Course: Watopia Flat – 2 laps
Distance: 20km/12.4 miles
(No stream)
Its been about 6 weeks since I last raced on Zwift. I popped on last week to do a lap of the new desert expansion in Watopia, buts thats it. All my time has been spent just commuting to and from work with some additional loops home.
Storm Hannah was with us this weekend so I decided I was due to get back on it with a race or ride. I’d had three straight days off the bike after weeks of solid commuting gave way to feeling jaded and tired. Today was a test then too.
I picked a flat race and two laps of Watopia flat was a good one to test the FTP engine for 25-30 mins.
140+ were in the pen and I was with Gary Chandler too representing the team. The start was pretty fast. I opened up with the usual 30 sec effort to get to the front but it was obvious as we rode through the tunnel my blob surfing skills were a bit rusty. I eased as I rolled towards the front and always seem to pick up too late and get swamped and then I’d put too much effort to get to the front again. This went on and on through the first lap with the foot of my screen looking like a row of red teeth. I seemed to be strong on the small ramps out of the tunnel, out of the esses and particularly up the drag after the bridge where I accidentally went off the front though. Lap 1 done, lap 2 seemed to ease a touch. I was getting used to maintaining position now. The legs were fine, my breathing not so. Time off doing hard efforts meant my diaphragm and stomach were blown to bits as I was breathing so deep. I felt pretty sick but ploughed on just counting the km down. If I wasn’t feeling so sick I probably would have had the legs to attack after the bridge but I eased and decided to test them in the sprint as I had a draft power-up. It was great to see Gary up in the lead group at the front. As we turned for home the speed wound up and then the sprint began. I was there in the top 5 maintaining but with 300m to go the sickness overwhelmed and I had to back off. I rolled in for 10th I think. Gary not far behind.
