It was my recovery day, so of course I was browsing the next day’s Zwift race schedule, looking for an event that appealed to my schedule and sensibilities. I was seeking something without long climbs, but where I’d be pushed to the limit. Then I saw it: “Renegade Race”.
Over 250 riders were already signed up for this event I had never heard of – what was that all about?
Held on 5 laps of Seaside Sprint, this looked like it would be a fun challenge. And all the categories were starting together, which meant I would be pushed to my limit hanging with the A’s until I blew up. (I’ve been doing more of these flattish mass start races lately, since they push me harder than pure B races. Solid training, even if the end results are nothing to crow about.) Let’s do this!
The Warmup
The race started at 11am, and I dinked around the office too long, not getting on the bike until 10:45. I had already chewed a couple of pieces of caffeine gum and put PR lotion on the legs, but I knew that wouldn’t make up for the shorter warmup, which never serves me well. Regardless, I spun with C. Cadence and crew on the Tick Tock route, putting in a few digs to get my heart rate up.
In both of my race warmups this week, it’s been a real chore to get my HR up to 160bpm, which is what I try to hit to “break the ice” before a race. That’s a sign that I’m either 1) sick or 2) not recovered enough to race at full strength. My guess is it’s #2. Time for more rest…
Commercial Bicarb Break
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The Start
The race started exactly like I thought it would – a hard effort on the lead-in to the first sprint banner. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hang with the front pack for the entire race, but I wanted to push hard until I got dropped. So I hammered away, tailgunning the front pack, hanging on for dear life with sore legs and a heartrate that said, “Don’t expect a power curve bump today.”
Sharing Kit
We had 365 riders across all categories, and we all started together. Here’s the weird part: we were all placed into the same kit!
Who thought this was a good idea? Things are confusing enough when you’re mixing all the categories. Why place everyone in the same kit, making it virtually impossible to track individual riders in the pack?
Blegh. Race organizers: please stop forcing us to wear the same kit. (One exception: chase races, where each category has a different kit.)
Getting Dropped
The A’s and strong B’s were in the front pack, which was whittled down to ~75 by the time we hit the first sprint banner. I managed to hang with them until we hit the glass tunnel leaving the Volcano. Didn’t even make it one lap! #sad
zPower + TT: A Potent Combo
I saw a handful of riders several seconds behind, so I sat up until they caught me, then rode in that group for a while.
This was an interesting little bunch. We had just 5 riders, but were staying away from the larger group behind. How? Because we had two zPower Rangers in our group: one “B” rider who consistently held 5w/kg+, and another “A” on a TT frame holding 4.5+. And the rest of us were just hammering to hold those wheels.
Needless to say, they stayed on the front of our group. And after a while, my legs said “No more.” Once again I sat up as the group rode away, but I wasn’t very sad about this, because it felt a bit like cheating, sitting in with those two.
Finding My People
The next group caught me quickly. Easing into this pack of 20+ riders, I was happy to find that these were “my people.” Almost all B’s, and riding at a pace my spent legs could sustain. We were halfway done with the race, so I sat in the draft, pushing 250-275W and recovering, hoping to have the legs for a decent sprint at the end of the final lap.
Taking the Bait
My newfound racing happy place was soon spoiled, though, by one “H” (not his actual screen name) – a French rider who kept messaging in game, complaining that nobody in the pack was taking pulls. “We need to bridge up”, “You’re all just wheelsuckers”, etc, etc.
Wisely, nobody was answering him. I typically stay quiet in these situations as well. But he kept messaging, and eventually I snapped:
Rude? Yeah, a bit. But he was really getting under my skin with his steady complaints that we weren’t working hard enough. Did he not realize I had ridden with the front pack for (nearly) a lap? Then hammered with the zPower Rangers for a couple laps? It’s not like I’d been sitting on his wheel all race.
This is just where I landed after blowing up. Which was probably true for a lot of the riders in the group.
So yeah, I called him out. I’m not proud of it. But come on: I said what everyone was thinking already. As soon as my message popped up, riders in our group chimed in with, “Well said”, “Exactly”, etc. And they started giving H a bit of advice, welcoming him to take all the pulls he’d like:
Our messages didn’t stop H from continuing to complain about our laziness. They never do. It reminded me of some IRL races I’ve done, in fact. I messaged to that effect:
IRL Storytime
In my long and illustrious IRL racing career, I’ve won a handful of races. Probably all Cat 5 events. Very high-level stuff.
One crit I remember fondly because of the debriefing with the Cat 1 mentor after the race. One of the riders in our group (who had spent a lot of time needlessly hammering on the front) complained to the mentor that nobody was taking pulls with him. The mentor said, “Well, how did that work out for you?” The rider sheepishly admitted that he finished near the back of the pack.
Then the mentor turned to me (I had won the race) and said, “This guy wasn’t on the front much at all, until the very end when it was time to go. It seemed to work out well for him.”
High Stakes
After throwing down the gauntlet by equating H with IRL dudes I’d beaten, I knew I had just one job left in this race: beat H.
I pulled up ZwiftPower to look at his numbers, hoping I could predict if he’d go for a long attack or a hard sprint finish. And I was surprised to discover he wasn’t even on ZwiftPower.
He was pushing us all to work harder, to help him win a race he’d already lost in multiple ways. The irony.
The Finish
With an aero powerup at the ready, we hit the Esses for the final time.
Don’t mess this up, Eric. Even though he won’t be in the final results, you’ve got to beat him in-game. For honor.
We hit the final little climb before the sprint, and the hammering began. I kept the power up over the crest and onto the descent. Several riders from our group had gone early and were just up the road, but I had my aero boost at the ready. Partway down the descent I triggered it, then kept hammering with whatever I had left.
