Race 3 of Zwift Racing League Season 2 is upon us, and it’s one for the climbers as we finish atop the Innsbruck KOM – the longest climb in Zwift Racing League history!

Let’s dig into the course, including some tips for bike choice and key selection areas.

Looking At the Route: Innsbruck KOM After Party

This route is best viewed in two parts:

• Innsbruckring (3 laps)
• Innsbruck KOM

We begin with three laps of the popular Innsbruckring loop. This 8.8km “mostly flat” loop winds its way from the start line through the city for 4.7km before arriving at the infamous Leg Snapper. This straight uphill shot is 430 meters long at 6.9%, and you can plan for a full-gas 1-minute effort every time.

Cresting the Leg Snapper, you being a descent which brings you to the start of the sprint section, where First-Across-Line and Fastest-Timed-Segment intermediate points are available, 10 deep.

Apart from the Leg Snapper climb and the descent immediately following, the Innsbrucking loop is basically a series of false flats, so just mind your position in the peloton.

After three laps of Innsbruckring (30-40 minutes of racing for most groups), we head out of town to take on the final feature of this route: the mighty Innsbruck KOM.

This climb is comparable to Watopia’s Epic KOM Reverse, but even more steady, holding close to 5.5% for most of its 7.4km length. Top racers can finish the climb in around 15 minutes, while mere mortals should expect a time of 25-30 minutes or more. It’s essentially a 20-minute FTP test tacked onto the end of a race!

The last section of the climb levels out to nearly flat ground, which should make for an interesting finish as the advantage shifts from w/kg to pure watts in the final ~500 meters.

Bike Frame + Wheel Choices

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the best bike for this route. And guess what? There’s no easy answer. This course has two distinct sections, and your bike choice really depends on your race plan in those sections.

Sprinters looking to drop climbers and get those sprint intermediate points may want to go with the most aero setup possible – but that seems a bit extreme given the key climbs on this route. We would recommend the Tron bike for anyone focusing on pre-KOM performance, since it will climb the Leg Snapper just a bit better than the disc wheel setups, without losing much in terms of flat-out speed.

Looking for a bike that climbs as fast as possible? Check out Fastest Climbing Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level, although, given the 3 laps of Innsbruckring heading into the KOM, we wouldn’t recommend a pure climbing setup. Looking at the Tron Bike vs Top Performers chart the Canyon Aeroad 2021 + DT Swiss wheels or Tarmac Pro + ENVE 7.8 wheels are probably the two best setups that outclimb the Tron. But those setups lose a lot more on the flats than they will gain on the climb, so be sure you count the cost.

In summary: we’ll be seeing a lot of Tron bikes in race 3.

Strategic Options

This race is full of strategic options thanks to the course layout and WTRL’s points structure.

Intermediate points are available at these locations on Innbruck KOM After Party:

• First-Across-the-Line (FAL) Intermediates:
  • Innsbruck Sprint 3x
  • Innsbruck KOM 1x
• Fastest-Through-Segment (FTS) Intermediates:
  • Innsbruck Sprint 1x
  • Innsbruck KOM 1x

Additionally, each arch will distribute an equal number of the following powerups: Helmet, Van, Feather. Riders will receive 7 different powerups over the course of their race thanks to the Sprint and Start/Finish arches on the Innsbruckring portion of the route. Make sure you know how each powerup works, and use them wisely!

Innsbruckring Strategy

The Leg Snapper rewards riders with high 1-minute power, and those riders will be doubly rewarded with a chance at FAL sprint points on each lap. Expect to see big attacks up the Leg Snapper, especially on the first lap as the strongest riders push to make the first big selection and better their chances at grabbing those intermediate sprint points.

Sprinters who don’t fancy their chances at a final KOM victory will also be pushing hard up the Leg Snapper, in hopes of staying in contention for those sprint points. In fact, one could argue that sprinters have a lot more skin in the game on the Leg Snapper climb, because the sprint sections will be their only chance at intermediate points.

It’s quite possible that the front group of riders will see no reason to push hard once the sprint ends, allowing chasing groups to rejoin. Why keep pushing, when you know you’ll drop the riders again on the KOM? Expect to see groups blobbing back together, only to get split apart again the next time up the Leg Snapper.

