The quality of sprinting on Zwift has certainly improved over past couple of years. 2 years ago, I would be pretty confident that I could stay with the main pack on the leg snapper at around 7wkg in Tuesday’s ZRL race, I was dropped even though I averaged 545w (8wkg), I think that you needed a minimum of 8.5wkg to stay with the pack. I don’t think that the guys at the front are faster, however, its the sheer number of people who are able to hold the lead pack that is a surprise. Out of 59 riders, 50 stayed with the lead group.
Initially I wondered if I am not a strong as I was in the past, however, when I look at my times on Strava, this was my 9th fastest out of 75 times, only 3s off my PB. I would have needed to match my PB to hold the lead group.
Lots of comments from people who say that they can’t sprint on Zwift, I certainly count myself in that category, on a good day I may scrape an 11wkg 5s sprint. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t get good results on Zwift. I am ranked top 250 in the world on ZP, 15th over 50 year old, and 5th in Switzerland.
In a popular race series, like FRR, where courses are longer and more challenging I take loads of points off the sprinters, climbing the Alpe I can pretty much hold the wheel of anyone, and being short and relatively powerful, I will always do well in an ITT, strangely I always struggle on the Epic KOM and just can’t ever get the radio tower right. Just because a load of B’s can thrash me in a sprint doesn’t mean I should be a Cat B rider.
More often than not, I am choosing to do races, like ZRL, BL13 series, and Crits where I know I’m going to be beaten up, I’m improving my race craft and trying to improve my sprint. If I want to rationalise it, Finishing mid pack or in the 2nd group isn’t bad for a 50 year old, racing against some pretty decent youngsters and a bucket full of cheats
Nightmare for me tonight, followed the link and signed up, then when I was in the garage it wasn’t showing as a race join. Ran inside and tried to join again which said successful but looks like it was trying to join race 3 for some reason! By the time another link appeared it had started.
So, had a long warmup and then did a TT, which felt harder than it should have.
That was particularly unpleasant tonight, much longer effort than I’ve done for some time. Started with 5 and one had to back off around halfway as he was struggling with a virus that had been getting worse during the day. He did well to get that far doing some big turns.
It was mostly survival from the volcano for me, got a bit of recovery back down but was grimacing a bit in the last 10 minutes
Severe toothache since sat, turned out to be the least of my issues.
Mid warm up. Lost power to turbo (not uncommon) but zwift then shit itself and refused to work.
Reboot x 5 didn’t work so plan B, steal wife’s PC.
Initially also didn’t work. Got going with minutes to spare.
Things didn’t feel quite right and soon twigged that the trainer difficulty would be 100%, I found racing at 40% suited me.
Made it quite difficult to stay smooth and a nightmare on downhill.
Also couldn’t hear the DS. and didn’t have my normal array of data.
Still we caught the league leaders halfway up volcano. And gapped everyone else.
Solid second in the league, literally just losing 2 races by a single point/position.
Finals will be interesting with all the cat As not allowed to ride.
too