I had a nice easy indoor Zwift ride planned for the day after my mountain biking escapades, you know the sort of thing – an easy hour or so just to shake the previous days efforts out of the legs. No record-setting planned, or PB chasing on the climbs, just a nice easy bimble round the virtual world of Watopia.

Ten minutes later I’m lining up on the start line of the first race I’ve entered for by my reckoning a whooping 29 years, how the hell did that happen? As usual boredom and technology had been my downfall. Spinning along at an easy pace had allowed me both the time and spare physical and mental capacity to devote some neurones to exploring some of the hitherto uncharted areas of the Zwift Companion App on my phone. First I experimented with waving at other riders, I gave out a few ‘Ride On!’ shouts for the first time and even got one back.  Then I played with some of the different camera angles available and marvelled at how good the virtual me looked on the bike compared to the real thing. After that I hit the ‘Events’  button and was presented with a bewildering list of organised rides and races that were about to start in the not to distant future.

Intrigue duly piqued I scrolled up and down the list of events and clicked on a few to pursue the descriptions. A quick read up on a few of these events revealed that most Zwift races are divided into categories broadly similar to the ones I remembered from my dim and very distant competitive past, but instead of the old 1st Cat down to 4th Cat these races were split into 4 categories from A to D with each category having a Watts per Kilo band to split the riders according to ability. It was up to the individual entering to determine the category they best fitted into which seemed at first a tiny bit trusting and naive to me, but more on that later perhaps, anyway it would be an easy choice for me with my meagre power figures. My pathetic FTP would put me firmly in the lowest Cat D section of whatever race I entered.

Did I really want to give this weird slightly arcane looking world a try though? well some of the races were clearly out of my league even at Cat D level, the distances alone would probably defeat me and besides I only had an hour or so before the family came home and wondered why I was in some real life video game that was making me go a funny colour and bring my lunch back up. There was one event that caught my eye however, a shortish 20 mile two lap handicap race around a relatively flat looking course in the Zwift facsimile of London. Now handicap races were a concept I was familiar with from my youth when as a Junior Cat racer we used to set off first with the lowest ranked (4th Cat) seniors and see how long we could hold the fast guys off before we were inevitably caught usually within agonising sight of the finish line.

This race followed a similar pattern with the Cat D riders setting off first then each succeeding Category starting at 2 minute intervals, and enticingly there weren’t a lot of riders entered so if I was hopelessly outclassed nobody would really notice, and I figured if it went really badly I could just pull the plug out of the trainer and claim I’d lost the connection at the vital moment just as I was about to make the decisive move of the race.

So press the ‘Enter’ button I did and virtual me was whisked away from where I’d been ambling along to reappear behind an electronic start line which looked disturbing like a Star Trek type force field stretched across the road. To the left and right of me were my fellow racers with each different Cat of riders helpfully wearing a different riding kit so we knew who our direct competitors were, amusingly the Cat D riders were resplendent in a copy of the old Z Peugeot Jersey from the 1990’s which had graced the shoulders of Greg LeMond when as a gawky teenager I’d cheered him on as he won his third Tour de France title. Was this an omen for success? well I was about to find out as the clock ticking down above the start line showed under 60 seconds to go.

It turns out that the start of  Zwift race is very much like the start of the real thing, everyone sets of far too fast and jockeys for position in the first half mile or so. The only real difference is that the cacophony of sound that is a massed start of riders all trying their best to clip in first time is missing, along with the curses of those that have missed the pedal but hit their shins…… It’s not my intention to give a blow-by-blow account of the race as 1/ that would be quite boring, and 2/ it was several weeks ago now and I’ve got the memory of a Goldfish. I will try to give some impressions and snapshots of how I found the whole thing however.

Firstly, after the mass sprint fest away from the line and about 5 miles into the first lap I found myself in a front group of about 10 other Cat D riders and we all settled down to work together to try to stay away from the fast people behind us. It really did take me back to the real world races I remembered a s a junior. Out of the 10 or so riders there were perhaps 6 of us working doing proper ‘through and off’ stints at the front of the group to try and stay away while the obligatory wheel suckers stayed with us but never did a turn. This was my first real-time riding in an organised group of Zwift and you really can feel the effort change when you’ve been on the front then drop back off into the wheels again. Apart from the fact that the avatars on the screen tend to wander around a bit and it’s still disconcerting when you appear to almost ride straight through another rider in the group it really surprisingly realistic, you can even give a little elbow flick when you want the next person to take a turn which is a nice touch. Shame there’s no option for throwing a bidon but you can’t have everything I suppose.

Halfway round the second lap our little group was down to six riders and I could feel the group dynamic change as people started to think they could be on for a result as we still hadn’t been caught by the higher Cat riders. The turns on the front were getting longer and it was getting more difficult to get a couple of riders to take a turn as the old classic conundrum of tactics or work to stay away started to kick in. Then a couple of riders bolted off the front as we hit a small climb. As usual yours truly was just off the back of the group when it happened and before I realised they’d gone they were several virtual hundred meters down the road. Then just like in real life there was the agonising moments when the rest of us all waited for somebody else to chase. Nothing happened and I could see the two riders dots on my little map still marching away from us so I took in pursuit and one other rider came with me.

I really was ‘on the rivet’ now as we used to say back in the day. Max effort, heart rate horribly high not looking at the screen or at anything else than the sweat dripping onto my top tube I agonisingly closed the gap up over the next couple of miles or so. My companion seemed quite happy for me to tow him back into contention as he sat just behind me for the whole drag back to the front pair. We caught them with 5 miles to the finish showing on my screen.

My poor old heart rate had been bouncing around my limit for a while now so as soon as the four of us were back together I sat firmly at the back and just tried to hang on. Then fatally I started to think, ‘hey this isn’t bad for a first race – might be on for a result here……’ My brief moment of hubris was soon dealt a devastating blow. As we rode through one of the London underpasses I was both caught slightly off the back and in the wrong gear as the incline suddenly ramped up briefly and in a flash I was a few meters off the back of the group, just like in real life I’d made the cardinal sin of losing the wheel at a crucial moment. It was so crucial because it was at this precise juncture that we were caught by a mixed group of about 8 Cat A & B riders and these boys were really shifting. If Zwift had virtual turbulence I’d have been blown off my turbo trainer by the wake vortex as those riders came past.

That totally blew our little group of Cat D hopefuls apart. Two riders managed to latch on to the faster guys as they shot past but the other pair of us were left woefully behind. With only 2 miles to go now my fellow sufferer and I tried to regroup and make a last push for the finish but my legs were like jelly by this point. Tantalisingly just up the road I could see that one of the other riders in my category had been dropped by the fast bunch and slowly we were reeling them in so there was still potentially a second place in Cat D to squabble over, but I just had nothing left to give. As the finish line on the Zwift version of the London Mall hove into view I tried to launch some sort of sprint but got my backside comprehensively spanked by my riding companion.

The post finish arena is were Zwift is least like real life. Unlike a real amateur race on Zwift after the results have popped up on your screen your just left riding along in whichever Zwift world the race was in like nothing had happened. No little village hall to sit outside glassy-eyed waiting for your quads to uncramp, no rock hard plate of flapjacks being passed around and no queue of horribly dehydrated cyclists awaiting for a weak cup of tea from a scabby old urn, so that was a little disappointing.

So what if any conclusions can I draw from my first competitive foray for many years? Well firstly age has not withered my zen like ability to make naive tactical mistakes when racing……. secondly, as ever I need to be fitter, and lastly it was a surprising amount of fun and really rather realistic. It certainly seemed to hurt as much as the real thing. Will I try another one? Yes definitely, but not for a while !