Zwift Racing League teams headed to Yorkshire this week for a points race held on the 2019 UCI Worlds Harrogate Circuit. Over the years, this route’s sawtooth profile has struck fear into the heart of many a Zwifter, including myself. And our race was three laps long, meaning it would take us over an hour to finish.
My team (Coalition Delusion, racing in the Open Development B1 Lime Division) knew this wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be short. But you’re not a true cyclist unless you regularly run pell-mell toward the prospect of personal suffering. Let’s race!
Lap 1
73 riders left the Yorkshire start pens, quickly turning right to begin climbing Otley Road. (You’ll want to be nicely warmed up before racing in Yorkshire, as the work begins right away!) Otley Road is 1.6km long at 3.4%, a draggy climb that always seems to take longer than you’d think.
But this was a points race, and Otley Road isn’t a timed segment. With plenty of miles ahead, riders were clearly wanting to keep their powder dry. I sat in the wheels, doing the minimal work to stay in the group. I finished the climb in 3:22, averaging 3.96 W/kg.
What follows on the route is a bit of down, a bit of up, some false flat, then the lovely Pot Bank descent followed by another short climb and a descent to Oak Beck, where the Yorkshire KOM begins. Interesting things can happen on these in-between bits, but in a points race, that action is muted.
We hit the bottom of the KOM as a pack of 64, and I bumped up my power and used my feather powerup to stay near (but not on) the front if possible. New teammate Enrico was riding off the front (impressive!), so I eased even more, not wanting to give anyone a draft to chase him back (insert timely Team Jayco-AlUla reference 😜).
At the flatter section mid-climb I was positioned well, but when the second half began, lots of feathers popped, and I found myself sliding backward. By the time I rode beneath the KOM arch I had averaged 4.64 W/kg for 2:32 (tying my PR time), the pack was strung out, and I was in… well, I really don’t know what place I was in.
Rider Placement Bug
The rider list on my screen (see above) wasn’t showing my current place in the race, and I must say, I didn’t realize how much I looked at that HUD element until it was missing!
I had Sauce for Zwift up, which showed me in a group of 29… but that was a very strung-out group that was quickly breaking up.
(After reporting the bug via an internal Zwift channel, it appears that this happened to anyone running the latest Zwift version, v105, that released the morning of the race. The new version interacts with ZRL’s funky event config in an unexpected way.)
I figured the groups would come back together once we were through the sprint segment, and that is indeed what happened. By the time we finished the first lap, I was back in the front group of 28. With a 31-second gap to the closest chasing group of 5 riders, it seemed pretty clear that nobody behind would be bridging up.
Lap 2
The next Otley Road ascent was a bit more chill, taking 3:35 and averaging 3.57 W/kg. Nothing remarkable here, except for one Team Ukraine Mariupol guy, Klish, who attacked off the front. He would continue to do this on and off for the rest of the race, going off the front, getting caught, then doing it again. I’m not sure what the strategy was, but without a lot of TUM guys in the front group, I don’t think anyone was worried enough to chase him down in earnest.
As we neared the Pot Bank descent this time, I decided to put in a few hard pedal revs to go off the front and attempt a supertuck on the crazy steep descent. And it worked!
That gave me almost 20 seconds of no pedaling, which was quite nice.
Soon enough, we were at the start of our second Yorkshire KOM. This time, I had determined to save my feather powerup for the second half of the climb, where the road is just as steep as the start of the climb, but you’re more fatigued! Clearly others had learned the same lesson, as I saw zero feathers at the start, but a pile on the second bit:
This time up the KOM was definitely easier than the first. We were 8 seconds slower, and it took me 0.16 W/kg less, and I finished the climb in a much better position than the first time around, as well.
This is where my glycogen-depleted brain began to dream that I might be able to hang with the front pack to the finish. But those hopes were soon to come up against the hard wall of reality…
I would love to say that I was able to contest the sprint segment each lap, but since it was at the top of a climb, I was always gassed by the time I got there, and was only able to put in half-hearted attempts. I just hoped that my being in the whittled-down front pack would earn sufficient points.
We finished lap 2 with a front group of 18 riders.
Lap 3
As we climbed Otley Road for the final time, I was surveying the front group. How many riders were here from each team? I was happy to see that most teams only had 1-2 riders in the front, while my team and one other (SZR) had 3. That was a good sign.
We finished Otley Road in 4:01 this time, much slower than the previous laps. Fatigue was setting in, and everyone knew the final KOM would be a hard one!
I grabbed another cheeky supertuck on the Pot Bank descent, and soon enough, we found ourselves crossing Oak Beck and beginning the final KOM. It felt like the group was pushing hard up the first half, and I found myself sliding backward in the group. By the time we started the second half I was blowing up. It wasn’t that the pace was higher than previous laps. It was that my legs didn’t have any punch left. Even my feather powerup couldn’t save me.
I was dropped. 17 riders were up ahead, and I was all by myself, with the closest riders over a minute behind.
Doing whatever I could to keep pushing over the top and down the other side, I used my aero powerup on the descent in hopes that the pack would ease and I could catch back on. One rider had fallen off the group, and I caught and passed him on the climb to the sprint. (He would serve as a sort of “reverse carrot”, forcing me to keep my effort high to stay away to the finish.)
Alas, the pack never eased in those final kilometers. Teammate Andrew finished in 2nd, the best finish for our team (chapeau!), new teammate Enrico finished 5th, and I finished in 17th place, just over a minute behind the leaders.
On the plus side, I didn’t even need to sprint, because nobody was nearby.
My legs were happy about that.
Watch the Video
Results and Takeaways
It took several hours for the results to be finalized (not sure why it takes longer sometimes), but eventually we saw we’d finished 4th overall:
Our rivals from last season, Team SEA, took first. They’re sitting in 1st overall after two races, and we’re in 2nd.
But here’s the thing: we only had 5 riders. So we’re pretty happy with 4th this week, knowing that having one more rider finishing mid-pack might have won it for us overall. That’s not bad at all, on such a hilly route.
Personally, I’m both happy and disappointed in my performance. On one hand, I didn’t think I’d survive in the front as long as I did. But on the other hand, getting dropped so close to the finish really stings! I can’t help but wonder if using my feather earlier, or gutting it out just a bit more, or being able to see my rider placing might have helped me stay with the front to the finish.
The truth is, I probably just wasn’t strong enough on the day. But I reported the bug to Zwift via a Slack channel anyway, asking, “Can I use this to excuse my getting dropped like a hot rock on the last KOM? Please?” Happily, Zwift’s VP of Product Mark Cote said I could, and admitted that Zwift was clearly at fault for my loss:
So that helps lessen the sting just a bit. 😉
We finished with our customary Discord team portrait, featuring “shadow-Captain Neil” (at bottom) who honorably did this event twice in one day:
What about you?
How did your race in Yorkshire go? Share below!
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