Season 2 of the 2021/22 Zwift Premier League runs from January 10th to February 14th. As a quasi-contributor to Zwift Insider and a rider/director of a newly promoted Premier League team, I wanted to give an unfiltered behind-the-scenes look at the action. Look for a recap each week here on Zwift Insider.
Team Time Trials. They look great in pictures. A team lined out, aggressively positioned on a billboard of carbon. Aero helmets floating just above fields of flowers, speeding through the French countryside. Fans across the world asleep on the couch, enjoying a nice nap with the race dreamily playing in the background.
It’s hard to make these races captivating, compelling. The Premier League had a plan to spice things up this season. This plan would be the destruction of my Velocio team.
The race was mostly flat, but it had some tricky rollers and a KOM segment for team bonus seconds. Each team’s fastest rider on the Aqueduct KOM would give their team a 10, 5, or 3 seconds bonus. In an event that can often be separated by a second, it sounded like a fun play.
My Velocio team’s best event is typically the team time trial. We have never had a guy that can win races, but we have lots of strong guys that communicate well. This race was our best shot to give us some breathing room from the relegation zone.
The week before the race in the WTRL series, many Premier teams raced the Thursday TTT to practice for the upcoming race. Saris crushed the race and set a course record but Velocio finished second. I felt great and had one of my best TTT performances ever, completing all 10 of my pulls well above 500w.
The best thing we could have done for the race is do what we know: execute a dialed TTT. But the allure of those bonus seconds was strong, very strong. In the starting pens, Ryan, an actual World Champion, said “you know, trying new things for the first time in a race is always a bad idea.”
I might have said YOLO.
Instead of our typical 30 sec pulls, focusing on pulling through with momentum, conserving draft and staying lined out, we decided to change some of the pull lengths, and then planned on doing a leadout for the KOM. Stick with our theme of aggressive racing. Risk it for the biscuit.
This was absolutely a mistake and was 100% my fault. The race started well and we were close to pace with Aero and WeZ, the teams ahead and behind us in the start order. Leading into the KOM segment, things started to fall apart. I made our strongest TTT rider Dan Cassidy sit on the front too long because I misjudged the start of the KOM. Ryan, our leadout guy, got confused about the start of the segment and jumped early. To fix these mistakes I sent Charles to the front to glue us back together. We finally hit the KOM and Ryan did a great jump to lead us out, but then our sprinter Jason came off my wheel. I held the sprint to the line and we actually crossed with the fastest time at the time. Perhaps a success but nearly all the teams were still to come.
Behind me was absolute carnage. We detonated the team. We could have jumped from 5 different planes and parachuted in and landed closer together than how we were spread out on the course. Charles was gone and Dan was 15 seconds back. It took a long time to get everyone together.
We regrouped and tried to recover our rotation with four riders. It became clear everyone was cooked except for Ryan. He held us together but it wasn’t long before we were down to just three. The team that started behind us was getting closer and closer. We literally sprinted to the line to not get passed:
That team was WeZ. Not a team I get along with. I knew they were gunning for us and would have thoroughly enjoyed passing us. WeZ has had something like four annulments this year. They firmly believe it is unfair and they are being targeted. I am not making the rules, just saying what happened. If you listen to Nowhere Fast Podcast you will recognize some of their club’s members such as Tamper for his Zpower disqualification tag and the guy that got DQed from the playoffs for not following power meter rules. I see a pattern of rule-breaking and have no patience for it. After the race, the team director made sure to rub in the fact that they almost passed us.
Our team was ready for a good ride and we rode our faces off but I did a terrible job at strategy and ruined it. We finished 14th of 15. We did get second in the segment to score 5 bonus seconds. We gave up probably a minute to get those bonus seconds. You don’t have to be good at math to know that’s not a good trade. I would say “lesson learned”, but we are highly unlikely to be back to try again. The team is now 14th overall.
Saris, the team that won to break the NeXT Enshored win streak, raced amazingly. They are a team packed with big FTP guys and have made an art of keeping team speed, using the draft well, and getting seconds through incredible execution. All the teams in the top 5 have incredible watts. Winning also means mastery and kudos to them for a well-executed ride. Inspiring.
Next week is Temple and Towers and it has a gravel climb. Pretty sure a gravel bike is 100% the wrong move but we will have all week to think about making the wrong decision. Just like I did with our team’s TTT. Don’t be me. Don’t overthink it!
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