Ride Reports and News

Tonight's TTT took us to Richmond for two laps of the 2015 UCI Worlds course, a strange combination of a flat first half and three punchy hills on the back half of each lap. Our core team of Carson, Melissa, Shawn, and I lined up at the start line. The plan we sketched out was basically to take equal sixty-second pulls at 3.6 w/kg on the flat portion, and then just kind of wing it on the hills, trying to keep the group together as best we could.

We more or less stuck to this plan through the first lap, staying together pretty well. On the second lap the hills started to take their toll, and Carson came through with some long pulls to give us a bit of relief. I let my attention wander for a minute at one point and came dangerously close to getting gapped off the back, needing to burn a couple matches to get back to the group. By the time we got to the final climb up to the finish line, Shawn was dangling a few seconds off the back, but Carson, Melissa, and I crossed the line together with a time of 50:34, putting us in our accustomed position near the bottom of the Frappe division at 85/107. This was actually a slightly better placement than last week, though, so I guess we're moving up in the world.

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday January 22 at 6:20 PM Eastern. The race is two laps of the UCI Worlds course in Richmond, for about 20 miles total. The course has three significant climbs per lap, so there is a lot of up-and-down. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/U2lPcWU2UmdDTWJUdUI2M1JDY1N5Zmo4Q1BBQ0s5TUUrUGRVM0RDb24rQT0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL. (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/) Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here. (https://is.gd/nccdiscord)

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

Tonight's Zwift team time trial took us to Watopia for three laps of the Hilly KOM route. Medical issues knocked out some of our core team this week, so we were left with a skeleton crew of Carson, Melissa, Shawn and me going up against some big strong teams in the Frappe division.

The course features three climbs (and descents) of the old-school classic KOM, making it hard to get a good team rhythm going. I was sort of improvising the pull schedule on the fly, to try to keep us together on the climbs, and protect the lightweights on the descents. My instructions got a little jumbled by the second lap when oxygen deprivation started to set in, but the team figured it out and made it work. Melissa and Shawn stepped up with some long pulls in the second and third laps, and Carson was always ready to do whatever was asked of him.

Our finishing time of 41:39 was solid, but now that we've been upgraded to a higher division, competing against teams composed of A and B riders, our position in the rankings is not quite as lofty as it had been in previous weeks (88th out of 108 teams as of this writing). Everyone seemed pretty knackered by the end, though, so I feel good about our effort -- nice work, folks! Come and join us next week to get in on the fun!

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday January 22 at 6:20 PM Eastern. The race is three laps of the Hilly Route course in Watopia, for about 17 miles total. This is three laps of the original Watopia "Hilly Route", with a short but significant climb each lap. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/ZmxTdldPaUdlU3VZNFNhUmNxSlBYaVhwZTRVR1hoQVdLREJ5WS93WnAvVT0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL. (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/) Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here. (https://is.gd/nccdiscord)

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

Tonight's Zwift team time trial took us to the Makuri Islands for two laps of the Suki's Playground route. This course is mostly flat, except for where it isn't -- two non-trivial climbs each lap, one of which has a steep extra kicker at the top of it.

We brought a large-ish team of six riders to the line tonight -- Carson, Dusty, Lauren, Melissa, Shawn, and me. It felt great to have the extra riders in the group, with plenty of time to recover between pulls. However, we weren't quite firing on all cylinders, as Dusty was hampered by back problems, and Shawn was fighting off a cold. The team worked well together, though, and we were able to hold a tight formation and keep the group together all the way through to the beginning of the final climb. We started off at 3.6 W/kg and pretty much stayed there the whole ride. Shawn started to fall off at one point, but then rallied to close down a four-second gap, and hung on the rest of the way to the finish.

We rolled into the finish with a very respectable time of 55:40. We would have finished around the top 20% of our usual category, but unfortunately our competitive landscape has been scrambled by the fact that Carson's big power numbers have finally earned him the "Category A" designation that he probably should have had all along. This forced an upgrade from our usual "Latte" category to the much-more-competitive "Frappe" division, where everyone is super-fast, and teams can have up to three Category A riders. Little fish in a big pond, as Melissa put it. We ended up near the bottom of this division, in 108th place out of 115 teams, but that's fine -- we still rode a strong race and had a blast. And now that we're in a higher category, we can recruit more A riders, so if you're a strong Zwift rider (or even if you're not), come and join us!

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday January 15 at 6:25 PM Eastern. The race is two laps of the Suki's Playground course in Makuri Islands, for about 23 miles total. This is a long, flattish course, with four moderate climbs. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/Y1REVzRvUGtTTWFmcUhXRUEwZmpmQjAzMklPdmZ1WmF5S3hZNmVOSTVvZz0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/). Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here (https://is.gd/nccdiscord).

