Week Three of our winter Zwift race season brought us to France for this week’s installment of the Tour de Zwift. We opted for the B category this week, avoiding the A route up Mont Ventoux, and were instead treated to a fast lap of the “Douce France” course around the flatter part of the circuit.
With 300+ starters and double-draft mode enabled, the pace was fast from the start, but the whole NCC group managed to hang with the lead pack of about four dozen through the first half of the course. The Aqueduc climb at the midpoint is fairly benign, but it managed to do some damage, and trimmed the lead group to about 30. The pace dropped a bit as we got closer to the finish, and with about two miles left, Dusty and I were getting bored, so we took a flyer off the front, with him pulling most of the way, and me clinging to his wheel. We managed to stretch a gap out to about four seconds, but that’s not nearly enough to hold off a hard-charging group, and we were easily caught with more than a mile still to go. From there it was just a big-pack sprint finish, with four of us managing to secure places in the top 15. Melissa and Tim were right behind in the first chase group, and by virtue of category & gender bonus points, both ended up atop this week’s results — great work!
Week Three Results:
- Melissa Warwick (B) – 30 of 212 – 117.8 points
- Tim Downey (C) – 27 of 212 – 114.1 points
- Jonathan O’Keeffe (B) – 8 of 212 – 101.5 points
- Zinj Guo (B) – 10 of 212 – 100.5 points
- Dusty King (B) – 14 of 212 – 98.6 points
- Henry van den Broek (B) – 17 of 212 – 97.1 points
Season Standings after Week Three:
- Tim Downey (3 races) – 300.4 points
- Zinj Guo (3 races) – 282.6 points
- Dusty King (3 races) – 281.1 points
- Melissa Warwick (3 races) – 280.6 points
- Jonathan O’Keeffe (3 races) – 273.1 points
- Henry van den Broek (3 races) – 262.1 points
- Chris Stratton (2 races) – 140.6 points
- Charlie Bailey (1 race) – 74.4 points
