The final round of Zwift Racing League 2025/26 is underway, and I’m still racing with the Coalition Delusion squad I joined back in Round 1. While I had anticipated coming into this round in good shape, it’s turned into a rough start.
After a lovely trip to Mallorca for Zwift Community Live, which included three days of epic training rides, my wife and I headed to Germany. We found lots of amazing castles and cathedrals, but she also found a chest cold, which she eventually (generously) passed on to me.
Returning to the US, I agreed to ride the first race of round 4, because we were low on riders and I can typically hold my own in a flat TTT. Sadly, this first outing for our team was not pretty. While we normally excel at the TTT, we started with only five riders due to availability challenges, and one was quickly dropped. While I felt like I held my own and hit my targets on pulls, we finished 6th overall. (Notably, our final time was only 32 seconds slower than the winning squad. That’s a close set of results!)
I had been taking it easy on the bike, trying to follow the conventional wisdom of, “If your sickness is from the neck down, don’t push the bike training.” And I definitely was on the mend. But as I would soon find out, “On the mend” and “Back to full fitness” are two very different things…
The Race
Our race was a points race on 6 laps of Watopia’s The Classic, which meant six KOM efforts and six sprints. I was just hoping to stay with the front group for the duration of the race, but planned not to push hard for points, unless I felt unexpectedly good near the end.
As it turns out, I managed to both exceed and fall short of my expectations. Luckily, this is a team event!
Lap 1: Unexpected Sprint Win
Everyone took it easy on the lead-in to Jarvis, and most chose to hold onto the Feather powerup they’d been given in the pens. We hit the bottom of our first Jarvis KOM as an intact group of 57 starters… but that wouldn’t last long.
A few seconds before the uphill wooden bridge, the feathers began flying, and efforts ramped up. I used my feather as well, and hammered my way up and over. I had no intention of finishing near the front – I just wanted to stay well-positioned so I wouldn’t get dropped.
Descending the other side, I tried to take it easy and catch my breath while also moving up a bit in the group. (As an “overmuscled cyclist”, this is typically pretty easy to do.) Aero powerups started flying rather early, but I held onto mine until I was 8 seconds from the sprint start line. (Not that I timed it that precisely, I just know the timing based on watching my recording, which is below.)
With the help of the Aero powerup I quickly moved toward the front of the pack, then into the wind. I hadn’t expected this, but I was on the front with less than 100 meters to go, so I kept hammering to hold my position… and it worked! 1st place. 57 FAL points!
I definitely felt that effort, though. And my heart rate spiked to 186 (my max is 189)! So I decided to try to recover on the next lap, simply staying in touch with the front group without chasing points. To try to follow my original plan, after already mucking it up.
Lap 2-3: Dropped
The starting group of 57 had been reduced to 30 after the first lap. Lap 2 went as planned – I “sagged” the climb, starting near the front and finishing near the back to minimize effort. I did the same thing on the sprint.
My heart rate was clearly elevated above normal, and the legs didn’t feel great. But heading into lap 3, I was feeling like I could at least hang with the front group, perhaps until the final big push on the last lap’s KOM.
But I soon learned that was pure hubris. On the final ramp of lap 3’s KOM, riders pushed the effort once again – and my legs said, “Nope.” I was dropped.
The front group was now 22 riders, and I was in the first chasing group of four. I had one teammate behind me, and (happily) three still in the front group.
Lap 4-6: Survival
I figured I’d be able to hang with my group of four (places 23-26) until the end of the race, and that we’d probably catch a dropped rider or five as racers blew up on the back half of the race.
Little did I know, I was the one who would blow up. Again and again.
My group stuck together for lap 4, and caught two riders near the start of lap 5. Unfortunately, the group pushed harder than my will, and I was dropped again before passing the Banjo Cafe. A group of 11 behind caught me soon afterward.
Now I was fighting for, at best, 25th place.
But the prospect of 25th rode away from me on the final KOM as I was dropped by most of the group. My body just didn’t have it.
I finished 34th.
Watch the Video
Takeaways
Teammate Andrew finished on the podium in 3rd while Andrea, William, and Mike all finished in the front group (7th, 9th, and 11th, respectively). I was 34th, and Neale was 38th.
Looking at the WTRL results soon afterward, we saw we were leading with only FIN points calculated. Could we possibly win the overall?
It turns out we could! We took the overall win, putting us in 4th overall:
My personal takeaways? Just a reminder that I’m not invincible, I suppose. I didn’t feel like I was overextending myself on that first lap, but XERT says I had a near breakthrough, so I think it’s safe to say I pushed too hard, and paid for it later:
Did I maximize my points by doing what I did? Perhaps. If I’d sat in on that sprint, I probably would have survived longer in the front group, thus grabbing more FAL points up the road. But it’s hard to say if I would have earned more points overall by taking the conservative approach.
Riding while sick/recovering has been an interesting experience these past two weeks.
When I start a hard effort, I feel pretty “normal”, apart from my heart rate being elevated by 5-10 bpm. But the most surprising thing is how I seem to hit a wall unexpectedly early.
It’s no fun when my body doesn’t perform as expected. But what else can I do, apart from taking it easy, then pushing it a bit every few days to test how I’m feeling?
So that’s my current plan. Hopefully my heart rate and performance normalize soon.
What about you?
How did your race in Jarvis go? Share below!
