This week’s Zwift Racing League event was, for me, the toughest of the season so far. Held across four laps of Yorkshire’s ever-pitchy Tour of Tewit Well, I knew from past experience that the route doesn’t suit me. This wouldn’t be a race where I went on the offense. It would be a race of survival.
Here’s how it all unfolded from my point of view, racing with the DIRT Roosters in Division B3 of the EMEA W zone.
The Warmup
My typical pre-race ritual was executed as usual. Beet juice (liquid dirt) a couple of hours before the race, then three pieces of caffeine gum (100mg of go-go juice per piece!) an hour before, and PR lotion on the legs before kitting up.
The only problem was, I neglected to look at the Companion app and hence forgot that the race was an hour later than usual due to European times changing a week before California time. So I got to sit at my desk fully kitted and lotioned up, working on Zwift Insider posts for an hour.
Then it was time to awaken the legs and heart by spinning with the C. Cadence groupies. 45 minutes or so with a few sprints to get the heart rate up and I was ready to go.
I went with the Tron bike for this race, as I knew the climbs would be my battle today. (They always are.)
The Start: All In
69 B riders jumped out of Yorkshire pens, but it was clear nobody was attacking yet. We all knew that 60 seconds up the road the KOM began, and this would result in the biggest selection of the race.
My mind was made up – I would go all-in to stay with the front group on this initial climb. If I was somehow able to do that, it was possible that the group would settle down and I could hang in until the finish.
But that was a lot of maybes.
The initial slope of the KOM is steep – it’s best to hammer and keep your speed up. Then it settles down for a bit, as does the effort. Then the road turns slightly right, ramps up, and the real work begins. Can you keep those steady high watts?
And just when you think you’re nearing the end, the strong riders pick up the pace even more to sprint for the line and intermediate points. Gah! I made the mistake of poorly shifting and standing in the final seconds, and that small power drop slid me from 7th to 10th.
(Despite that misstep I still set a Strava PR on the climb – 2:06, with an average wattage of 443.)
Over the top I found myself in a small pack of riders just a few seconds behind the small pack in front. Thanks to some anvils and supertucks, we caught the front group at the bottom of the descent. A sigh of relief – I was in the front group!
But this was Yorkshire, so there was no time to rest. You descend only to hammer another climb. Hammer, descend, hammer descend. Over and over again.
On top of that, there were 3 Roosters in the front group (Antoine, Clem, and myself) but 4 of our rivals, the Vikings. We were already on the back foot in terms of numbers.
Penny Pot Lane was the next climb, but it wasn’t bad (relatively speaking). A bit steep at the start, then just hold the power and hang in with the group. Then we had a welcome descent to the steepest climb on the route: Pot Bank. I had a feather saved, and a strategy already figured out: deploy the feather as the road turns left and ramps up steeply, hitting the wattage hard for ~30 seconds up the steepest section. I knew with the road pitching up to 17% that I had to put out big watts if I wanted to avoid my 83kg grinding to a halt.
The strategy worked well – I found myself on the front of our pack of 16, in fact! Which is not a place I generally find myself. Especially on climbs! So I eased up and let the group catch so I could sit in with slightly less effort up the slacker portion of the Pot Bank Climb.
I was stoked that I had survived the three main climbs of the route. But I could also feel that those climbs had taken their toll on my legs. I couldn’t do this for three more laps. Would the pace ease up?
There was one final climb on Otley Road. I have to say, of the four climbs on the loop, this is the one I underestimated. It was longer and steeper than I realized. This wasn’t a “three climbs and a bit” loop. It was a 4-climber. And it hurt!
An anvil powerup dropped into my pocket at the start/finish line, and I activated it as soon as the road tilted downward since I knew it lastest for 30 seconds and I didn’t want it active on the flat (or worse, uphill) roads coming up.
Dropped
On the second KOM I once again came over the top in a chase group that was just a few seconds behind the front pack. But our smaller pack of 7 strung-out riders couldn’t reel in the front pack of 9 so easily this time. We pushed hard up the next climb (Penny Pot Lane) and 3 riders bridged up to the front group.
But I wasn’t one of the three. I gave up the chase, choosing instead to recover and join up with riders behind. With more than 2.5 laps left, working hard by myself was a bad idea.
