Zwift Race London: Stage 4 A&B (B)

Bah. A bit of a sad start today.

After Saturday’s Tour of Watopia Stage 3 Longer ride I went for my shower, and being absolutely knackered I forgot to remove my Polar heart rate monitor from the strap prior to leaving the bike room.

What that meant is, I took the HRM off somewhere between this room and the Shower room, and being exhausted, I put it down somewhere and have … err, lost it.

Whoops.

I tried to find it yesterday after my ride, but had no luck. And I tried again – although somewhat more halfheartedly – this morning before work. My wife assures me it will turn up. And I’m fairly certain it’s gone into the washing machine.

Anyway, all of this means I was disqualified from Zwift Power results today. Which is a shame.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that – by some miracle – the person in charge of changing the clocks over at Zwift HQ must have been back at work today after a long weekend, and remembered to wind them forwards an hour.

Ultimately that meant, inexplicably, today’s races were switched back at 12:10 and 12:30 (it’s a two parter), whereas yesterday they were 13:10 / 13:30.

No idea what is happening there. But I’m not complaining.

And I’m glad I noticed, honestly.

Being that I got DQ’d though, I am not going to bother splitting these two into two posts.

Rather I’ll just cover everything under this one post.

Besides, they were only 5km each, so not a huge amount to write about.

Stage 4 A

Stage 4 A was first up, and although I had a short pre-ride warm up, I was not properly setup for the start line by any means.

What that meant was I was caught out by just how fast the pace was from the line today. Twice, in very quick succession, I was almost dropped.

Almost.

It took a couple of spikes to keep on, but thankfully I did.

Knowing the route (to a point), I knew the hardest part would be the climb up Northumberland Avenue. That’s the bend with the little rise up to the big London roundabout.

From there I figured we turned left, onto the Mall, and across the line.

Not so.

Once the punchy climb was done, the pack was completely split with three bunches forming. Up front were 9 riders, which meant the second bunch of about 5 were all going to be fighting for that last top 10 spot.

Behind us was a small but growing gap which pretty much had the rough positions for the leaderboard already determined.

However, there was only 0.7km to go to make any kind of move.

The problem, from my perspective, was that not only had I cooked myself on Northumberland Avenue, I hadn’t had chance to ease off since. So holding on until the line meant I would have nothing left in the legs / lungs to sprint.

And that was pretty much how it finished. With about 300m to go, the other four guys left me for dirt, and whilst I tried to put in a last gasp stint, I was soundly beaten by the bunch I was with.

Still, not a bad finish, just outside the Top 10, and just over 10 minutes of recovery before Stage 4 B would begin.

Stage 4 B

10 minutes seems like a decent amount of recovery, but I was definitely still feeling it in the legs as we got underway in Stage 4 B.

Fortunately, I knew all the other racers were in the same boat.

And whilst there was a little kick to the start, it was nothing like as fast as Stage 4 A. Of course that’s also because everyone was saving their legs for Fox Hill.

Being a climbing race, and seeing how strong the front 12 were in the previous race, I was already tempering expectations for this one.

By the time we hit the bottom of Fox Hill I’d dropped back to 21st.

But truthfully, and tactically, I knew that a good number of people misjudge their pace on rides like this. So I was hoping to claw back spots on the ascent.

My aim today was to hit 4.0w/kg for the climb, holding that as steadily as I could. At 2.4km / 4.9%, it’s not too long to be able to hold a higher pace, but there are certain parts (the top bit, most notably) that seem like they are never going to end. Each 100m is well won, I know that.

I did alright on this one. Not spectacular, by any means, but alright.

Having hit the bottom of the climb in 21st, I’d crested the ridge in 15th and just needed to dig in and hold on to what was, in truth, a hard fought and honestly earned mid table finish.

Anyway, after that I was bloomin’ knackered. So with 10 minutes to go until my next meeting it was time to get off, get showered, and attend a zoom call with a proper chunky vein bulging right out of my forehead. No one questioned it. But they must have all seen it.

Overall then, about where I’d have expected to be today. Actually, maybe that’s not true. Maybe I did a little bit better than I was expecting before I got on the bike. I felt tired, like I was going to struggle, but I think I proved myself wrong on that front today.

Looking forward to a recovery ride tomorrow though. If the weather holds, I may do it as an outdoors lunch time ride. Maybe. Probably lash it down though.