It feels like a while since I rode on the London map, and the search provided by WordPress, the blogging platform that I use, isn’t particularly good at ordering in a way I want. So tracking down the exact last time I did a London ride isn’t easy.
Anyway, it feels like a while ago.
I used to ride on the London map a lot. It has never been my favourite, but the Classique is always a race I seem to do well on. And by well, I mean I can stay in with the bunch until the end.
I’m never in contention for the podium, and more on that below. But at least I come across the line within a short distance of the front runners.
And so it was today. A fairly standard Thursday lunch time rider number saw ~40 of us get underway.
The pace from the line wasn’t blistering. I’d managed a ~10 minute warm up, but my legs weren’t in it at all. Fortunately they arrived for the race. At least for the start line, anyway.
Early doors, for half of the lead-in at least, I was struggling to get the Polar H10 heart rate monitor to play nicely. It was reporting, but very low.
Weirdly it seemed to fix itself when I disconnected it from the Garmin. How it was working after that, I have no idea. But immediately after I did that, it spiked up to where I thought it ought to be. Which was around the 170bpm range.
Madness.
From there we were in to the Northumberland Avenue Climb. Only one of those today, thankfully. I wasn’t fortunate enough to get a power up on the way there so had to do it the old fashioned way.
Well, after that I was absolutely bushed.
It took a strong effort to get back on, with me feeling a very panting thankfulness to the other stragglers who dragged me with them back to the bunch. I figured if that pace continued I would be shot. And we weren’t even done with the lead-in by that point.
But it did settled down. Once we were on the first official lap, the pace seemed to drop considerably.
I was being tactical, trying to keep as much in reserve as I could. Plenty of tempo riding had me more worried than happy, actually. I was convinced the bunch was going to drop me at the first pass of Whitehall Road. That’s the little down and back up again, as you head towards the roundabout.
I was fortunate enough to have a power up for that one. An aero. It still took a big effort to stay on though.
But again, after that it settled.
Remarkably I started lap 2 (of 2) in the top 10.
It would be nice to be there at the end of lap 10, but I wasn’t holding my breath. In fact I think I already mentioned, I was panting.
Again, lap 2 was low pace.
Whilst I was personally working fairly hard, I wasn’t on the edge like I often am in other Thursday races. Another racer posed the question as to whether we might be up for an attack / tank emptier at the next pass of the Whitehall Road segment.
Well, I figured I was.
I got myself a draft van power up at the ready, and I figured why not just dump everything I had, build up the speed in to the little descent and then cling on and hope to come out the other side still somewhere near the front?
It was a bold tactic.
It paid off.
I was absolutely dead in my seat after it, heart rate hitting 196bpm when I glanced up. But I was still there. Amazing.
I did drop off a bit after this sadly. I didn’t expect the bunch to slow again, but they did. I guess they needed a breather before the final sprint.
For me it was head down, out of the saddle where I could be, keep on pushing on, and just see what happened.
The rest is a bit of a blur. I wasn’t watching. I was in quite a lot of pain and discomfort.
But I managed to cross the line a mere 5.4 seconds off the pace.
For me that’s a huge win.
For ZwiftRacing.app, less so. I somehow didn’t make the points cut. Disappointing.
I really tried during this one. I feel I played it well, tactically. Maybe my final sprint / attack was nuts, but like I say, I tried … something. It might not have resulted in much, but it was a learning experience.
Anyway, I wasn’t dropped for once. That’s something.