Around this time I also noticed my heartrate wasn’t showing on screen. Uh oh! I knew it had been showing when I first started the race. Eventually I had the presence of mind to pair my TICKR with my Wahoo Bolt computer, so I had some heartrate visible and recording in case WTRL needed evidence that it was working. (As it turned out, it wasn’t an issue, since it was functioning for part of the race.)
Things weren’t looking good for the Roosters. Clem and I had both been dropped from the front group, with only team captain Antoine surviving. And the Vikings still had 3 riders in the front pack!
Just after the Pot Bank Climb I was swallowed by a pack of ~12 riders which included teammate Clem as well as one Viking. This was the chase group. We had a front pack of 9 that would lose a few riders as the race went on. And it would be our goal to catch those riders and hopefully bump our finishing positions up a bit.
Lap 3 was uneventful enough. Hammer the climbs, rest on the descents. As much as we wanted to take it easy, we could see riders dropping from the front group, and we wanted to catch them.
On Discord we could hear that Antoine was still holding his own in the front group. (He was riding like a man possessed after last week’s race where he fell off the front pack because he was distracted by his phone.)
Teammates Dejan, Ally, and Brett were somewhere behind, all fighting their own battles. But we all knew that every point matters, so we were working to set ourselves up for the best finish possible after grabbing as many intermediate points as we could in that first lap.
Dropped Again
Up Pot Bank I again found myself in the front of the group, just long enough to recon what was going on up the road. I was in 10th in the front of my chase group. Two riders were dropped from the front group, including one Viking – but our group wouldn’t be able to catch them unless they totally blew up.
In the spirit of grabbing every point possible, I was crunching numbers in my sugar-starved brain. I knew 10th place got more points than 11-15th. Could I finish in the front of this group? If not, I at least needed to finish better than 16th.
But just as I was thinking all this, three riders attacked on the final stretch of the Pot Bank Climb. One TBR rider and two Stages riders (although one didn’t have his team name in his profile – bad form, sir.) I couldn’t grab their wheels. Curses. That was 10th place riding away! Seven riders left in my group, representing places 14-20th.
The Finish
Then on the final climb (Otley Road), the two BBR riders in my group attacked hard. I had to go to the dark side to catch. Absolute suffering. I only grabbed on because Monica was jumping up and down and yelling, “Go! Go! Go! You’re catching them! Almost there!”
A short recovery on the descent, and we braced ourselves for the final sprint to the line. Who would finish in those coveted 14th-15th slots, getting 1 more point than the rest? We turned a sharp left, one rider began sprinting, and we all went for it. I gave it all I had, and somehow beat the pack to the line, finishing 14th.
See my ride on Zwift.com >
See my activity on Strava >
See race results on ZwiftPower >
Watch Full Race Recording
Team Result
The Roosters were uncharacteristically quiet on Discord as the race finished. We had all given our best efforts, but with Vikings outnumbering us 3 to 1 in the front pack, we didn’t hold out much hope for a win.
But once again, we were surprised. When the results were posted they showed us winning by one point. The slimmest of margins.
Especially big kudos to team captain Antoine, who redeemed himself this week with a 5th place finish in a very select front group. And to Clem, who grabbed big intermediate points.
Takeaways
This race, more than any other I’ve done in ZRL, underscored how these events are team efforts. We like to focus on the strongest riders, the front group, the ones who make it over the line first. But in today’s race, literally every single point mattered. Luckily for us, the Vikings only had 5 riders finish… otherwise, the win would have been theirs.
Could I have raced it any better? The only spot I see where I could have improved is when the group of 4 attacked on the end of Pot Bank on the final lap. If I had followed that attack, I may have been able to get 3 extra finishing points, if I was also able to outsprint the pack for the win.
But hindsight is 20/20. Every bike race is full of judgment calls where you have to quickly decide if an attack is worth following or not. In this case, I didn’t make the right call. Fair play to the four who got away!
Lastly: I just want to say I still hate racing Yorkshire. It’s essentially VO2 repeats, which aren’t my strong point anyway. And it’s just a suffer-filled painfest. Every. Time.
Your Thoughts
Did you race this week’s murderous course? How did it go for you and your team? Share below!
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