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

After taking a couple weeks off over the holidays, the NCC team was back in action tonight for the first Thursday night Team Time Trial of the new year. Carson, Dusty, Melissa, Shawn and I lined up to tackle the Triple Flat Loops course in Watopia, which delivered what it said on the tin -- three loops that were very flat. It was also pretty long, at 22+ miles, the longest course we've done so far.

Knowing we'd be out there for close to an hour, I chose to start off fairly conservatively, with pulls at 3.6 W/kg spaced evenly across the group at one-minute intervals. Everyone seemed to be holding up fairly well in the early going, with some joking and chit-chat on the Discord channel, which I took as an invitation to ramp up the pace a little bit. At the halfway point we bumped it up to 3.8, and then notched it up further throughout the second half, until we were doing 4.2 on the last set of pulls before the final sprint to the line. I think everyone was hurting a bit by the end, although I don't think I achieved my goal of getting Dusty to regurgitate his dinner. Maybe next week.

We crossed the line with the whole team intact, in a time of 52:02, which currently has us in 28th place out of 160 teams in our division. Not our absolute best result, but pretty close, and I'm happy with the time and how well organized we were throughout the ride.

We'll be riding these TTT events through the winter on Thursday nights, and we're always looking for new team members, so keep an eye on the club calendar if you'd like to join us.

For this year's winter Zwift season on Thursday nights, we are participating in the WTRL Team Time Trial. This is one of the largest racing series on Zwift, with hundreds of teams competing every week, on a variety of courses.

Teams consist of between three and eight riders, and can be mixed-gender, with mixed ability levels. We can enter multiple teams if we have more than eight riders interested in participating in a given week. All riders on the team ride together, alternating pulls, with a goal of achieving the fastest possible time. Races are on Thursday nights, and usually last between 30 and 45 minutes.

This week's race will be on Thursday January 8 at 6:25 PM Eastern. The race is one lap of the Triple Flat Loops course in Watopia, for about 23 miles total. This is a long, very flat course, with just a few gentle climbs and descents along the way. The sign-up link is here. (https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/YlJpSy9aVnYrcUUzWHhEWmgxcEpnbXAyVENPeWhSSHg4a3djTUJxN0cxbz0=)

To participate, you need to take the one-time step of creating a free account at WTRL (https://www.wtrl.racing/ttt-home/). Once your account is set up, follow the link above to register for this week's event. Then you just show up in Zwift and enter the event as usual, and you will be placed on the starting line with other riders on the team. We use Discord for voice communication during the race, which is super-important in a TTT to coordinate pulls and race strategy. You can access our Discord channel here (https://is.gd/nccdiscord).

If you have any questions about participating, feel free to post here or email me at jonathan.okeeffe@gmail.com.

The traditional New Year's Day Temperature Ride has been scrapped this year due to the weather, so let's ride on Zwift instead! Join us at noon for a Zwift version of the Temperature Ride -- we'll check the temperature in Northampton at noon, and that's how many miles we'll ride.  All riders welcome, social pace, no hammering.

Zwift event link: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/5320375

RWGPS event page: https://ridewithgps.com/events/438758-ncc-new-year-s-day-zwift-ride

Discord for voice/video chat: https://is.gd/nccdiscord

Happy New Year to all, and hope to see you tomorrow on Zwift!

Tonight marked the eighth and final night of our fall season riding in the WTRL Team Time Trial series. We marked the occasion with the largest team we've fielded all season -- Carson, Dusty, Jamie, Melissa, Michael, Shawn, and me.

The big team should have made for an easier workload, but the course tonight was very challenging -- two laps of the Tour of Tewit Well, which is basically all of the hillier parts of the Yorkshire course without any of the flatter downtown sections. The course has four significant climbs each lap, so we were always either going up or going down, which makes it super-hard to coordinate everyone's efforts.

With seven starters, the fourth rider across the line determines the finishing time, but my goal was to get the whole group of seven through at least one lap together. We just about made it, as everyone hung tough through all four of the climbs on the first lap, before Michael fell off just as we were cresting the last hill. Carson did a lot of work on the second lap, patrolling the back of the group and helping anyone who started to falter. Jamie finally slid off about halfway through the second lap, leaving a group of five to power through to the finish.

We finished all together with a time of 36:42, which currently has us in 16th place in our division out of 166 total teams, in the 10th percentile, which is by far our best finishing position of the season. Thanks to everyone for their hard work, tonight and throughout the season!

We're going to take the next couple of weeks off over the holidays, and then resume both the Tuesday night TT/HC series and this Thursday night TTT series the first week of January. Hope everyone has a great finish to their riding season, and we'll see you in the new year!