New week, new route. For Stage 2 of February’s Zwift Race Scotland series saw the herd travelling to Glasgow Crit Circuit, where I would be taking part in the B Category race, along with 96 other dinner time racers.
I thought I’d do things properly today. Get in a solid warm up (15+ minutes) at a fairly steady endurance / low tempo pace, be set up for the race with good time to spare, and generally give myself a fighting chance.
But, then the race started and everything went very quickly right out of the window.
There were problems both big and small today. The biggest problem happened on Lap 1, and I want to say that destroyed my chances from the off.
Totally my own fault.
And doubtless I would have done that much better even without this.
What happened was I, as ever, I wanted to take my screenshots as we were parading around the route. I figured, in hindsight really rather arrogantly, that I would be fine to take my shots as we raced, even without knowing the circuit.
Unfortunately the Zwift phone app kinda locked up on me very early into Lap 1. When this happens, the fix is to close the app, turn off the WiFi, and then turn the WiFi back on and reload the app. That almost always fixes any issues.
And it did fix the issues today.
But what happened in the ~15-20 seconds it took to do that was I fell off the front bunch. And not knowing the route, I did something that killed me – I gunned it to get back on.
That’s a major problem as whilst the first half of route is flat or very slightly downhill, the second half – and it feels longer – is rather more climby. So much so actually that I’d spiked signficantly into the red to get back on, and was immediately confronted with a short, but steep incline.
And that was just one of three little punishing rollers that came in fairly quick succession.
Heart rate high, I was really, really struggling to recover under pressure, and mentally I was ready to give up very early. Disappointing, to say the least.
However I was saved, somewhat, by a fairly fast second group who had fallen off after those first three little rollers, but were setting a good pace.
The thing is though, even they saw me off fairly quickly. I was goosed. My heart rate wouldn’t come down, not without dropping the effort. And if I dropped the effort, dropped I was.
I actually managed to hold on, somehow, to that second group for most of 2 further laps, before they saw me off on the big kicker on lap 4.
Along the way we had picked up some stragglers from that very quick front group, but each lap seemed to throw the rollers at us so fast it felt like I was forever going up hill, and not getting any benefit from the descents at all.
By mid lap 4 I was utterly shattered, and it became a case of “how bad is this going to get?”
By the start of Lap 5 I was alone.
I slowed big time here, dropping back to Endurance pace hoping the guys beyond me would catch me but I’d have had a good bit of recovery by the time they did.
Only it didn’t really work like that. They weren’t catching that quickly at all.
So I pushed on.
And is so often the case with Zwift, when you push, the guys behind suddenly come from nowhere, pass you, and spit you back out.
That, typically, happened on that big kicker. I was out of the saddle up the climb, and stuck with them over the crest, but they continued to slide away from me as I had emptied whatever was left in the tank just to get over the ridge. Then came the two further little digs and I was flat.
To be honest, crossing the line was an achievement today.
I felt like I wanted to give up on Lap 1. I was telling myself I could always try again on Thursday. But honestly I think that’s what kept me going. Not wanting to do it again 🤣
Hard.
In a word. That is a harder circuit, in my eyes, than Crit City.
I don’t know if it’s because I did too much in the warm up. I don’t know if it’s a lack of proper eating pre-ride. I don’t know if it’s because of my disasterous first lap.
Honestly, I just don’t know.
For whatever reason, that was a bad, bad ride today.
But on the plus side, a solid 15 minute effort all the same. And a good lunch time workout.
Tough circuit though.