KOM Strategy

But make no mistake: the strongest climbers will be saving themselves for the final KOM effort, since the first riders to the top will receive not only finishing points, but FAL (and probably FTS) intermediate points! That’s a lot of potential points. If the first rider across the line also manages to get the fastest KOM time they will receive a total of 70 points (40 finishing points plus 10 FAL and 20 FTS points), not including any sprint segment points they may have already earned.

A cagey climber might be smart to begin the KOM segment as far back in the group as possible, then working their way to the front for the finish. This would allow them to use the draft benefit of the group on the climb, while completing the segment faster than those who started ahead of them.

Your Thoughts

Care to share your thoughts about this upcoming race? Are you looking forward to it, or dreading it? Comment below!

Team time trials aren’t something I write about often, for two reasons:

1. I don’t do them very often
2. They’re usually not very interesting to read about

But yesterday I raced a TTT with my DIRT Hellhounds team, and it turned out to be the best TTT I’ve ever been a part of. And thus I’ve decided to write about: because I think you’ll find this post both interesting and helpful. Onward!

The Warmup

Zwift Racing League‘s Tuesday events are my priority races each week, so normally I do everything I can to be ready heading into race day. But this week I rode with a couple of buddies on Monday – one of those outdoor rides you just can’t say “No” to. After going a bit harder and further than I typically would on the day before a race, there was a bit of nagging worry in the back of my head that tired legs might impact Tuesday’s effort.

Tuesday I planned a solid warmup routine, coupled with my three favorite race-day products:

1. Caffeine gum – two pieces (200mg), 1 hour before the race.
2. PR lotion on my legs about 45 minutes before the race. More bicarb=less burning.
3. The Nopinz Subzero kit, with freezer packs ready to insert when I had 20 minutes left.

This would also be my first day riding a new rocker plate I’m testing out from KOM Cycling. I had done a bit of setup to dial it in a few days earlier, but I was crossing my fingers and hoping there wouldn’t be any problems I would need to fix during today’s efforts!

The DIRT Hellhounds joined a private Meetup around 35 minutes before the race start time, and as we made our way around France’s R.G.V. route we chatted on Discord, rehearsed some rotations, and made sure our in-game setups were optimized. That meant three things for us:

1. Having the fastest bike possible (most of us were on the Specialized S-Works Venge + Disc wheel)
2. Changing our names in-game to use a number at the start, indicating our rotation order
3. Making sure we each had different headwear, making it easy to spot each rider in-game

Soon enough it was time to hit the start pens. Let’s race!

The Start

It seems a bit silly, given how many thousands of riders participate in TTT’s every week on Zwift – but Team Time Trials are still a “hack” on Zwift. You’ll have a pile of teams in one start pen, but each team has been given a particular time delay by the race organizers. When the event clock hits zero, nobody leaves the pens. Instead, each team’s timekeeper begins counting down, so they can tell their team when to leave the pens.

Zwift really needs to improve this. But before that can happen, riders would need to be lumped together into teams – something which isn’t yet in place. It’ll happen… eventually.

The clock hit zero, and our timekeeper began his 7-minute countdown. We sat and spun our wheels, taking nervous pee breaks, making sure our towels and water were within reach, and chatting on Discord to pass the time.

We each had our Zwift pairing screens up so we could ride without moving out of the pens – then when the countdown hit 1 second we hit the Escape key, leaving the pairing screen and jumping out of the pens at a high wattage. This is the commonly-used “Pairing Screen Jump” used in TTT’s.

Dan, the #1 rider in our rotation, was set to take a 1-minute pull to start. I expected him to sprint hard and be the first from our team out of the pens, but as we exited I was in front! I didn’t ease up much, though – the TTT is all about speed, and if I was ahead of the team they could use my draft to join me as we got into our initial formation.

Soon enough we were flying in fine formation.

A DS and a Plan

Our team actually has 8 riders, giving us two substitutes in case of illness or injury. One of the strongest racers on our team is Tim Hanson, but unfortunately he couldn’t race this week since he’s recovering from injury. fortunately he makes a great DS! He was on Discord calling the rotations for us, and it worked really well.

The basic plan was single-file formation with 30-second pulls. As we neared the switch every 30 seconds Tim would give a 5-second warning to the rider who was about to start his pull, then let the rider know his pull had begun, and tell us who was on deck.

It may seem like a minor thing, but I found it super-relieving to have Tim giving us instructions. I didn’t have to think about my timings with Tim on the horn! Instead, my job was to sit on Dan’s wheel (I was #2 in the rotation), and when Tim said Dan had 5 seconds left I would up my watts to come around Dan, shooting to get my nose into the wind just as Dan’s pull ended. Then I just went hard until the #3 rider (Phil) came around me 30 seconds later.

