Having missed last week’s Stage 2 race, today was my first time racing in over two weeks and, knowing ahead of time this would be 5 times up the Mech Isle Climb, I can’t say I was overly thrilled at the prospect.
I got on early enough, getting in a ~10 minute very easy warm up. No excuses.
Until I joined the race pens and saw… 12 riders, with a single remaining rider joining shortly after me taking the field to 13. Unlucky for some?
Well, yes.
I knew right then and there I’d be struggling with this one even more than I expected.
Sure enough, I kept with the bunch until the bottom of Climb #1… just under 3 minutes into the race and I was dropped.
Great.
I wasn’t going to kill myself up the climb just to stick with the pack for a whole extra lap – I knew I couldn’t sustain the 5.5w/kg the guys ahead were putting out and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to repeat that on Lap 2.
So I went for my own pace. Which was attempting 4w/kg on each climb.
Sadly that did mean I spent the whole race alone.
After the first lap I wasn’t the only person to be dropped. There was a target to aim for ~10 seconds in front, and so that became my focus – getting to them.
Only, when I did finally catch that person at the start of Lap 2, they weren’t for working together. I did my repeat of Mech Isle Climb for the second time, and then watched that person drop from the race entirely.
My hope at that point was someone in the Top 10 would drop on one of the forthcoming climbs and give me some hope of catching up and at least having a bit of a race.
Alas, that did not happen. The top 10 remained strong throughout. Fair play to them.
Instead it became about keeping one person behind me.
We played a bit of cat and mouse, but each climb saw me hitting that 4w/kg target and they weren’t doing those numbers – they were more consistent throughout the whole lap, but the climb was where the lap would be won or lost.
And so it was.
I didn’t see anyone else after the first ten minutes.
In short it was basically a solo ride… some race :/
I really, really wish Zwift would do something about the way these race categories are organised. Yes, it was ‘fine’ as a workout, but as a race, this sucked.
I have moaned regularly in my race write ups that not challenging for a Top 3, heck a Top 10 spot isn’t fun when occuring again and again, but to be basically racing myself in some kind of unexpected time trial? Where is the fun in that allegedly multiplayer experience?
Lame.
Hopefully my next mid-week attempt will fare better.
