This morning, I won my first Zwift race! And to be honest, it wasn’t really close.
After more than 5 years of fluctuating between 3.5 w/kg and 4 w/kg, and never getting close to a B class win on Zwift, I’ll take it. Normally, winning a lower class would be called sandbagging. This is slightly different, I think. I’ve been off Zwift for close to 4 months and have been recently recovering from painful cycling injury.
Since my layoff, Zwift released its new Zwift Racing Score and reset its recommendations for riders. Or at least reset them for me. When I got back on Zwift last week, I got recommended E class. So I took it. I didn’t even podium that one. If you compare my performance in the first race to today, I worked harder (higher heart rate) in the first race, but did 13% more power (this is a lot in cycling) this morning – I was still a bit weak and a bit sick then. I didn’t even win the second race I did, in which I got recommended class D. I finished fourth – my indoor trainer went crazy and I had no power data for 15-30 seconds in the last few minutes of the race. I had expected to podium, but not win – I made the wrong call not to follow someone and my group wouldn’t work to catch up to that breakaway rider.
So again, it’s not like I’ve been destroying the competition taking easy wins.
Today though, I was feeling reasonably decent and when a gap opened up even though I wasn’t working at my limits, I decided to keep pushing and try to stay away from everyone else. It worked and the result was a 45 second victory in the field of 18, pushing about 3.6w/kg in Normalized Power (NP) for half an hour.
Zwift isn’t going to let me compete in C again, so at least I got one victory to show I don’t belong in C.
I Spit Hot Fire 