Sink and Sprint + Slingshot

This 5-second “slingshot” was a new tactic for us. And it seemed to be working really well. Remember, the big goal is to keep the speed high, and that speed is determined by the front rider.

We didn’t want the 2nd rider slowed by the sticky draft if the front rider easedup before the 2nd rider came around for his pull. So the front rider’s job was to keep their power/speed up while the 2nd rider hit the watts hard to come around, benefiting from a bit of a slingshot. Once the 2nd rider had come around, the front rider would ease up dramatically to “sink” to the back of the line, putting in a quick sprint once they reached the back so they could grab onto the wheels again.

We caught our first team – the Vegans – just over halfway through the race as we hit the Aqueduc KOM. It always feels good to catch another team in a TTT! The pass was clean, and as we descended and took a bit of a recovery we all knew this race was going really well.

Far From Perfect

Still, our team formation was far from perfect. Generally the problems occurred when a rider would be sinking from the front to the back, and some teammates would get stuck behind that rider. It’s really a tough balance to strike, because as the sinking rider you can’t just stop pedaling – you would get dropped from the pack with no chance to get back on. So you have to ease up on your power just enough to sink back but not so much that you are dramatically dropped.

It’s easy to “overpower” your sink, which causes riders behind to get stuck on your wheel instead of coming around. It’s also easy to “underpower” your sink, so you can dropped off the back and have to sprint extra hard to catch back on.

It’s a team effort, really: every time the rotation changes, the back 4 riders need to be paying attention so they don’t get stuck behind the sinking rider. That means bumping up your wattage a bit just before encountering the sinker, so the sticky draft doesn’t grab you.

It’s fair to say each of the Hellhounds probably messed up a rotation here and there, but we recovered well. This was feeling good, and we were almost done.

The Finish

The R.G.V. finish is always tough, because you’re on the curvy rollers of Les Intestins, which make it impossible to hold a single file formation. Still, Tim was calling out the rotations, and I think this was good – it meant there was always at least one rider pushing hard to be on the front, even if they weren’t on the front. This meant the overall group speed stayed high.

As we began Les Intestins we passed a second team, DZR. Our #4 (Roger) had been struggling to hold on, and our acceleration through DZR was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He let us know on Discord that he was off the back, and we pressed on. 5 riders left.

Over the top of the climb portion of Les Intestins, Scott (or resident climber) pushed hard, keeping our speed up in that crucial section. It was too much for our #3 (Phil) though, and he announced he was dropping off. 4 riders left, with just 1.8km to go. This was it! DS Tim took it all in stride, calmly calling out the rotations.

With 1km left our #1 man (Dan) just in front of me was struggling to hold high power in the wind. Hard to blame him – we were all on the rivet! But I rolled past him on the slight descent, and decided to just keep the power high. I’ve learned from other TTT’s that I seem to often have a bit more in the tank for the final minute than other riders, and if I could stay on the front and lend a draft to the other three I wanted to do that.

800 meters left, and I was all in. But the watts were far from impressive! The other three came around me as we turned onto the main road before the start of the Marina Sprint, and I shifted, stood up, and began the final effort. I couldn’t even break 600 watts, but I was able to get back in the front and pull the team over the line. That always feels good!

Our final time: 33:24.313. This was the 4th fastest time of any B team in ZRL! Unfortunately, our division is super-strong, and that time got us 3rd place. Still, we were very happy with the result. In season 1, our team finished this same race in 34:28.375!

As I saved the ride, I was greeted with an FTP increase popup:

Woohoo! It’s been a long time since I got one of these.

See activity on Zwift >
See activity on Strava >
See race results on ZwiftPower >

Watch My Race Video:

(Sorry the Discord audio is too quiet, but at least you can hear my heavy breathing loud and clear!)

Watch the Race from DS Tim’s Point of View:

Takeaways

Two big takeaways from this race:

• A good DS is a big help. Having Tim calling the shots allowed us to focus on holding formation and keeping our power up. For me, at least, this narrowing of focus helped me perform better.
• The 5-second slingshot works well. We’ll be doing more of this.

Oh, and if you’re wondering: the rocker plate worked great. Good feel. More on this in an upcoming post where I’ll write a full review!

Your Thoughts

Did you race in yesterday’s TTT? Got any rotation, DS, or other tips to share? Comment below!

