Zwift: London Uprising

Did a Zwift race yesterday: stage 4 of the “Fresh ‘Outta 25” series. This one was London Uprising and was a two hill climb through the London virtual area, 13.4 miles and 1172 feet of climb. That’s a lot of climb for a big guy during a race. I’m still in the lowest category (E: 0-210) and I tend to sit right on the border with D. I believe I barely popped into D with a second place on this race.

There are some riders who tend to select a cat lower than recommended so they don’t have to feel like they’re struggling not to be last (which will presumably be the case for me in stage 5). I had one of those riders in this race. I was a 204 going in and he was a 236. He was also 37 years old. That doesn’t always mean they’re going to be faster, but his average heart rate (175 bpm versus my 150 bpm) clearly shows his blood flow is better than mine. He had the power to sprint off the front of the pack early with an 8+ watts/kg and my attempt to reel him in simply became a chase trying to maintain a roughly 240 watt power level come hell or high water (or Surrey) that put almost 5 minutes between us and third place while I was tracking for anyone catching up. Amusingly, when I caught up, he drafted for somewhere between one fourth and one third of the ride until his sprint at the end. At that point, I was sticking to pushing my power level and ignoring the finer points of trying to win the race given the obvious mismatch.

In the end, it was a 238 watt average and 2.52 watts/kg over 45 minutes which was far and away my strongest ride. Third place ended up being 8.5 minutes back. Zwift says I dropped 708 calories in those roughly 45 minutes. I think a good observation is that I recovered quickly once I was off the bike. I remember my first race earlier this year when I had to lay on the floor for a while recovering and was absolutely knackered for a day. This time I don’t think I’d even know I’d raced unless I was racing again today. Maybe that means I didn’t give it as much as I could have (valid, particularly on the finishing sprint), but I’ll take the stronger-despite-a-year-older aspect over that bit of self-critique.