What do two Americans, two Brits, one Italian and one German have in common? well there may certainly be other random things that link this particular demographic, but last week we were all locked in a no holds bared struggle over the mid pack placing’s in a Cat C Zwift race the results of which I’m pretty sure will never come to the notice of the wider cycling world, but for that particular hour on a Wednesday afternoon became a life of death battle over 28th place out of 56 competitors.

One of the nice things about Zwift racing is that after the race has finished and you’ve mopped up the puddles of sweat and other bodily fluids from your floor you can look at the results on the App and do a bit of light stalking of your erstwhile competitors just to get a bit more of a handle of who you’ve been locked in a life and death battle with over the last hour or so, and in this case adding a bit of context to these characters is going to help flesh out the wider story I’m trying my best to get over…….

So the principal players in this little melodrama are: (all details have been taken from their Zwift profiles with a slight tweak to the names for privacy purposes on the million to one chance that any of them read this and get upset 😠 ) 1/ Bert Farris , Nationality – American, Age – 62, Total Zwift Distance ridden – 15,467km. 2/ Emily Adamson, Nationality – American, Age – 42, Total Zwift Distance Ridden – 11,419km 3/ Dave the Grampa, Nationality – British, Age – 59, Total Zwift Distance Ridden – 8,955km 4/ Lorenzo Beri, Nationality – Italian, Age – 57, Total Zwift Distance Ridden – 14,368km 5/ Andreas Schneider, Nationality – German, Age – 52, Total Zwift Distance Ridden – 2,838km 6/ Me (T.DecliningCyclist on Zwift), Nationality – British, Age – 52, Total Zwift Distance Ridden – 6,156km

This is what I like about racing on Zwift and what keeps me coming back for more doses of really quite a lot of pain semi regularly, there are always people of similar ability to race with, you just have to find them – and in this particular race these 5 disparate people out of the 56 competitors in Cat C for this race are who the world through my iPad narrowed down around. My tactics for Zwift racing are pretty simple, I’ll try and hang with the front group for as long as I can, then after inevitably getting shelled out of the back I’ll wait for a second group to form and try and stick with them for as long as I can till I get dropped again, then try and stick with the next group etc. What almost always happens is eventually I find myself with a small group of riders with whom I can keep up and then I’ve found my race within the race – the battle for glory at the front is nothing to do with us, but the struggle for the honour for who out of the 5 or so of us is going to be first across that line is fully joined. Well that’s how I usually feel about it, but I’m pretty sure that’s how 99% of Zwift racers feel judging by how hard people will scrap over 28th place.

So, by the time we’re about 10km into this particular 26km long race our little group had formed, the front group of riders had disappeared up the road on the first small climb, most of them putting out power figures which meant they really should be in a different category, and a big second group had formed about 30 seconds or so behind them. I’d managed to stick with this group for awhile, but as the pace ratcheted up a notch on the second climb of the course I’d slowly lost touch with the group alongside four other riders, with another group about 20 seconds behind us the gaps stabilised and at this point I knew I’d found my people. These were the riders I was racing for our mini win this afternoon.

For the next few kilometres the five of us, Andreas, Emily , Bert, Lorenzo and Myself had formed a tight little nucleus driving along at a pace which was keeping the gap to those behind us consistent and was even starting to reel in the group ahead of us. For a long time just up the road I could see the avatar of a single rider who had found themselves isolated and stuck in the hinterland in-between the groups on the road. Now I’ve been in that position and it’s not a great place to be. Riding on your own in Zwift just like in the real world takes appreciably more effort without the effects of other riders to draft and there’s nothing worse than being dropped by one group and then struggling on your own to stay ahead of the next riders all the while watching the gap remorselessly closing on the placings graphic on the righthand side of the screen. I could almost feel this riders pain as we slowly reeled them in and soon enough 5 became 6 as Dave joined the party.

Then the road kicked upwards into a steady but not to steep climb and slowly the elastic which held our little band together started to stretch, gaps started to open and my legs didn’t feel like they had an awful lot left. I’d never ridden this ‘Mayan 8’ route before so I was’t familiar with the climb but from the course graphic at the top right of the screen it looked like this was the last climb before a steep descent and the run into the finish, we were climbing at about a 5% gradient which looked like it got steeper towards the top which was at least a couple of Km away. Lorenzo, Andreas and Dave had slowly fallen off the back of the group and I was struggling to hang onto Emily and Bert who working together had pulled out a couple of seconds on me as the climb started to kick up into its steepest section.

Just as my quads were really starting to scream in protest another rider blasted straight through our group as if we were standing still. No idea where he came from or how far behind us he’d been at the start of the climb but Mr M.Arcapolo from Argentina obviously loves to climb hills as after carving through our group he promptly disappeared up the road, I knew as soon as he’d passed me that I didn’t have a hope in hell of staying with him so I didn’t even try, but Emily kicked away from Bert and I in an effort to hold his wheel and started to ride away from us. As for me I locked onto Bert’s wheel and shamelessly let him drag me up the last Km or so of the climb. At the top our Argentine friend was long gone and as Bert and I crested the hill Emily was about 10 seconds ahead of us.

Now its rude to speculate about a Ladies weight, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Emily was giving away a good 10kgs or more to my middle aged man’s critical mass and in Zwift just like in life weight counts for a lot when going up and down hills. Emily’s probable lighter weight had helped her distance my beer belly on the way up but now the road was pointing down the tables had most definitely been turned, with a few hard cranks to get the speed up I sat up on my trainer, mopped my face, took a long leisurely drink from my bottle and had a good stretch while my on screen avatar took up a super tuck position and dropped down the descent like a stone. Poor Emilys avatar still pedalling like a rider possessed had been caught and passed before we were half way down the arrow straight descent, which must have been pretty demoralising.

Come the road levelling out with I think 3Km or so to the finish I had pulled out 10 or so seconds to Bert with Emily another 15 seconds back. Now it was just a matter of getting my head down and holding on to the finish, with full on TT mode engaged the distance to go ribbon at the top of the screen became the most important metric in my increasingly narrowing view as promising my legs it would all be over soon became my repeated mantra, luckily now our little group had splintered and we were all on our own closing the individual gaps had become equally hard for all of us and so that’s how we finished, a stunning 28th place finish for me followed by Bert, Emily, Dave, Lorenzo and Andreas in that order. I finished in 47:24 with Andreas coming in at 48:14 so the group was pretty close at the finish. First place in Cat C finished in 42:53 so our little band of riders was never going to threaten the podium.

So if you haven’t tried racing on Zwift give it a go – it’s fun, strangely addictive and I guarantee competition will see you riding faster and harder than you can normally manage. There’s always people to race with however fast or slow you are and the natural selection in every category nearly always ensures you end up having a really good contest with people you’ll probably never meet or even compete with again but somehow you’re closely matched in riding ability.

Hope I’ll see you on the virtual start line soon!