The Crush of Speed

It was different from the first dash out of the pens. It was more horsepower from more big engines roaring to the rev limiter from the opening meters. I quickly realized I wouldn’t be getting a sniff of any of the KOM points I had considered targeting on the opening climb only 3 minutes into the Reverse Richmond course. The speed was too high and while I scrabbled towards the fore at 10 w/kg, the real puncheurs took off for the line and the bonus points at 12-14 w/kg.

For the next 10 minutes it was like being tossed around in a washing machine full of rocks, moving from the front to the back and up again and taking hits all along the way in the form of surges into the “orange numbers” of 8w/kg+. It was my first race in the Premier League with the newly upgraded Finesse Rockets team and in the words of Dave Towle “It was on like Donkey Kong”.

The pace eventually settled slightly and more importantly I started to find the rhythm of riding in the faster pack and conserving energy where I could. You can never lose focus though – it will cost you. I have felt this strangling level of baseline speed before in the real world at the World Tour races in Quebec. It is like driving along the highway at 120kmh: you know you are moving fast but you are under control. But, if you open the window though and slide your hand out into the open air you feel the real weight of the resistance you are up against. You know you can only brave that crush for a short time before crumpling and that you had better stay inside the draft as well as you possibly can.

My Attack

I couldn’t be of much use on the KOM or points sprints, my power profile will never be sharp enough for that. So I switched to plan B: a late attack. This tactic became more clear-cut when we lost our sprinter to the infernal pace and another fast finisher to an Internet dropout.

I was never going to sprint into the top 30 in the final to get league points so there was nothing to lose. With an attack at least there was the potential of drawing out other riders and either making a go for the line or at least allowing my teammates a free ride while other teams responded.

With around 4km to go and directly after the last points sprint of the race I hit out. The pack was already stretched by the acceleration of the sprint and I figured I could capitalize on that. I hit my aero powerup and within a few hundred meters I was in clean air.

The problem was I was alone.

The pack watched and I cranked away at 7-8 w/kg to establish and hold a 6-7 second gap. There was no going back though, no point in regrouping to sprint for 50th, so I kept going and hoped for either a reaction or a moment of hesitation. 3km left, 2km then 1km and the finish line in the distance. I began to think “if I get to 500m I can kick one more time”… and then they were there, rushing past with 700m to go. I limped home, our sprinters sprinted and that was the end of my first Premier League race. I was empty but I was smiling, I came for a hard race and I got it.

• 

• 

Impressions

It was a tough outing for the team on that first event. We scraped together a few points in the sprint with Matt Usborne and Timmy Bauer but finished well down the order. That’s fine though, a learning curve is expected and we have already bettered our season position by finishing 8th in this week’s TTT of the 21 teams.

After so much anticipation and hard work to get to this level I definitely had some thoughts after our first outings.

More than anything, I am struck by the scale of it all. Even on a Monday, over 24,000 people watched that first event live, and more people were cheering on my solo effort than at almost any IRL race on the North American calendar. It’s a big opportunity for all of us and I am grateful for that.

It does make me wonder why there isn’t more aggression in the men’s field even if it has a low chance of succeeding due to the blob physics. I didn’t make my move for TV time, I made it based on game theory (and limited options therein!) but I sure got some of the former. It’s striking that teams and riders don’t try attacks more often if only for entertainment and a small chance at glory. Points are important, but entertainment and exposure are too. The entire field is looking for sponsorship, and sponsors love that stuff.

The women’s field, to their credit, seem to take on these attacking tactics more readily. It makes for an exciting final product.

Maybe we will see a little less of the “conserve, optimize, and sprint” game as this season goes on. It’s not that I don’t respect that approach, or even that I want racing that gives me more chances to win – I just think the sport benefits from an unpredictable racing narrative.

To that end, Zwift Racing League Season 2 has a calendar of courses that are undoubtedly harder and less predictable than Season 1. There is even a mountaintop finish next week where hopefully I will be the one sitting in for the finale and others will be going off the front to try to steal the show. Maybe the same top riders will still win on these courses too, but it should show off their power in a more compelling way.

Overall, I am excited to be a part of it. It’s a unique situation to be competing at the top of a sport that is still evolving so quickly. We will all need to analyze and adapt while staying at our physical peaks and still taking on as much suffering as we are capable of. Sounds like fun to me.   

Watch the first race on Richmond’s UCI Reverse: