Past performances by trainer1/28/2024 ![]() ![]() Thanks to indoor training, I have done more winter miles than I have ever done in my life. When I think about my main takeaways from a winter on Zwift, it’s the data that stands out to me. I am, factually, a more powerful rider, and I feel it, too. In just a month of training, my FTP has gone from 252 watts to 265, my watts per kilogram rising from 3.2 to 3.5. I did not win, my name will not appear in the magazine, but I feel I’ve made enormous progress, and a sense of pride absorbs me. I finished a valiant 29th out of 71 (it didn’t actually say valiant, I added that bit). When I look back up, the race results are on my screen. I bow my head and gasp, loudly, for something to breathe in the stuffy air of my bedroom. Then comes the sweet release of the finish line. Bet they wish they shaved their legs now, I cackle. ![]() I whirr past the rider in front with just a handful of pedal turns to go. My legs are screaming, and as my heart tries to pound through my ribcage, I manage to lay down over 400 watts. With the finish line in sight, there’s one final doomed soul I’m determined to tag. I smile as my avatar brushes past theirs. I set my sights on them, crank up my pace, and work my way around them. This is where I find out if I’ve timed my effort well or burned the candle down with a blowtorch. I swig my water, go back to the bottle for seconds, and pedal as hard as I can. I thought it would be funny when I picked the songs. I turn my fan up a notch, and try desperately to hang onto my high cadence.Īs I get to the halfway mark, and the water tunnels appear, my playlist deals me an ironic blow with Linkin Park’s ‘Faint’. My power data teeters between 260 and 300 watts. I stare blankly at the numbers on my screen. If I can tag a handful of riders and make the top 30, I’ll count that as a win. As things are playing out, I find myself around the middle of the field. There goes my big victory, I think to myself, the one I said in my last article I was “ guaranteed” to taste. Right from the gun, around 20 of the 70-odd riders competing blasted up the road, never to be seen again. The Cycling Weekly time trial is a mass start event, allowing you to pick people off as you shift around the course. I bring my cadence up, kick over 350 watts and take a deep breath.Īs I watch the screen ahead of me, almost immediately, I realise I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I chose this song as my opener to remind me to hurt, to harness the pain. “I push my fingers into my eyes,” sings Corey Taylor. As the flag drops, the song switches to Slipknot’s ‘Duality’. A raft more then tune in with seconds to go. More and more people join, their avatars bobbing by the start line. I flick on my playlist, and with five minutes to go, Fatboy Slim’s ‘Right Here, Right Now’ quickly dials my heart rate into race pace. When I log into my race the next day, I’m too nervous to think about the fact I’m getting sick. Remco Evenepoel won the time trial at the Giro d’Italia with Covid, I remember. I try to sleep it off, but at 2am, I’m sitting upright with my face over a boiling mug of Lemsip. The night before, as I slip into bed with my newly shaved legs, disaster starts to brew. Then, in the second half of my race, there would be a series of underwater tunnels, something that seldom features in the great British time trial scene. For each of my last few training rides, I transported myself to Tick Tock and memorised all the key elements of the landscape: the waterfall, the giant green dinosaur, the remote highway town that reminds me of Radiator Springs from the Disney film Cars. On Armstrong’s advice, I spent days doing recons of the course, as I would do for an outdoor event. Less than a month ago, I could barely do that in a sprint. Winners on that course tend to average around 400 watts. For my race week, the course for the time trial was ‘Tick Tock’, one of the flattest on Zwift. There is of course little (see: absolutely no) benefit to shaving your legs for a Zwift race, I am aware of that, but suddenly I felt as slippery as Filippo Ganna, and maybe that would help me channel some of his power. It’s a mental thing, really, a way to trick myself into thinking I’m a high-calibre racer. And that is why, like an aspiring accountant putting on a tie for a phone call, I decided to shave my legs. ![]()
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