STW Zwift Autumn Race Series 1

Sorry Phil, feel a little bit bad about that attack. Probably would have been quicker to hang around and work together but the power ups just seemed to line up and set it up. It was a bloody long way to the end from there!

Sorry Phil, feel a little bit bad about that attack

Is it wrong to admit that I was pretty sure the group were going to catch Phil in last lap, and as soon as we did I had saved up a aero boost to hammer myself at front of pack in hope he’d already be cooked and we’d shell him out the back so he couldn’t hitch a ride!

Didn’t quit work out like that, awesome effort to stay away. But even if we had caught him, I dropped my phone at start of last lap so couldn’t use my boost regardless 😂

Huge congrats and thanks to @robbo1234biking for making this happen. I’ve loved every second (in one way or another), my fitness has improved at a time of year it would normally be sneaking off until Spring at least, the money has gone to a superb cause and it has all had a real community feel.

Today really did not suit me. But seeing as I was in no-mans land in the overall points competition and I had a win under my belt (after handicap) from last week, I figured I had nothing to lose. So I thought I’d try and chase another win (!). The main obstacle (there were many others, but the main one) was @tpbiker and his lightweight handicap. I’ve ridden with Tim enough to know I can’t drop him under any circumstances, yet I somehow had to put a minute into him. So I made a plan: go absolutely hell for leather right from the start, hope for some kind of very early split behind me, try and hang on with the riders up front if so, hope the gap eventually goes out to an undeserved minute. This seemed like a delightfully kamikaze plan when I made it. But it turned out to be idiocy (obviously) that I just wasn’t capable of delivering. I put my biggest ever minute in right from the start, shot off the front, nixie and phil soon came past (maybe i can stay with them, I thought, so far so good…) and then a whole blob of others came past too just as I cracked, at the very start of our first visit up the champs. I had literally nothing left, right at the start of the race, and had to watch the front group drift away up the road as I grovelled along. At least I tried.

The rest of the race I settled into group 2 (well, it was to start with, the group ahead splintered I see!) with @crazyharry, @garry_lager, @kirky72, @oblongbob and @dandasbike. We cooperated pretty well most of the time and held the group in front at about 45 secs (it went to nearly a minute and came back down). The start almost finished me. I really nearly gave up after 1 lap (“the route badge will do me”) and 20 minutes (“that’s a nice round number to stop on”) but eventually I recovered enough to feel like it was maybe manageable. I even had a moment of madness the penultimate time round l’etoile and tried to escape down the hill when I found myself initially unintentionally off the front, I even got a bit of a gap I think but @oblongbob brought me back. And I went again, this time all in but very predictably, the last time up the final ramp, but @oblongbob again paced back to me. After that, I was done. I can’t sprint when I’m fresh so I had no chance in that state.

Well done @kirky72 on a relentlessly assembled victory. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed sharing lots of those km with you. See you all in November. And in the meantime do all please contemplate joining us in the STW Team Time Trial Teams (yes, plural now!) each week – there’s a barrage of info here https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/zwift-team-time-trial-thursday/ and all are welcome. Lots of riders in common with this series, but they want to stay together rather than bury you.

thanks everyone, big thanks to Drp for helping me in two races, thanks for letting me tag on to the group on the way by tonight. really pleased and relieved that Andeh took the win and a couple of others slipped in between Andeh and Woody, already super close. great effort woody tonight hanging with the flying squad again, an extra race and you would have overhauled me for sure.

strange sprint finish again, I passed Savoyad, Fordo and dryesdale as they seemed to ease up or tire just ahead of the banner. However they all placed before me in the results, I’m pleased it did t effect the points to much and final standings.

the race type or handicaps do seem a bit harsh on the flying guys, I feel guilty or bad for them when I see the timed Nixie and Phil finish with relative to the points attained. I think along with hillier routes the big handicap breaker would be a longer race. 35/40m hilly race, as I found at the weekend It’s a struggle for me to hit 2.9w/kg for 1hr45 as opposed to 3.3 or 3.4w/kg around laps of London, volcano or Paris.

Definitely been getting seriously hard work over the late few races as my ftp increased and handicap decrease along with it to the point I’m on equal footing with the likes of Savoyad and Southside Jonny, you can see my points average as been depreciating. I’m thinking of using this as inspo to drop some weight. I’ve been 11 stone before, on my way down from 16.5 stone but wasn’t a very healthy shaped 11 stone. I’m happier now shape wise but could easily lose 7 or 8kg Over a few months and maybe more competitive on the climbs at 73kg.

thanks Again Robbo for sorting the league out and for nurturing this thread where everybody’s dropping some banter, tactics, race reports etc which as helped make it feel far more intimate and involving than standard Zwift races.

Also big respect to the guys who keep plugging away towards the tail end, we’ve all been there and hats off to very body for joining in and contributing towards a good event.

Now where the champagne, bugger that give us an hot chocolate and a protein bar.

@tpbiker not at all. I was banking on him being able to stay away as if you’d pulled him in quickly then I’d have been toast.

thanks Savoyad, the start of your races mirrors mine, I also over reached up the climb. I got up rapid enough but my legs just evaporated and I couldn’t sprint onto the small group that passed after arch. I was then stuck in no Mans land nervously hoping I could jump on with the next passing group before too much time elapsed.

@mrhoppy happy for you take on the organising of some Tuesday evening social rides over the next few weeks. Cheers!

I need to adjust the handicaps for the A’s and D’s. For the B’s and C’s it works OK as you tend to get some big groups form. I will analyse the data and see if there was a consistent percentage that the A’s were away from the B’s. It seemed to suit tpbiker who is an A because he has the same power as the Cs but weighs a lot less. Not so much for the bigger As with big power out the front.

That is something I will try to resolve!

Def at least 1 summit finish for the next series. TT is a good option but difficult to manage as you need everyone to turn up on a TT bike.

The handicap thing is interesting, as someone not bothering the front either way it has seemed to balance out and dispassionately it seems to have fairly consistently got everyone within a range of 5-6 minutes which is pretty good going. A tweak here and there might be appropriate but I’d not go too nuts on it.

On the TT, everyone should have a TT bike in their garage though so it’s just a reminder to people at the start. We can all go from the start for a fixed distance biggest question is are we doing club 10 or a 25?

A tweak here and there might be appropriate but I’d not go too nuts on it.

Oh yeh pretty happy with it for Bs and Cs. There just isn’t enough As to get a critical mass to really stretch that gap out so need to bring them closer to the B and C times. I think the same is true for the Ds as there is only a few of them so again getting a big group and getting the speed advantage isn’t happening.

Tempus Fugit is made for TT isn’t it?

I do feel for those “A” riders putting all that effort in for not much reward. But as you say it only needs a little tweek to get it closer and give them a chance of a win.

At least this first series has given a good indication of how to make it even better for the next, it was close Robbo, you did a good job with no prior information.

Summit finish…please no Ventoux or Alpe! Eek!

Well i don’t know about you fellas but i need a complete re-think on just about every aspect of my riding/training/racing for the next set in the series. To say i’ve been disappointing is a complete understatement. Apart from race 1 which went OK i’ve completely under achieved in my targets, goals, wants and wishes.
I think the biggest issue is that my training and racing are a lot shorter in general so i’m hitting 25-30 mins and that’s it, i’m done, out of there. So need to concentrate a lot more on longer and steadier efforts with possible thoughts of intervals within it to allow for kicks on hills.

Last nights race i was chatting mid race saying i was on the limit, i’m not sure the boys believed me, but i was up around 176bpm. I recovered back down to 163 from there, which is OK, but then back on the way up to the line i’ve got 173 on the HR and there’s not a lot left for the hill by then, so i can’t kick on again up the incline.. So how and what, i don’t really know yet, but i need to stay out of Crit City and into, well, something more like the racing we do together.

Second step is to drop some excess weight, but i’m not sure how realistic that is.

I’ll set something up for next Tuesday same time. I think I’ve got most STW people following me but if you don’t get an invite and want in shout.

Invite has gone out, if you’re not invited and want in then follow me, if you can’t find me then give me a shout on here.

The sprint sessions were good fun. Plus will provide the interval training Weeksy needs 😃 Everyone should try to get on Discord tho like with the TTT, makes for better bants!!

I’ve done a few sprintalozas I think they call them, good fun and everybody can just put in an effort as when it suits them. I’ll be up foR jumping on the occasional Tuesday but whilst there’s a break in between series I’m also going to ride Out as and when weather and opportunity allows.

@Weeksy, I know where you are coming from, as I was the same. All I can recommend is getting involved in the longer events and include the climbing, I can definitely see my improvements by doing this.
I like you would love to lose some lard to help on the hills, it’s hard to see people putting out less power and shooting off up the hill, especially on the Alpe, but it is what it is and up to me to get weight off if I can stay away from the bakery counter 😉

Join the Sunday hills when you can, put in hour efforts rather than the short sprints, but you know all this! For sure you have the power as I know you would floor me on a crit, it’s just sustaining it now for longer efforts, especially on the inclines.
It was good training for me to do the Zwift Academy at the weekend, the workout was hard and I wanted to quit at times (but glad I didn’t), the Sunday ZA group ride was basically a race at 3w/kg. I’m definitely out of my comfort zones on these and sometimes just hanging on but they seem to be helping me to improve. Perhaps try them yourself?

an awesome final race. Was nice to do something fairly flat to really test that endurance! Annoyingly I only managed 3 of the 6 races, but had a ball. And was well chuffed with 3rd in last nights race once the handicaps where added.

Also chuffed to finish 14th with only doing half the events.

I was in the same group as Robbo, oopnorth etc and really enjoyed the pace and digging deep to stick with it.

Good times had by all! Roll on the next series!

@mrhoppy – can I be added to next Tuesday please? Laurence Abbott IRC

I can’t make next Tuesday’s ride but look forward to joining in with other rides in the future. 👍

@movingslowly you should have an invite now.

Def at least 1 summit finish for the next series. TT is a good option but difficult to manage as you need everyone to turn up on a TT bike.

Easiest way to run a tt is for everyone to just enter one of the existing tt events that run as that means the timings will be easy. There will be others on the course but as it’s a tt it won’t influence the results. As has been pointed out everyone has a tt bike in the garage to use.

Summit finish would be ace. The obvious one is the alp however if we could run the same innsbruke loop we did last time, only put finish at top of the climb (not sure if that’s possible), that would perhaps lead to more exciting racing than a race up the alp, which would just be a 50 min tt/power to weight test (which would probably suit me tbf!)

Volcano after party of Leith hill after party are good hill top finishes. There is also one in France where 2 Laps would go up a medium climb 3 times with finish at the top.

There is also one in France where 2 Laps would go up a medium climb 3 times with finish at the top.

Roule ma poule. 2 laps is (too?) hard. 1 lap maybe not enough.

Two laps is a bit evil yes.

Shame we can’t do bologna, that would tick both boxes

Shame we can’t do bologna, that would tick both boxes

Seeing as we can’t I can say yes it’s a great shame safely in the knowledge that it can’t backfire and get scheduled.

The majority of the hill top finish events are race only though so aren’t available in meetup.

But I can cut short certain routes so we could do a race part way up the alpe and stop halfway up or something. Just need to adjust the distance and see where it would get you. So that opens up quite a few route options.

As long as I know where the finish is…last night that blue banner caught me out, I was expecting it to come after the lap banner..doh!

@mrhoppy

Can you throw my name into the hat please.

G iggsmaster

As long as I know where the finish is…last night that blue banner caught me out, I was expecting it to come after the lap banner..doh!

You need to keep an eye on the bar at top of screen that tells you how far you need to go!

You need to keep an eye on the bar at top of screen that tells you how far you need to go!

If you can, you need to pedal harder!

Shame we can’t do bologna

We could do it as a tt if we all entered one of the official events. I reckon a flat tt would be a better option personally, but I’d not complain about bologna, it’s given me my best tt results by far.

Given innsbruke is a loop can’t we just start and finish it at a different point…granted the first 6k would be downhill!

You need to keep an eye on the bar at top of screen that tells you how far you need to go!

Usually I do but last night I was concentrating on trying to keep with the group out of the tunnel and got sidetracked…hence missing the sprint.

So with luck you’re all recoveredid from Tuesday’s exertions and looking forward to filling your Tuesdays with beer and cake for a few weeks.

A huge thank you to everyone for taking part, I missed a couple but really enjoyed the ones I did and I’m genuinely disappointed not to have made the last two, though I can’t see they’d have made any odds to my points it would have been good to see it through and to race on my home turf in Harrogate.

Our find raiser has manged a bloody brilliant £400 for Cardiac Risk in the Young so a huge thank you to everyone who has not only chipped in but also anyone who, by presence in the races alone, has made it something worth using as an excuse to put hands in pockets.

Raise a glass to yourselves, one to Robbo and imbibe enough calories to make sure the last 6 weeks of hard work haven’t left you in calorie deficit.

Cheers all and thank you!

£400! Great effort. Take a bow Robbo. Couldn’t compete in all races but genuinely felt my Zwift subscription was worth it for this alone.

Just a quick update then folks :

£403 raised in all, after card fees £382.79.

Donation now made to Cardiac Risk in the Young for £383.00

Thank you all and well done!

Well done all! That’s a good haul