Minuteman Road Club

3/4 race
The battle for the VT cup was on straight from the gun. GLV had a really strong team and B2C2 & Butcherbox had the numbers too. Lots of attacks, I worked to follow anything from the other leaders in the series. Nothing was sticking though. Then a few guys countered a move I was in and nobody chased since it didn't have any of the leaders in it. Rees bridged up so MRC went back into blocking mode. They got a solid gap pretty quickly. Then the attacks started again. Any bit of intensity made my legs want to stiffen up and stop pedaling.

Skipping a bit ahead (because I can't remember) I got into a break with Jason Tinkov, Matt Shaffer (GLV), Nick Huber (GLV), and Travis Wold (leader in the series). We started working well together and Travis got dropped after he pulled and I took an extra hard pull right after. So it was 2 MRC and GLV with our fellow MRCers blocking for us. Laps ticked by and my legs hurt some more. Shaffer is probably the strongest cat 3 in the area and Huber is a really good sprinter so my plan was to not let both of them beat us. With 1 lap to go they traded off attacks while I chased. So I finished 5th with Rees coming in 2nd and Jason in 7th. Little did we know that the guy who won then took the leaders jersey.

P123
I spent half the race tailgunning for dear life while Tom and a billion ccb kids formed a break. 2 guys broke off from the break and lapped the field. When they broke away from the field again, I left my sanctuary at the back to chase them down hoping Tom's break would also lap the field and be able to duke it out with those two while the rest of us mortals watched and complained about how hard this felt.

Patrick spent probably an hour following every move that looked threatening and slowing down all chase attempts. With 20-30 minutes left I could tell the field was near shattering (at least I assumed that because I was hurting a lot so I figured everyone else was too). So I moved up and started following a ccap guy who seemed to have unlimited watts as he was counter attacking his own attacks.

He got a gap and I was on the front with Patrick on my wheel so I took a deep breathe then sprinted up. When Patrick pulled through soon after I knew the field was gone and this would stick. There were 4 of us and then a NE Devo kid bridged up. He skipped so many pulls that when he finally finished his first turn at the front I pulled through with the intent to make it so he couldn't catch back on. He yelled at me to not pull so hard but that was the last we saw of him.

The break mates nicely didn't make me lead them all out and I jumped right before the last corner but they caught me at the line. So I think I was 11th. Tom got 4!! I'm sure my moral support made the difference in his performance but he was in the break the whole race so I don't know what shenanigans he was up to.

Today was the first time Katie and I got out of the house together since we were hit by #crattyflu. I've ridden outside 7 times since California, and the last corner I took at any kind of speed was coming down the Alpe du Zwift. So, I thought I'd sit in for a while and remember how to go hard, not ride through people and deal with wind.

Master's 40+

There was only 20 of us for the 40+ race and I found myself on the line at the start. Pare took off at the gun (or at least had the best clip in from the group) so I jumped on his wheel and kept rolling when he sat up. I went through the first couple corners waiting for everyone for yelling at me for taking "zwift lines" but didn't hear a peep. Then I looked back and saw I had a gap. A couple other guys came across so I started working with them. We turned into the wind and were caught, and Pare took off with the counter attack, got a bunch of people to go with him, and that was that.

John and jumped on the various bridge attempts, but eventually one got away without us and made it a 8 man break. Then after a conversation with the Scorpion boys where we realized we were both had people in the break we settled in to a nice tempo on the front controlling things until Pare's group lapped the field. At this point I told the Pirate we should probably get off the front. There was a lot of arguing going on about if we were supposed to work with the lappers or just let them go. I was thinking I should probably save my legs for Robbie in the 3/4 race and settled in until the final laps, but then Pare called us back to the front. He wanted John to go at 2 laps, then me to counter, but it didn't work out quite right, they didn't let John go, so Pare told me to go with the "big one, its coming" or something like that. Before we turned into the wind to get the bell a bunch of cyclonaughts went up the left side it what looked like a lead out. Pare yelled for me to go so I took off up the right side, but then rode right past their leadout train. I just kept going, doing 3/4 of a lap at 28mph before getting passed before the turn into the wind.

3/4
Robbie described pretty well how Rees's break formed except for the fact that the pack freaked out yelling "is that Tucker?" when Rees took off up the left side in his bridge.

I jumped in a bunch of counter attacks that went nowhere, missed one of them with an Aetna and Wheelworks guy and had to chase to bring it back. Recovered a bit after that one and fought my way back up to Robbie, when another counter went, this time with the series leader. I yelled "Go Robbie!" but he was already on it and they got about 10 seconds. The bright yellow leaders jersey was like a beacon though and the pack was strung out trying to bring them back. We made contact with Robbie's group, but things were still strung out. It was Robbie, 3 other guys (include series leader) and Jason, then me. Some quick math told me that letting a counter attack go with 2 out of 5 guys from MRC would make sense, so I just let a gap open to Jason and away they went. Funny how reluctant people are to come around you when you are "pulling" into the wind.

A couple laps later the gap was down to 6 seconds so I got to the front as we turned into the wind and watched the gap open up again. Then, Robbie, worked over the poor "former series leader" and the chase group was down to 4.

At one point there was a butcher box guy on the front. People were yelling at him to get off. I thought he was doing a great job blocking and rode up next to him and double pacelined for a while to make sure things stayed slow. Later I realized he wasn't blocking, he was just that slow. They had like 20 guys in the field but somehow missed both breaks. B2C2 missed the breaks as well, but never really chased just started half hearted counter attacks every once in a while.

Going into the finish I told John that if we could finish ahead of the guy in the bright yellow jersey it would help Robbie. We agreed this was good in theory, so John cranked it up and forgot actually turn his bike into the finishing straight and went right off into the grass. I stood up to sprint, but my legs said "no" and I finished in obscurity.

Apparently the guy who won is a zwift phenom. Rees said he wasn't pulling much in the break even though his FTP is 385.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/profile.php?z=15522

rraymond wrote: ↑Mon Apr 09, 2018 4:38 pm Apparently the guy who won is a zwift phenom. Rees said he wasn't pulling much in the break even though his FTP is 385.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/profile.php?z=15522

Whoa... ranked 8th

...and he’s a mildly successful cat 3. That is weird - is he allergic to wind?

He was on a dumb trainer Sunday

Mkidd3 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 09, 2018 4:50 pm

rraymond wrote: ↑Mon Apr 09, 2018 4:38 pm Apparently the guy who won is a zwift phenom. Rees said he wasn't pulling much in the break even though his FTP is 385.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/profile.php?z=15522

Whoa... ranked 8th

I just googled the guy in 17th, and he's a 40yr old cat 4. So either zwiftpower rankings don't represent a deep pool of real-world talent, or these dudes are terrible at going round corners.

Nice racing & write-ups guys!

Isn’t it obvious. Nothing on Zwift can be trusted