Deep End

If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know I’ve had an ongoing love hate relationship with Zwift. We split a couple of years ago but recently I rekindled our relationship seeking an online community to ride with while I bash away on my pedals on my own in my paincave every week.

I rejoined back in early Nov ’25 and initially decided to give it a month to see if I would persevere with it. Fast forward to now and I have to say it’s been quite enjoyable and different. There have been new places to ride on the platform. I’ve ridden a mix of rides, races and workouts. Some solo, some as a group. Then I kind of accidentally joined an online team, Galaxy CC while I was digging around looking at various clubs to hook up with. I accidentally clicked a button that sent my application in! So to save face I followed it through lol. They were very welcoming and efficient setting me up giving me access to the club area on the Zwift companion app, their Facebook page etc. I rode one of their rides which granted me their online kit and I was in. They are quite a big club. There seems to be a strong structure to it with riders leading/sweeping rides, managing teams, organising events etc and the calendar is littered with rides they host for all abilities which is refreshing too.

I also gave myself a bit of a target on Zwift. Back when I first started using it properly around 2018 I was a Cat A/B rider and used to give a decent account of myself in races occasionally. But with tens of thousands of more riders now, I’m less fit and a smaller fish in a lake now rather than a pond. In my first race back I had to suffer the indignation of being recommended by Zwift’s new auto-categorisation system (for fairer racing) to race as a Cat D. Well that was the catalyst I needed to get my fat arse on the bike more and work on my race fitness.

Adjusting to the demands of online racing again has been quite hard. Trying to transition from an offroad plodder to a much sharper online racer means a lot of short sharp efforts which, frankly, aren’t very nice and at my age I do question why I do it sometimes but I have seen the benefits in my numbers. Additionally, my mental tolerance to extended full gas efforts has improved too. My approach has been pretty simple. Nothing too scientific. In races, they tend to be harder from the start then settle and then endurance is the diffrentiator for the better riders, so I’ve gone hard in events and just tried to hang on for as long as I can. If I don’t finish, that’s been fine but I try and last longer the next time out. The results have seen improvement in my power, on Saturday I did a 20min power PB which bodes well for what I’ve signed up for on Tuesdays now.

The biggest race league on Zwift is the WTRL which is weekly team-based racing. Results decide positions in a league-based format, and the categorisation system tries to ensure riders of similar abilities form teams which race other teams on the same level. I expressed an interest last week and I was originally going to be a reserve for a Cat C based team but my race results midweek pushed me over the Cat B threshold so I was moved to the bench on another team at the weekend for this Tuesday but now I’m in as a rider has dropped out ill. Eeek!

WTRL races are a mix of Team Time Trials, Points Races and Scratch races which is fine. My race on Tuesday night is 3 laps of the Harrogate UCI Worlds course which is just brutal. It’s a points race too so there will be loads of sprinting (definitely not my forte) and hanging on but my biggest concern is the distance, it’s almost double the length of what I’ve been racing recently, so endurance is going to be key. As a team, we have a captain and I’m hoping there will be a strategy he employs and I’m just given a task to do for the team but I have no doubt it’s going to be the hardest race I’ve done so far.

…and of course I’ll probably stream it so I can watch myself getting dropped again lol. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Adios