This week, we all visited Glasgow for a tough points race in the penultimate event of Zwift Racing League 2025/26, Round 2. With so many points segments, no one rider could contest them all. How would teams play this, and could we grab enough points to win?
Read on to see how my team’s race unfolded in the B1 Development Lime division…
Race Planning
As usual, my Coalition Delusion teammates and I were chatting on Discord in the days leading up to the race, trying to figure out how best to ride the course.
It was going to hurt no matter what we did: 10 laps of Glasgow Crit Circuit, with the Clyde Kicker KOM and Champion’s Sprint as points segments each and every lap. Along with a sprint on the lead-in, that meant 21 hard efforts would be required just to stay in the front pack.
Because of all those hard efforts, we figured this would be an attritional race. Therefore, staying in the front pack wasn’t important so much for the finishing position as it was for the segment points you would earn every lap as you beat the riders who had fallen off the back.
But of course, if we wanted to score big points and actually win overall, we would have to put in some max efforts on the points segments. How do you decide which segments to go all-in on, and which ones to conserve on? Nobody can produce 21 max sprints in a 40-minute race.
I decided my best approach was to target the Champion’s Sprint, since I would perform better there than on the Clyde Kicker, being stronger in terms of pure watts than W/kg. So I would go all-in for as many reps of the Champion’s Sprint as I could, while doing the minimum amount of work necessary to hang onto the front for the rest of the race.
Warmup
Prepping to get on the bike, I used all the supplement tricks at my disposal: PR Lotion to my legs, 300mg of caffeine thanks to MEG gum + dirty chai, a Nomio shot (still not sold on this), and some beta-alanine, for the tingles.
Then it was off to Watopia to spin up the legs for ~25 minutes, putting in a few good efforts to get the heart rate up to 160bpm. A full warmup was especially important this week, because we would be going all-out for the first 40 seconds of the race.
A Hard Start
The race begins with a short lead-in to the start of lap 1, and that lead-in includes the Champion’s Sprint. So straight out of the gate we were sprinting, then holding that high power for around 45 seconds!
It was a tough start, and the pack stretched out quickly. I was near the front, but when riders really poured on the power in the final stretch of the sprint, my legs just didn’t have the power to hold their wheels. I came across in 14th place, and Sauce for Zwift showed the first selection had been made: 44 front riders from the original group of 51.
The pack didn’t ease much as we made our way to the Clyde Kicker, but I made my way toward the front, activated my feather powerup, then pushed just hard enough to stay in the pack while drifting backward up the climb (the classic “sagging” strategy). Even with all my tricks, it still took a hard effort to stay in touch with the group.
Down the other side, the pack eased considerably. I certainly wasn’t going to complain. I tried to spin the pedals as easily as possible, breathe deeply, knowing another sprint was just up the road.
It arrived quickly, as riders started jumping off the front and popping their aero powerups just after we turned onto the sprint straightaway. I followed the wheels, pushed hard, and came across the line in 6th.
This was going to hurt.
The Middle: Attrition + Efficiency
I went all-in for the sprint at the end of lap 2 as well, coming across the line in 2nd for my best segment result of the day. And that’s when I decided not to sprint the next time. There was no way I could sprint hard 8 more times!
So I settled into a rhythm of sprinting every other lap, and essentially just trying to stay in the front group with as little effort as possible apart from those sprints. That meant keeping my avatar’s nose out of the wind, sagging the Clyde Kicker, and even sagging the sprints I wasn’t contesting.
The front group’s behavior became quite predictable, and I felt like each lap I was learning to rider more efficiently. That little kicker after the first descent from the Clyde Kicker? You can almost coast over that. Going all-in on the Champion’s Sprint? I could coast for several seconds after that as well. And in between the segments, the group simply wasn’t pushing hard. Nobody had the legs to get away.
You can see what this looked like in my Ride Report chart. This is what a book of burned matches looks like! (Yellow arrows are max Champion’s Sprint efforts):
After 5 laps, most of the attrition had occurred. The front group contained just 23 riders, and Coalition Delusion had 4 riders in that group (including myself), with 2 behind in the chase.
The Finish
I took it easy on the penultimate sprint, wanting to have the freshest legs possible for the final sprint, since it essentially counted for double points (sprint points plus finish points).
Coming around to the final Clyde Kicker, I expected some riders to attack hard, so I pushed a bit harder to make sure I didn’t get gapped off the back. The group didn’t surge as much as I’d expected, though, and I came across in 4th, grabbing some unexpected extra points!
A couple of riders tried to go long off the front with less than a 1km to go, and things were confused as we were about to lap a rider as well. (Where are the race officials when you need them?)
It started popping off 400m from the line, well before the final straightaway, but I didn’t think I had the legs to follow wheels from that far out. So I upped the power but stayed seating, trying to surf the draft so I could stay near the front without blowing up early.
I triggered my aero a bit earlier than usual, then downshifted and got out of the saddle for one final sprint to the line. I looked up just in time to see my avatar passing a few riders (who had probably gone a bit early), and I came across in 9th.
Watch the Video
Results and Takeaways
Heading over to the WTRL website, we were elated to discover we’d won the race!
Team leader Dave Thompson had turned in a particularly impressive performance, coming in 2nd over the line and leading our team in points. He scored plenty of points on both segments, which shows he’s quite a balanced rider.
Our finishing points were also strong, because we had 4 riders in the front group of ~20, and all of us finished in the top 10.
Here are my segment results on the day. You can definitely see which Champion’s Sprint efforts were all-in, and which were conservative!
It’s interesting to see how my placings on the Clyde Kicker improved in the back half of the race. I’m not sure how to explain that, except to say perhaps those punchy W/kg were getting tired!
Could I have scored more points if I’d raced this differently? I’m not sure there is much I would change, actually. I think I did about as well as I could, given my relative fitness and the day’s race course.
This was a really strong result for us, and we are now tied overall with team TSE heading into next week’s final race of the round:
Taking home an overall win will be far from easy for Coalition Delusion: we excel in flat/rolling TTTs and flatter races overall, and next week’s race finishes on the NY KOM (see the race guide). We’ll give it our best!
I’ll close with our traditional team Discord shot:
What about you?
How was your race #5? Share your story below!
