Today’s race story comes from my first time racing the Team DRAFT Tuesday Race. Held across three laps of Three Village Loop with category enforcement enabled and no powerups, it happened to tick all the boxes for me on this particular morning:
- It was in a good time slot, and just under an hour long
- It featured three goes up a hard climb where I would be challenged to stay in the front pack
- The flat, fast sprint finish suited me
- The number of participants was lower (40ish), which would make interacting with other riders more personal while opening up more strategic opportunities
The Warmup
The race began at 7:30am, so I was on the bike by 6:45 to spin up the legs with Coco. I’d eaten a banana for a quick breakfast, to get some fructose in the veins. And of course, I had chewed two pieces of caffeine gum (200mg of go-go juice!) and applied PR lotion to the legs… my typical race prep.
I put in a few hard, shorter efforts to get the heart rate up and break the ice, then I headed for the start pens on my Tron bike.
The Plan
I haven’t raced Three Village Loop much, but I know the course well enough to know that there’s just one stop where I would have to push at or near my max: the KOM up to the Castle.
Apart from that climb, the route is basically flat or slightly downhill, ending on a high-speed flat sprint.
The climb is around 3.5 minutes from start to finish for a B rider like myself. It’s really a two-part climb, though. The first part – across the bridge and twisting up through the houses – is very draftable, rather short, and generally not very challenging.
Then the road flattens for a bit before you turn left toward the Castle and begin to hammer for the final 1 kilometer. This is where the big efforts come, and when the route follows the road all the way to the KOM banner, I usually get dropped! But the Three Village Loop, mercifully, turns right earlier, keeping the climb short.
I wasn’t sure if I could hang with the front across three laps, but I figured it would be a great workout regardless.
Lap 1
After an easy downhill lead-in to the Country Sprint banner, our first lap began. We had 42 Bs in the race, and everything stayed tame until we hit the bridge that signals the real start of the KOM. (The actual start line comes well before the bridge, but the road is mostly flat from the start line to the bridge.)
I stayed in the wheels up through the first part of the climb and across the flat section in the middle, then steeled myself for the real effort. 376W average for ~100 seconds kept me in touch with the front group of 14. I survived! Now it was time to sit in, recover, and get ready for the next lap’s climb.
There’s a bit of easy uphill after you leave the Castle area, then it’s flat or downhill through the Fishing Village and Village Onsen to the sprint banner. The Castle, the Fishing Village, Village Onsen. Three villages. Get it?
One Belgian rider, Claessens, went off the front as we left the Castle area, but he got reeled in before we passed the start pens 3 km later. A bit later, he attacked after the Country Sprint banner. Was he super strong, just racing for the workout… or something else? We would find out soon enough.
Lap 2
The second lap’s KOM began rather unremarkably, but we caught and dropped Claessens just before beginning the hard final kilometer. He wouldn’t come back.
But the Belgians were out in force today, and one “J. Mertens” attacked hard on the climb, finishing 7 seconds ahead of my pack of 9 survivors.
That second lap’s climb hurt more than the first, but I wasn’t quite at my limit, either. I was starting to feel hopeful that I could hang in on the final lap.
Lap 3 and the Finish
Mertens stayed away, and as we began lap 3 he had ~10 seconds on the peloton. Two riders – M. Chaix and J. Profeta – jumped off the front of the peloton early in the lap and bridged up to Mertens, making it three strong riders up front vs seven chasers. This was getting interesting!
We hit the beginning of the KOM and one “P. Thomsen” attacked, bridging up to the three ahead. Now it was 4 vs 6, with the breakaway 10 seconds up the road heading into the final hard climb.
At the end of the climb Thomsen ran out of steam, dropping back to my group. We were back to 3 vs 7. Could we chase down the leaders? Nobody in my group seemed to have the will/legpower to pull the group back to the breakaway, even though “M. Tremblay” and “Old Andy” put in some decent pulls. For my part, I just couldn’t put out the power to stay on the front of the group in any meaningful way, so I gave up the chase and sat in.
With 1 km to go I congratulated the front three, then prepared myself for the final sprint. With just under 300m to go, Tremblay jumped first, followed immediately by an even harder acceleration from “A. Erikssson”. I reacted a bit slowly (need to put the KICKR back on my rocker plate and enable race mode, I guess!) but held decent power, reaching the line well behind Eriksson but ahead of everyone else in my group.
5th place on screen, 4th place in ZwiftPower.
See activity on Strava >
See results on ZwiftPower >
Watch the Race
Takeaways
4th place on ZwiftPower earned me a result of 182.2, which wasn’t quite good enough to make it into my top 5 recent results and improve my ranking. For that, I would have needed 1st or 2nd.
Should I have followed the two riders who joined the break and stayed away? Perhaps. Looking back on races, I often think things like, “I could have made that jump.” (Do you do the same?) In the moment, though, with tired legs and a high heart rate it seems close to impossible!
Regardless, I always smile when I see a breakaway succeed in a race, even if I’m not in the breakaway, because it just doesn’t happen a lot in Zwift. Looking at the results, though, it’s worth noting that the breakaway rider who “won” this race, M Chaix, averaged 4.2W/kg (328W) for 48 minutes, with no HR and no ZwiftPower account, while the other two breakaway riders averaged just 3.4 and 3.6W/kg.
