How the Race Was Lost: A Swarm of B’s at the L39ION Crit

December 15, 2021

LAST UPDATED December 14, 2021

The L39ION of LA Crit Series has seen crazy numbers of racers. Some are just there to grab the Neokyo Crit Course route badge, but most are in it to win it, resulting in field sizes of 300+ in some categories and time slots. Lunacy!

I couldn’t make it to every race in the series, but I wanted to make it to at least one so I could experience the new course and see what it was like racing 300+ B riders. I wasn’t disappointed! Here’s how it all unfolded from my point of view…

Warmup

My race was at 11am, so around 10am I started the pre-race ritual. Two pieces of caffeine gum. Slap some PR lotion on the legs and kit up. Then I went to Neokyo for a warmup, knocking out the “Sleepless City” route badge while I spun the legs up from resting to race mode.

I pulled up the signup list in ZwiftPower while I was warming up (see it here). It was slightly frightening to see the firepower signed up in the B race! When I sorted the signup list by rank, I didn’t even make the first screen. No, I had to scroll down to 41st place to see my name listed.

It’s been a long time since I entered a B race against that many higher-ranked riders. Winning today was clearly a long shot at best.

A few hard efforts got the heart rate up to 160bpm, then it was time to join the pens for a second time (because of course I joined the pens 30 minutes before the race began, to hold my spot near the front. This isn’t my first rodeo!)

Saving my spot near the front of the pens

The Start

The clock hit zero and we jumped out of the pens, quickly ramping up to 48-50 kph. We soon settled into a steady pace, eating through the kilometers as we made our way through the Shopping District and into Castle Park.

I modulated my power to hold a position at least a few bike lengths from the front, but not so far back that I couldn’t see the front of the race. (Or what I hoped was the front of the race…)

Big Group Wackiness

There were 361 riders in the B peloton, but Zwift only renders the 100 nearest riders on your screen – which can really screw you up in a big race!

It can lead to very strange situations, two of which are:

Incorrectly thinking you’re in the lead pack because you see no riders up the road – even though a pack of riders has broken off the front and ridden away from your group.
Not knowing there are hundreds of riders just behind, or even a small group dropping off the back. This is because in large, tightly-packed groups, the game seems to have a bias for rendering riders ahead of you rather than behind.

I found myself looking at my ranking in the rider list, which was bouncing between ~50 and ~150. Then I would look at the mass of riders ahead of me and think, “That looks like around 50 riders. I must be in the front group.”

I hoped I was right.

Settling In

The group quickly settled into a rhythm: ramp it up a bit when the incline hit 2-3% for short stretches. Ease a bit on slight downhills. Chug along at 47-48kph, finishing each of the six laps in under 5 minutes.

The pack speed was so high that nobody attacked. Or if they did, I didn’t see it! I know for myself, I can hold 47-48kph for maybe 30-60 seconds solo, having done so in some race breakaways and TTT efforts. So I knew there was no way I could attack this pack and stay away. And I think plenty of others were thinking the same thing.

This was, in fact, very much like IRL pro crits against the L39ION of LA team. L39ION’s very effective strategy is to put their workhorses on the front to chase back attacks and keep the speed high while their sprinters sit in and wait for the final leadout.

With two powerups given per lap, there were always powerups flying. (Happily, there weren’t any burritos being handed out. Because they’re the worst.)

The Finish

We didn’t have a lap counter in the HUD, because ZwiftHQ had changed these events over the weekend to be distance-based, since the lap-based method had resulted in an invisible finish line in the first races. (That’s fun!)

But it was easy to figure out which lap of six we were on. And as we started our final lap, the pack definitely got a little nervous.

The pace ramped up as we hit the false flat after the Castle Sprint arch. I was holding an aero powerup, just trying to figure out the best time to use it.

The pack began to stretch out with 1.5km to go, as riders started attacking off the front. It all came down to this final 90 seconds! Who could hold high power to hang with the stretching front, then put in a big sprint to finish?

The front of the pack was slipping away from me, so I activated my aero powerup probably 30s before the finish line, hammering my way past anyone I could catch.

The downside of making this a distance-based race was that nobody knew where the finish line was. Sure, we knew approximately where it would be. But the virtual finish line didn’t show up until we were actually approaching it for the final time! So I was looking at the distance to go number in my HUD. At 400 meters riders began really sprinting, and I did my best to follow them.

But I was clearly outgunned. I gave it all I had, crossing the line in 19th according to the game… which somehow became 20th on ZwiftPower. (The first time I’ve ever had my finishing position get worse in ZwiftPower’s results!)

See activity on Strava >
See ride on Zwift.com >
See results on ZwiftPower >

No Video

I didn’t record my race video this time around, as I was concerned that doing so would impact my framerate too much. Neokyo is very CPU-intensive, and adding in a mass of nearby riders makes it even more so.

In hindsight, it looks like I made the right call. My framerates during the race were around ~25 fps, which is not ideal but acceptable to my eye. Recording the race would have dropped it to ~15 fps, which isn’t fun at all.

Takeaways

Finishing 20th resulted in a ranking points improvement of -11.35, which is a big jump for me. That’s the beauty of facing off against stronger riders!

This race reinforced my growing belief that your ability to deliver strong 1-2 minute power is probably the #1 determiner of Zwift race success. The first 28.5 minutes of the race were actually quite easy, as evidenced by the fact that some 120 riders finished in the front group.

But it was that final 90 seconds where the important work happened. Those who could hold high 1-minute power moved to the front of the pack as it stretched out. And those who could sprint on top of that 1-minute effort put themselves into contention for the win.

What did it take to win? I don’t know precise power numbers in those final seconds, but I can tell you that all of the top 5 finishers have 15-second power above 1000 watts and 13 w/kg according to ZwiftPower. Most over 1100 watts and 14 w/kg.

Me? My much weaker sprint was never going to beat the big boys. But an aero powerup, decent 1-minute power, and a good sense of timing landed me a much higher finish than predicted. And in those final meters, I set a new 6-week PR for 90-second power. So I’m happy with that, and happy with a points upgrade.

Making It Interesting

This race effort was remarkably steady. The exact opposite of what an IRL crit would be like on this course! Check out my power graph:

It was essentially a steady TT-style effort just below threshold, with a 90-second attack/sprint at the end. And that’s fine, if that’s what you’re looking for.

But what I’d really like to see (and I’ve mentioned this in the context of Crit City races in the past) is auto-braking on certain corners, which would force riders to attack out of the corners like an outdoor crit.

Couple that with next-level intelligent features like allowing a small group or single rider to go through corners faster than a large group and you’ve got all the ingredients for a much more animated race.