuff. Going to switch to this for my next ride, I think. I love me some unlocks.

Not realising the event would end and we’d just appear on the main Watopia map (in event’s we seem to ride in our own instance), I was promptly dropped by the ball as they all sped on. I tried … briefly, to sprint after them so I could dump ride on’s on them all, but I had nothing left.

Also, I had some IRL commitments to attend to.

So, it was time to get off the bike.

All in, 38.8km was a real eye opener for me. I didn’t realise we’d covered this much ground until I looked back at the ride after my shower.

Must be the draft in full effect.

For me, getting near 600kcal of work done before Sunday breakfast is a big win. I’d wanted to do a 50km ride this weekend, until I signed up for the Racing The Sun event, so getting close was a nice bonus.

For once it was nice to see my heart rate predominantly in the middle of the yellow band, rather than plenty of orange. Averaging 167w seemed like I was doing lots of work, but also not killing myself to do so. Still, I feel the need to push myself harder as I still feel really quite unfit.

I’ve got the starting of some muscle in my legs. That’s a first for me, in 36 years of existence.

This ride was never going to push my critical power graph. I don’t mind. That was never the point.

Whilst overall this was one of the easier rides of the week, I still feel like I gave a good account of myself on this one. More to the point, I really enjoyed the ride. And that’s equally as important to me. Really pleased I took part in this one. What a great event.

Anyway, tomorrow is a well deserved rest day.

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