Week 6 Results: NCC Zwift Winter Road Race Series

By Jonathan O'Keeffe
Published 02/22/2021; Updated 09/04/2021

Nine NCC riders took to the streets of Paris to contest the venerable Champs-Élysées route, in which Zwift has done quite a nice job of reproducing the famous finish of the TdF. We only did two laps of the circuit (and didn’t precede it with three weeks of daily racing), but it was still a pretty intense effort. The little climb up the Champs toward the Arc looks like nothing when you watch it on TV, but you definitely feel it on every lap.

David and Michael raced in the C race, and David pretty quickly picked up a red flag for going over the C-category power limits. This is sort of like a soft DQ, letting you continue racing, but cutting your watts so you can’t blow up the race. Due to the reduced power, David ended up finishing at the back of the field, but he is definitely ready to upgrade to the Bs, and will be competitive there once he does so. Meanwhile, Michael sprinted for what felt like about fifteen minutes to grab a third-place spot on the podium, and takes the points win for the week.

The B race had Kevin, Henry, Zinj, Dusty, Charlie, Melissa, and myself. The usual suspects stayed together in the front group, while Charlie put in a good effort to stay in for about a lap before falling back into chase one, while feeding us a stream of updates about the relative sizes and time gaps of the lead and chase groups. In the featherweight division, Melissa quickly got dumped by the big raw watts in the front group, finishing near the back but with a very solid 3.7w/kg. She is licking her chops and waiting for a climby course where she can drop all these sprinters. Kevin took the points win in the B group with a great sprint and a 5th place finish.

Week six results:

  1. Michael Bello (C) – 3 of 25 – 92.0 points
  2. Kevin Weinman (B) – 5 of 29 – 86.2 points
  3. Jonathan O’Keeffe (B) – 6 of 29 – 82.8 points
  4. Henry van den Broek (B) – 8 of 29 – 75.9 points
  5. Zinj Guo (B) – 13 of 29 – 58.6 points
  6. Dusty King (B) – 14 of 29 – 55.2 points
  7. Charlie Bailey (B) – 20 of 29 – 34.5 points
  8. David Goodwin (C) – 24 of 25 – 8.0 points
  9. Melissa Warwick (B) – 28 of 29 – 7.6 points

Overall standings after week six:

  1. Jonathan O’Keeffe (6 races) – 513.8 points
  2. Dusty King (6 races) – 504.5 points
  3. Zinj Guo (6 races) – 503.9 points
  4. Michael Bello (6 races) – 496.5 points
  5. Melissa Warwick (6 races) – 360.4 points
  6. Charlie Bailey (5 races) – 349.4 points
  7. Henry van den Broek (4 races) – 332.0 points
  8. Kevin Weinman (3 races) – 268.9 points
  9. Henry Weis (1 race) – 123.0 points
  10. David Goodwin (3 races) – 100.3 points
  11. Joe Lellman (1 race) – 88.2 points