That's a Wrap .... to Series 1 (SweatFest 2020)
Tuesday marked the end to our Fall 2020 series on Zwift. A Tuesday night series composed of 10 events where your score was based of your top 8 results.
Here's my re-cap of the series results, experience in the last race and what's next.
Re-Cap of the Series
Here's the Top 5 in the Series, Congrats!!!
Men's A
Isaac Juracich
Mike Murdin
Thomas Horan
John Osguthorpe
Adam Abrams
Women's A
Jamie Linde
Jennifer Price
Men's B
Craig Martin
David Charles
Ben Pflaum
Matthew Dutton
Tim Schmitt
Women's B
Karine Valliant-Saunders
Claire Law
Colleen Grygier
Kele Murdin / Sarah Gorham (Tied)
Men's C
Andy Foltz
Justin Kong
Dean Harding
Jean Grenier
John McConnell
Women's C
Jadine Riley
C. Robinson
Lori Brault
Karen Loomis
Monica Wallace
Men's D
Glenn Gervais
Sylvain Normand
Matt Yackley
Steve Hickenlooper
Hugh Barrington
Women's D
Kelly Ingram
Diane Meyers
Molly Cava
Becky Quardros
Claire Hinman
A big shout out for everyone that slugged it out in the series. We had over 40 people that raced eight races or more and 1,549 entries in the series. Collectively, 12,543 points were awarded ... I wonder how many ounces of sweat must have been generated. We'll pass on measuring that one.
The last race was on the NY Perimeter Loop. For a course without a long climb it is always brutal. The pitch of the rollers is pretty steep and there are so many that it wears down the peloton all night. Maybe it's the constant rollers allowing for smaller racers to punish others on climbs and then bigger guys returning fire on the downhill sections making it hard? In any case, it was challenging again.
Coming out of the pen, the late race B's felt like they were going hard to me. It's always hard but this one seemed to not back off after the first 2 minutes. Once we got off the lead-in and onto the banner climb it felt like the pace got into a flow of punishing on climbs but easing off a tad on descents (i'm on the bigger side). We were shedding riders on lap 1 and onto lap 2 this is where the story zags.
I noticed my trainer was leaning to the left? I was trying to figure out whether it was the kickr arm not positioned right or the rear skewer coming loose. I was pretty sure it was the skew as I had ridden the bike on the road recently and this race had meant I was standing and going hard. I was in my garage without my phone but could text my wife from my mac to help remedy the situation. That meant opening messenger on my mac, minimizing zwift and texting her ....... i got off the message "helrp". She figured it out and tried her best to reset the rear skewer but it didn't work out. You can imagine how it went with me barely able to give instructions, try to stay in the pack and produce effort. I stopped, lost the pack and finished off the back.
But the story is, that's Zwifting. It's not all flowers, back slapping and talking about our achievements. It's often this data problem, wifi, bluetooth, bike part thing happened and then it sucked. It did highlight for me what racing on Zwift has been in 2020. A much needed outlet from the lack of socializing in person and enjoying the things i'll now cherish much more when they return. I look forward to seeing you all in person and will continue racing on discord and Zwift until then!
What's Next?
More racing on Zwift, Series 2 starts on Tuesday with the same format. If you won, consider upgrading and cheers to those that have already announced their intent to level up. Sure you will do great at the next level. We will keep this going until racing outdoors begins and often change the structure to keep it fresh. Hope you can make the next series and did you know we still have our Thursday time slot (Fell Swoop Speed Series).
I'm going to work in the Rapha Festive 500 effort into my holiday down time. I hope you all get a chance to get a well deserved break!