Thanks @mw22
The big number of people riding and double draft I’m sure had a huge effect on that.
That would be me
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Clues in the name I guess 🤦
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75km Portuguese and cake ride. Lots of Portuguese - no cake 
3x25km of Watopias waistband at advertised 2.0 - 2.5 (naturally it was 3+ the entire way)
1st lap bit uncomfy and legs still fatigued.
2nd lap started to get enjoyable and nice to have a gear or 2 when the groud idiot starts attacking on anything over 1%
3rd lap - became the group idiot
Into finish and noob error rolled onto front of pack with 700m to go…
Eased up, pack rolled through with Aero helmets lighting up left and right.
One bloke went with 400+ to go out the saddle
Well chuffed with that 
Never saw the first 5, other few places are very dodgy - one bloke only got 3minutes on ZP and got the win!
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Anyone planning on the Haute series this weekend??
Keen for a couple of them but aiming to get outside for at least one ride this weekend so won’t complete the full set unless forecast changes.
When IRL imitates zwift
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Interesting race yesterday, ZWC Hill Climb Battle. Reasonabe standard, so potential for some points and ranking increase.
It was a strange start proceedure with the Cat A Pen, behind the Cat B and Cat C, meaning that Cat A had to come through all of the other riders. In the confusion a group of 3 Cat A’s managed to get a 5s lead. I put in a massive 500w effort to get back on, so we had a bunch of 4. However, all was not what it seemed. As we headed into Tempus Fugit, I was sitting in the draft, while the leaders were pushing between 6 and 8 w/kg. Even with such a small group, we were dropping the main pack rapidly. Before long, started to see lots of angry comments, with accusations of cheating. The guy infront of me was certainly using sticky watts (spinning really fast up to 8w/kg, then stopping for 3s, then spinning again), you could see his avatar doing it. Main pack accepted that I was genuine, but asked me to drop back and not draft the cheats.
I was a little conflicted, I was in a great position to win the race and gain some ranking points, My job is not to police cheats in Zwift, and I was racing clean. Also if I managed to bridge the gap, surely others should have seen the risk and done the same. Ultimately I decided to play fair and drop back to the main pack.
It worked out pretty well in the end, later in the race the 3 riders ahead all got flagged and vanished, I had a great ride up the EPIC KOM, and managed to outsprint 2 riders to take 1st place, and 133 points
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Nice work @Matthew_Spooner
Was going to make my Cat A debut in a Crit this morning, but got a late pm call for Covid jab yesterday. Feel Ok today, a bit off as if a mild cold but will stick to easy and let the immune system do it’s thing.
Will hope to Duathlon tomorrow at fullish gas.
I am doing full Haute route at the weekend and with an objective to race them hard.
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Mob mentality as they missed the break. Dodgy riders in many races, you don’t see the pro peleton just let the epo drug cheats ride off into the sunset, they race to beat them and win as with any other rider. I would have hung on if I could within reason, but if you were dropped the chances are that you would have been burnt out and the mob sweep past. But thats the joy of racing.
I’ve seen many bullying tactics in road racing, bad language etc. Don’t be intimidated if you are not cheating or doing anything wrong yourself. Cheat and win is an empty win. Win the correct way is a freaking fantastic feeling.
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It’s a tricky one. I’ve been in races where zpower rider(s) will shoot off the front and other riders will draft them, finish with them, and therefore get the official win on ZP. You can spot a zpower rider quite easily and ive been in a couple of tdz ride/races where they are quite happy to announce the fact.
One thing zpower riders can’t do is sprint! lol.
It seems dumb trainers, zpower are allowed in likes of tdz official results on ZP. all inclusive it seems, even seems the case in ZRL. but that’s another, side issue/argument.
Personally, if I find myself drafting a zpower off the front of a ride/race then I WILL fall back to the non-cheating group. If it’s 1 zpower in a group then just ignore them.
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It’s often too hard to keep up with ‘power dopers’ on Zwift, and the real race is happening behind them. We get a real good workout though, which is the aim of the game. But then we get those on TT bikes in flat races. Again all that happens is everyone can only draft them as the power required to pass, attack and make it stick is too great. Race spoilers indeed, but they are racing within the rules of those races. Those riders peeve me off more.
In my eyes, Zwift is a training tool. I don’t see why they get so uptight (yes it spoils the fun and integrity of the training session). Get excited out in the real world races. Whenever they start again.
We should have a Tritalk only race. That would be interesting.
We’ve had a couple. @Matthew_Spooner is reining TriTalk champ with his 2 Wins, 0 Losses.
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That’s really useful advice. You say its easy to spot a zpower rider, how do you do this?
Smell the wind. Taste the ground. Visualise the movement Matt. Be the Zpower rider.
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doing 6wkg off the front of the group while texting about how easy it is to race, etc.
but they do go quiet when theyre caught and they have a sprint looming
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It might be a quicker way to tick off Quatch Quest? The other 2 don’t look like the full route?
Probably going to venture outside though.
Stupid game!
Couldnt find much to do so jumped on some over/under group with Volcano at end!
Out the gate at 2.0 - least that was the plan. Leader up at 4… saw no-one else below 3 for the “warm up”.
Ints were sposed to be 3-3.5/4-4.5.
More Like 4+ to get back into the group then max to stay there!
Then throw in some Yorkshire bloke who completely flaunted the “wear pink”… dunno why my companion app kept taking pictures when he was drafting me…
I don’t mean to be picky but…
Surely thats a DQ without any HR data??
Second fastest of my efforts up volcano -despite starting the thing at 170bpm 
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Yeah - the Pro’s always stay in their Pro Kit.
I was riding with some Ribble-Weldtite riders on one of the TDZ events, who were all in club kit and bikes (not the event kit and bike)
I tried a workout.
I failed the workout.
The end.
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