Yesterday’s team time trial on France’s Douce France route was the first of the ZRL season. My team (the DIRT Roosters) was in first place in our EMEA W B2 division, but that didn’t give us much confidence because everyone knows the teams who win scratch races often don’t win TTTs.
They are two very different beasts. Scratch races reward smart sprinters, punchy climbers, and (occasionally) those with a high FTP w/kg. TTTs reward good planning, teamwork, and (usually) pure watts.
The Warmup
I even waxed my chain the night before, ensuring ultimate drivetrain efficiency.
In the days before we had worked out our pull order and power targets via Discord chat. Now I was signed into voice chat, and it was time to join the start pen and see how we stacked up against our division. Let’s go!
The Start
For the first time that I can recall, WTRL started teams with the top-ranked team going first, next ranked going second, etc. This is the opposite of what they’ve done in the past, when they’ve done the start order similar to what you’d see outdoor in a stage race, with the top-ranked team going last.
We’re currently #1 in our division, so we were off first, after a 1-minute wait. Teams were also spaced by 1 minute instead of the usual 30 seconds, meaning very few (if any) teams would get overtaken in today’s race.
TTT Formations
The Roosters had a smooth start, hammering out of the pens and getting up to our target speed of 44-45kph quickly. On the twisty, rolling Les Intestins section we had one designated pulling rider rotating every 30s, but everyone else just tried to stay in the draft and ride efficiently.
Then it was into our “ugly paceline” formation once things got flatter and straighter. That meant the designated puller, the on-deck rider, and the third rider tried to ride single file, while everyone else just stayed in the draft behind. It’s uglier and slightly less efficient than a perfect paceline, but it’s also much easier to do.
Up the Aqueduc KOM it was every rider for himself, just going hard to keep our speed up while staying together. I used my feather powerup (powerups in a TTT?!), then we went through the KOM banner, got another powerup (van), and recovered on the descent.
Steady, Steady
Now we were on the back half of the route. The flat half. Here it was about holding our ugly paceline formation, keeping our speed steady and our power on target.
Glancing at the rider list on the right, I could see we were around 10 seconds ahead of the KRT squad who had started second, and maybe 15 seconds ahead of TFC who had started third. That was a good sign, but we also knew there might be other strong TTT teams who were off our radar. We couldn’t let up.
We had one rider struggling (Dejan). With team captain Antoine not riding but acting as DS, Dejan was instructed to rest up in the draft, then take one final suicide pull.
The idea with a suicide pull is to put in one last hard effort, as long as you can go, then blow up and drop off. Since your team’s time is taken off the 4th rider, often you’ll have one or two riders who are struggling and won’t make it to the finish. Once they’re unable to take turns on the front, the best thing they can do for the team is one final suicide pull.
Dejan doesn’t talk much on Discord, and he didn’t warn us about his suicide pull either! Instead, as we whizzed past the Carnac stones of France’s Brittany area, he rocketed through the group, activating his aero powerup and gapping us off the front.
Fortunately teammate Sean chased him down, with me just behind, and we were still able to benefit from Dejan’s work.
Not long after Dejan’s suicide pull, Arjen managed to smack his ANT+ cable with his phone, disconnecting his power readings and dropping hard. That quickly took us from 6 riders to 4. There was no room for mistakes now!
The Finish
The final kilometers of a TTT are always brutal. This is where everyone is struggling to hit their power targets, the pull rotation gets messy, and the brain is low on glycogen. But you’ve got to give everything you’ve got!
And that’s what we did. With 2km to go it was just a matter of going hard on the front if you had the legs, or sitting in the draft if you didn’t. I put in one final pull then eased off, digging deep to gut out the final 500m.
See activity on Strava >
See ride on Zwift.com >
See results on ZwiftPower >
Sorry, no race video this week. My PC was acting up with poor framerates whenever OBS was running, so I binned it and concentrated on the race.
Team Result
Based on the time gaps we’d seen during the race, we figured our time was good enough for a podium spot. When the final results were posted, we were super stoked to see our name at the top of the list!
Takeaways
Although my legs were a bit sore from previous days’ efforts (including an ill-advised hike), I was able to hit my power targets for this event. I think I may just be fully recuperated from my (admittedly light) Covid infection. Fingers crossed.
The Roosters rode well together, with new teammate Sean Phillips slotting right in, taking strong pulls just ahead of me, covering gaps, and overall riding a really heads-up race. Sean recently upgraded from a C to a B, and he crossed the finish line first in our team. Since we were the fastest team on the day, does that mean he won his first B race? I think it does!
There are still places where we could improve as a TTT unit, and the next TTT of the season (on Richmond UCI Reverse) will be a challenge for everyone with its multiple climbs. TTT is a challenging format, with riders expected to stay together but also put in max efforts. It’s a constant give and take of recovering then going hard, and it’s never perfect. But this week, it was good enough. Go Roosters!
Your Thoughts
How did your ZRL TTT go? Got questions or comments? Post below!
Congrats!
I liked being able to use powerups in a TTT, aero felt extremely helpful during the pull 🙂 .
Let’s see if starting order is reversed again for the final TTT. But yesterday, together with the 1min gaps, it was an advantage to be able to concentrate on yourself and not have to overtake other teams. All in all a good experience in my opinion.
Btw, the bonus seconds for the best KOM FSTs in the premier league were adding interesting strategic possibilities, too.
Are you really able to maintain your lineup positions throughout the race? Our lineup was chaos and whoever was near the front just took over when it felt right and the guy in front slowed. Otherwise, chaos.
As explained above, we do an ugly paceline where the first three riders try to hold position. We DEFINITELY have designated pullers, with the on-deck rider on their wheel. The third position gets a bit messy.
But if you don’t rotate pulls in a planned/strategic way, you’re going to lose valuable seconds. Simple as that.
It takes practice to learn to feather your power in order to maintain ideal position. It’s not easy, especially with pack dynamics 3.0 (no sticky draft).
Well done Eric and congrats to the guys.
We had 4 heavier riders designated as “Pullers” who did the bulk of the work on the front and the two lighter riders designated as “Draftors”. That is, they sat in position 3 & 4 ensuring that the recovering pullers had plenty of draft and didn’t drop off the back. seemed to work really well – we blitzed our region recorded the fastest Div C time globally (other than one team who got DQ’d for having a couple Cat B riders in their lineup).
Smart! We did something similar once or twice – had a dedicated 3rd wheel guy. Made it easy to know where to be if you were on deck, and gave some extra draft to everyone behind the on-deck guy. Congrats on a smashing win!
We did a similar thing, posting the fastest women’s C time in the world. We call the non-pullers “glue” because they hold everything together, and while we “use up” lighter weight pullers, we don’t do glory pulls (which is a nicer way to say what Eric described). We instead take them out of the rotation and let them be glue too, as long as they can, for we all roll faster while they’re still with us.
@Eric Schlange I’ve found that if you don’t minimise OBS it hammers Zwift’s FPS, even on a powerful gaming PC. Minimise it and the problem disappears instantly.
Interesting.
I need to just upgrade my main Zwift rig. Or start recording on a separate machine. The Zwift rig is just too underpowered to record high quality, smooth video while running Zwift.