I don’t mention that to cast aspersions on any of the breakaway riders. The other two in the break had no easy way of knowing if Chaix was legit or not, and in fact, with this being a category enforced race, it would be fair to assume this was a breakout performance for Chaix and he’ll be upgraded to A for future events. So all good there.
I mention it because Chaix doing out-of-category numbers is probably a big reason why the breakaway succeeded. So my rule still holds – that breakaways rarely succeed in Zwift races. When they do, it may just mean there’s someone powering the breakaway who should be in a higher category.
But that sort of stuff just comes with the territory in Zwift racing. You have to learn to live with it, or it’ll drive you crazy. In the end, it was a fun and challenging race, and those willing to attack and take a chance came away with the win. Profeta finished 1st on ZwiftPower, and Mertens 2nd. Chapeau to you both!
Your Thoughts
Have you ever won a Zwift race in a breakaway? Or missed the break and cursed your poor judgment? Share below!
I’ve succeeded in doing breakaways twice. Both times were in Winter/Spring 2022, when I was a cat A rider and did some races with relatively few riders (10-15 at the starting line and only 4-6 finishing). In such small fields it’s possible 😉
One of them was actually in the Three Village Loop, where I broke away in the zigzags through the Onsen Village, about 1.8km before the finish. I think the others were preparing for the finish and didn’t notice that I flew away? At least I was surprised they didn’t catch me, since the rest of the race was downhill and flat. They nearly caught me, but they didn’t 😀
The other time was in Volcano Circuit CCW, where I broke away with one other rider at the final climb of the 3rd lap of 4 (so, about 4.2km before the finish). We managed to stay away, but the other rider gave up in the final climb, so I didn’t have to sprint. Which suited me perfectly since I’m not at all a sprinter…
I’ve succeeded in a breakaway once and was totally surprised. Was mixed surface and had a dirt climb. I was riding a gravel bike while more than half were on road bikes. Start of the race was paved and I put in an effort to stay with the front, as did 4-5 others on gravel bikes. When we hit the dirt I, unintentionally, jumped off the front a little. Since I was off the front, I decided to put a little effort just to get the gravel bike group to hurt the road bikes a little….and they let me go?? With just over 10 second gap, now I’m committed to the effort and somehow maintained the gap to the finish. (Next three TRS races were just an effort to finish…..
Seems like a solid result Eric. Get that trainer into race mode!
I find breakaways can stick if nobody in the pack is willing to chase, which is often due to course dynamics. Everyone always assumes it’ll come back together.
I can’t usually win from a sprint, so I’ve gotten a couple breakaways to stick. Going with a teammate helps, since you can specifically work together. Otherwise, attacking hard for the last five minutes can work. Nobody wants to burn a match in the chase. If you have good VO2 power and the group is 10 or less it’s an effective strategy!
Being the “Old Andy” in the article, I feel like this is my 10 minutes of fame!! I screen record all my races and review the “exciting” bits afterwards (I’m old!). I constantly criticise myself for not going with riders that break away, forgetting the amount of pain and suffering I was in during the actual race. Anyway, ref the race above, I’m no sprinter but I nearly caught you at the line, just missing out by 3 hundredths – damn! But there’s always next time. Keep up the good work Eric, and watch out for Old Andy trying to chase you down.
> breakaways rarely succeed in Zwift races. When they do, it may just mean there’s someone powering the breakaway who should be in a higher category.
But that sort of stuff just comes with the territory in Zwift racing
Happens all the time IRL racing as well! It’s how upgrading works by definition – your last races in a category pre-upgrade will always be above category limits. I remember working through the USACycling cats and my mantra was always “if you want to be in the next higher category, you need to *be* the next higher category first”, that is – in order to get the points to upgrade you’ve got to be putting out Cat 3 power in Cat 4 races or Cat 1 power in Cat 2 races etc, or you don’t get the points. Same with Zwift and power curve calcs or ZP and their measures.
Top results in a category are almost always above category limit by definition then. Zwift has probably already recalculated that person’s curve and poof, they’re an A, mozeltov 🙂
Fantastic result either way – but next time try the bridge! If you blow up, you’ve still got the chase group. Another mantra from a coach was “don’t let your mind quit before your legs”. Especially with PD4 coming I think breaks are about to be a thing and it’s worth changing the mindset to more of a gambler
Not being a sprinter, My only weapon is to get a breakaway to stick, so I try them often, they always seem daunting beforehand but if you don’t try, they never succeed by defintition, so try it. If you can get a couple others to come with you its slightly less work. And when you win its oh so satisfying. keep trying!!
Game is running super smooth! Great detail, graphics! What computer are you using?
Using this beast: https://amzn.to/3KUPFn3
Breakaways on zwift are mostly doomed, if you can breakaway then you probably should cat up if its not a very small group chasing. Done a few tests just for fun in crit city and the amount of power you need to put up just to hold the same pace of a B-pack is ridiculous. Do you think you would have beaten me on a kickr in race mode? if so I need to retire my Neo 2T and get myself a new Kickr…;)
I’d like to think I could have. But I doubt that’s reality. 😜