We often joke about the amount of gamification that Zwift brings to virtual bike racing. Sometimes we love it, and sometimes we hate it. But in Week 2 of WTRL Season 3, we were quite literally steamrolled by that very gamification.

For this second race of the season Alvaro was ruled out by technical issues on the start line, but we still had myself, Scott, Russell and Daghan in action. We were racing the Beach Island Loop, a mostly flat 12.8km route with one key feature: the Dirty Sorpresa, or as Zwift Insider puts it “570 meters of slow-rolling dirt on a snaking incline.” On this climb the steamroller power-up, which reduces rolling resistance, was absolutely overpowered — riders at the front would start dropping purple steamrollers and off the front they would go.

On the first lap of the race I was thankfully a beneficiary of this OP power-up, and snagged some intermediate sprint points after sneaking off the front with a few other riders. Unfortunately payback came on the second lap when I had to tackle the Dirty Sorpresa sans power-up. The result? Despite ~10% higher power output, I was spit out the back by the top of the climb. By the end of the sprint I latched onto a groupetto, but with 15km still to race my time at the front was over.

The rest of my race was spent putzing around with my groupetto at a much more comfortable pace, even if my heart rate remained elevated throughout thanks to the tough racing to start.

With Scott falling off the back on the same climb as me, it was Russell left flying the TBD flag at the front of the race. And he did so very well, snagging some intermediate sprint points on the final lap before a tough sprint for 10th place on the finish line. Further back, I had a 5-up sprint for 20th, but wound up getting absolutely smoked by one Jarred Hedwig. Scott was a few places back of me while Daghan, who was riding on exhausted legs, finished 31st. The full results from Zwift Power:

Unfortunately Russell’s heart rate monitor started acting up mid-race, which meant we were awarded 0 points for his intermediate sprint and top 10 finish (sad face). Combined with a smaller roster of just four riders, we finished back of the back in our field. But in a season where we are all racing the A’s for the first time, we are not particularly focused on the results — we still had a blast bullshitting on Discord while getting in quite the mid-week workout:

We streamed this week’s race live on both Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/tobedeterminedcc) and our Youtube channel: