Zwift Racing League, Round 3 Race 3/6 Scratch Race

Hi all, last tuesday it was the 3rd race of part 3 in the Zwift World Racing league. This race was a scratch race, so only final position defined your points, 1st place giving 60 pts and 2nd 59 pts and so on, with bonus for top 5 finishers 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 pts f

[DBR]Hailstorm was ready in the start pens with 6 riders as usually. This week the route was in WAtopia and the route was Road to Ruins Reverse, this time around a bit more elevation than the last 2 rounds, The reoute is 29,6 km long with 276m elevation, the tricky part about it is that quite some part of the route is on gravel.

The route:
Road to Ruins reverse is flat going out of the pens for the first 5 km, then there is a short 500m long climb avg. 2,4% incline and again flat-ish until at the 9 km mark, there things get a bit more interesting, there are climbs split in 3 with the toughest one Epic KOM up to the bridge, a 700m long climb averaging 7,9% incline, followed by the bridge that is 400m and 3,0% incline and ending on Windmill Hill for 1 km with 2,2% avg. incline. These 3 spots are sure to be where there will be some attachs trying to split the front. After the clibm it is flat on gravel until you reach the Jungle climb, around 3,3 km long and 2,2% climb to get you ready for the Reverse Epic KOM climb, at 21,3 km mark, which is partially on Gravel and 1,4 km long with 3,1% incline, the last real opportunity to make an attack to break away from the group as the rest is flat to the finishline except for a short kicker out of the tunnel, thats only 200m long and difficult to breakaway there.

The Race:
We were ready on the starting line where it was as always a hard start leaving the pens going around 400-500w just to keep up with the front, I was not feeling all that comfortable with this route as it is not the best type for me on gravel and with the climbs.
And as i feared, I lost the front group on the Epic KOM nad could not sit in the front group over the 3 climbs there, after we came up there i sat in a grup of 6 riders in 18th to 22nd place, rest of the race it was not much that happened.

I was about 35-40 seconds behind the front and around a minute ahead of the following group, as we hit the jungle climb I was struggling to keep up with the heartrate at around 187 bpm just hangin on for dear life to keep up with the group i was in, almost lost them on the last kicker a couple of km before the finishline, but using the last i had i came up to them again, but did not have the energy to go in an offensive final sprint and came in on 21st place of the 60 riders.

After the first 2 races [DBR]Hailstorm was sharing 1st place in the league with Team CLS and followed closely by Rapha, SRT and Team Velos. We did score quite ok in this race but were beaten by Team CLS by 17 points, so not that far off, Team England Revenge came in 3rd place 61 pts behind, witht Rapha in 4th and SRT and Team Velos after them.
I was not totally pleased with my effort in this race, i should have been able to do better but, on the day the energy was not there for anything more than avg. 2.1 w/kg

So halfway into the 3rd and last preliminary race series before the finals we are in 2nd place, one point behind Team CLS and with 3 point lead to Rapha in 3rd place.

Next time around it is again TT Race and usually we do pretty good in those so looking forward to that one. Until then, Ride on!

If you are considering joining the WTRL but don’t know where to look for a team to join, feel free to reach out and I will gladly help out.

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