7 Deadly Wins, Week 4: ZwiftPower Sniper

The 7 Deadly Wins challenge is my personal mission to collect a gold trophy in every Zwift Classic, no matter how many tries it takes. You can follow the highs and lows on my Youtube channel, Zwiftaholics. 

Racing up the Petit KOM was a challenge, for sure, but at least there was a flat sprint finish. No such luck in Yorkshire on the shortened Royal Pump Room 8 route with its custom summit finish. This was the first of the three major challenges for me in this series. My arch nemeses Box Hill and Bologna are lurking just over the horizon, but the immediate challenge was making it there with the winning record intact. 

Attempt #1 – Smoked

It was a nice lively chat on the YouTube stream for the race and I saw a familiar name – Dylan Jones. We had raced together in ZRL and enjoy a classic friendly British-Australian rivalry with plenty of banter. I thought that would add some nice colour to the broadcast, but got more than I bargained for. Dylan wasn’t just in the chat, he was in the race. 

The first five ‘warm up’ kilometres to the Otley Rd climb were uneventful, and though the climb itself would drop about half the field it was only a threshold effort for the high-Bs. That made the rollers to follow almost pleasant, and a group of 23 stuck together to take on the forward KOM. 

I felt good and chased an early move from Dylan, thinning the lead group to just seven, although it would become 11 again on the descent as we started thinking about that final climb up the Reverse KOM. I had done only a very loose recon of the finale. Two-minute effort, last minute steeper than the first. I should have taken a bit more time to look at the profile:

As soon as we hit the base, Dylan surged and disappeared with a ghost power up. I didn’t think too much of it. It would be just like Dylan to pull the very move I tried back in week 2, faking a ghost attack to lure me and the others into burning unnecessary matches. But this was no fake. He reappeared in a blaze of orange numbers some 10-15 bike lengths ahead with a two-second gap that was growing quickly. I panicked. I surged. The gap grew to 8 seconds with 1km left to climb. 

This was the time, as the road flattened out, to slot back into the group and take a breather while others took a turn to chase. But my lack of detailed study and the feeling in the pit of my stomach that this race was getting away from me kept any sort of rational thoughts far from my mind. I kept pushing and pushing. 

My greatest asset as a Zwift racer is an ability to deliver a high wattage burst and flood my legs with lactate. This works great when the effort is timed to finish very close to the finish itself and it’s acceptable for that power to very rapidly drop to zero. If I overcommit and mistime the effort, the result is an epic implosion and the sort of wobbly pedaling you see from a rouleur who has given it their all on a steep climb for their GC hopeful. I had over-committed. With 400m to go it was all over. Dylan held on for a stunning win with a six-second margin. I limped home for 20th. 

Attempt #2 – Opportunity Strikes

I was demoralised. The first race was by no means a close finish, and with other commitments during the week I couldn’t afford another all-out effort until Saturday, leaving precious little window to keep the challenge alive. 

I got lucky. A rare alignment of an empty house, a gap in my work schedule, and a race with a relatively thin field all came together in a brief window of time on Tuesday afternoon. I rushed to get ready, actually using the first 5km as a warm-up this time, and assessed the field on ZwiftPower live. 

There were only 5 registered competitors from our field of 10, and I had the edge on paper. After ignoring the attack of a non-ZP rider up Otley Rd, I used my draft boost powerup on the descent to the Yorkshire KOM and went all in to shake my ZP rivals. It was a harder effort than the previous night, and it did the job, even reeling in the unregistered racer off the front. With a 33-second advantage through the banner, and not much in the way of flat roads for a small group to work together and bring me back, the race was essentially won. 

A hollow victory compared to the hard-fought contests of the last three weeks, for sure, but I got some comfort from churning out a higher average wattage overall and a faster, harder forward KOM effort than the first attempt. 

I might still try this one again in a bigger field, as it’s such a brilliant race course. But this one’s officially in the books. 

London Calling

Next week is a double whammy. Box Hill has ruined more races for me than I care to remember over the last year or so. The peloton always seems to hit the lower slopes at an incredibly high wattage that blows up my engine before things settle into a rhythm. I’m hoping that the custom finish all the way over at The Mall will provide a chance to chase back on in the likely event I’m dropped. 

Life is also going to get in the way, though. With work commitments keeping me off the bike until at least Friday night, I may very well only have the weekend to tackle this one. At least I’ll have fresh legs!