Yes I noticed Steve's finish - not a bad first race in C
Well I achieved my aim at least, so I've got that! My main thing about getting promoted to C was to try and improve myself. While I do like winning races, I'm not going to get much better by turning in 2.497 w/kg performances time and again, so my hope was that by being with better riders, it might make me faster/better/stronger - rather than just turn up, do the bare minimum and 90 days later be back in D again that I've seen happening to others.
Had to put down slightly more power than usual coming out the gates, but not too much more - but then when riding in D, quite often you've got a few Cs leading the group anyway, so that wasn't too much of a shock. What was more difficult was keeping that high tempo for the next 15 minutes! Usually I can get away with slacking back down to Zone 3 for a minute or so for recovery purposes, but here I was always at least Zone 4, with surges to Z5 every time I felt that I was drifting towards the back of the pack - wasn't going to let myself get dropped before the climb. Even had the lead for a few seconds at one point!
When the climb came, I gave it my all to stay in touch and was surprised at how well I did - thought I was going to be distanced immediately like on my ride at the weekend, but I did just about stay in touch and although the group was now strung out like a snake, it was still conceivable that I might be able to stay in the mix. However a gap started to grow about 3-4 places in front of me and that was where the split ended up - all those ahead of it did eventually get back in the main group; those of us behind it had to form our own mini groupetto and we went to the finish like that. Not much that could be done - the guy who got distanced was actually pulling away from me and two others, so it's not like we could have overtaken him and caught up to the rest; we only caught him on the downhill because we were a group of three. Also didn't help that at each banner I got 10XP - no power ups for the entire race!
The twisty bit towards the end was absolute hell for me - I was hanging on at the back of the group of four already, but when we hit that section, I started to lose the draft at every corner and was having to sprint to get back on, only to lose it again round the next bend, putting me further behind. Luckily the worst I fell behind was just 2 seconds and I managed to get back on before we hit the straight bit again. Gave it my all in the sprint and just pipped two of the guys on the line - the other had jumped early and stayed away.
Looked at the final results on ZwiftPower and considering I had been on the limit for large parts of the race, I was hopeful of seeing some really good power numbers. What did I get?
Two point four bloody nine seven again! ****!
Anyway, if you want to see me suffering holding on to the pack, only just getting dropped on the climb and a rather good sprint finish, then YouTube is your friend:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYTSN0Z8Y8Q
Cheers