In the end, I finished 66th, just behind an A rider who was in our group, but ahead of everyone else in our pack. Including H.
66th place never felt so good.
See ride on Zwift.com >
See my activity on Strava >
See results on ZwiftPower >
Takeaways
Having run web forums for 20+ years, I’ve learned that engaging trolls is rarely the best strategy. The same is usually true when it comes to Zwift racers who are complaining about other riders not putting in the work.
But today I was feeling a bit spicy. And you know what? It made this race more interesting for me, even though that wasn’t my intention. What would have been an unremarkable midpack finish (I was 15th in the B’s in ZwiftPower) became something I was much more invested in – I couldn’t lose to H after calling him out! Which made me push harder. Which is really the whole point anyway.
A final request from me: don’t try to tell other racers what to do, or belittle them for riding the race in whatever way they see fit. It’s just annoying for everyone else, and makes you look ignorant. If you want help on the front, ask once. You’ll get an answer soon enough. Be satisfied with that answer.
One rider in our group described it nicely. “It was like a pedestrian signing up for a marathon race, then telling the other runners they aren’t working hard enough.”
Your Comments
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Eric, I adore your site and the work you are doing for the community- but please consider removing this post. The chap may have been annoying a group of riders, but you are actually exposing him to online bullying. He already had to change his handle, so I guess he got the message.
Agreed, it is a bit ugly.
especially considering lots of ppl use IRL names on Zwift, can be relatively easy to track someone down if they are active on social media D:
I could make the case that “he started it” (and was bullying the other riders, depending on how you define bullying). But you’re right – I should have left his name out of it. Changed to “H” above.
Strangely as a rubbish 57 year old not far behind Eric and “H” in this race i was chuckling to my self watching the text banter whilst doing my best to hang on ,
Me being old school and occasionally not always PC I found it amusing
Tactics are all part of the game
Eric I’m with you buddy 👍
Thank you. Now at least Google won’t perpetuate his being a dick and we can still learn from the story not to be one 😉
While I don’t dispute that there is a significant psychological effect to using PR lotion, there is no way that bicarbonate is being transdermally absorbed to any meaningful degree, let alone to the extent necessary to buffer lactic acid in the muscle.
Oh, you rub it on the legs? That’s not what I expected from a “PR” lotion.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325639033_Double-blind_Placebo_Controlled_Randomized_Crossover_Pilot_Study_Evaluating_The_Impacts_Of_Sodium_Bicarbonate_in_a_Transdermal_Delivery_System_on_Physiological_Parameters_and_Exercise_Performance_2402
Pretty small (20) sample, but that’s pretty typical of these kinds of studies. The results aren’t very strong. The killer for me is that it was the company that makes PR Lotion that funded the study.
PR Lotion is no better than placebo: https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijspp/15/7/article-p1005.xml
Dude, he doesn’t even Zwiftpower?
Right?!😆
No, he doesn’t. But consider this: If he was on Zwiftpower and changed his display name to be completely different in Zwift after connecting accounts, I don’t see a way Eric could have found him during the race, because names in both platforms are not in sync. There’s another French rider who incidentally finished on the same time as H who did just that. You could use this as an information-ghost-powerup….
Distractions aside, I enjoyed racing with you. I haven’t jumped into standard races much lately, but like you I noticed the solid signup numbers, I like this course, and someone I follow was racing! I also didn’t decide on the event until about 10min prior, so no real expectations. I lasted far less in the front group (maybe 3min?) than you did and then settled into the group that you ultimately joined. Honestly I was just blasting my music most of the time and focused on the racing. Without an aero I jumped on your wheel through the final sprint but couldn’t quite get you! Nice result – 15th in the B’s out of 80 finishers is nothing to sneeze at!
Funny story, I’ve been in a few mixed races recently (not overly keen as it reduces the tactics on the b’s to ‘hold on to the A’s and get dragged to the finish for the win’) but I’ve found a hilarious recurrent phenomenon – the ‘dropped A complaining that the b’s aren’t working’ effect 😁. In the last one the race split apart and there was a ~1 minute gap to the front of the race, which had no b’s in it, then our group. One A guy kept putting in digs at like 7-8w/kg*, which we’d shut down just in case he created a race winning (for us) gap. He then stated raging on the chat that we were strong enough to close the gap to an A so we were obviously sandbagging and should work to close the gap. I replied “it’s likely impossible to close a minute gap on a bunch of A’s” to which he replied “well let’s give up then! “. He wasn’t happy when I said we were racing for first place in the b’s and the only one that had given up was him, his race was a minute up the road 😁. Zwift racing -serious bizness!
*for reference, if you’re trying to get a cohesive group together, don’t keep attacking them with your best sprint then ask them to pull through!
I was in this race with you, it seems funny looking back on it now and seeing the screenshots, but man he was annoying. I’m an A rider who joined the pen last minute and never got anywhere near the front group, then rode with Eric in the mini-break with the zPower guy and the TT rider, then ended up back in the bigger bunch with H as well.
I found his attitude pretty hard to handle, he was calling out everyone, calling them wheelsuckers, even calling us all ‘pu**ies’ at one point (all this whilst doing minimal work on the front), before switching to french and continuing to insult us. I speak french too and it wasn’t any better.
Sometimes you meet clowns on Zwift, but thankfully it is minimal. I’ll happily take my licks and a bit of stick for not pulling enough, I’ll admit that most days the legs just don’t have it (I’m more of an A- rider, so the front group drops me almost every race). But, I hate being called out by people who don’t have a leg to stand on, much like this H guy.
All seems so childish now I look back on it and I could have zoned out and ignored him, but man it made me sprint harder at the end…as you say for honor!
Good race, see you out there again soon.