Zwift Racing on a Track Bike

If you know me you will know that I love my track racing. You will also know that I love my Zwift racing. It's only natural that those two loves would collide at some point and see me attempt Zwift racing on a track bike. I am pleased to say that after several attempts, tweaks and near misses, I have the set up spot on and Zwift racing on a fixed gear track bike is now a regular and very valuable part of my cycling routine. 

                                        

The equipment choice was obviously going to be critical to make this work. Two things would dictate the entire experience. Firstly, what kind of rollers I used (a traditional indoor trainer would not work as I did not have a track bike adapter) and secondly, the gear I selected on the track bike. Even if I had a track adapter for my indoor trainer, I think I would have steered away from it as I really wanted a variable and high cadence experience, much like actual track racing. A set of rollers would be ideal to produce this. This did mean that in terms of Zwift racing I would not have any 'smart' functionality. This was totally fine with me as it meant that (for example) the only way for me to produce the extra watts to stay in contact up a hill would be through high cadence. This is exactly what I wanted. 

My first attempt was on a set of traditional rollers:

Resistance on these rollers is low so I knew I would need a big gear to allow for sufficient resistance. I tried a few different combinations and attempted some racing, but even with the biggest gear I had available (58 x 13 = 120.46) I just couldn't get enough resistance. This gear at 110 rpm was only giving me power in the mid 300 watt range, which is not enough for Zwift racing. The other issue I identified at this point was that the start of Zwift races (which we all know are exceptionally fast) was going to be an issue. A set up that gave me the appropriate power for racing may not provide enough watts for me to survive those crazy race starts. The solution here would be to drop a category (I normally race A category).

My second attempt was on a Feedback Omnium Over-Drive trainer:

These work like traditional rollers but with the front wheel locked in you can concentrate more on the pedaling and less on the 'steering for your life' at high cadence. The resistance on these trainers is determined by the direction of the two rear roller through what Feedback call 'progressive internal resistance'.  If both rollers are facing forward = very easy, both rollers reversed and facing backwards = very difficult, one roller facing each way = a combination of easy and difficult giving a more balanced resistance. It was this third combination that would end up being the winner. Gear choice would also be important and after a few attempts and rides a 51 x 15 (91.8) gear would get the nod. I keep my rear tyre pressure consistent at 115psi. This combination of resistance and gear produced (approximately):

• 90 rpm / 300 watts
• 100 rpm / 360 watts
• 110 rpm / 420 wattts

With this new set up dialed in, I started some racing. As mentioned, I chose B category due to the concerns I had in surviving a frenetic A category start. zwiftpower.com would disqualify me from any official results in these races, but that was of no concern. I had no chance of featuring anyway. I was pleasantly surprised at how these races would play out. High cadence, variable cadence, a huge cardiovascular workout and in the end some Zwift racing that was unique and very challenging; exactly what I was looking for. I have tried to focus on shorter races in the 6 - 20 km range. Below is my data from an 11 km race:

The good news is that after being in a few A and B category combined races, I have now improved to the point where I can race in A (sometimes). The starts are still exceptionally tough, but if I can survive that first couple of minutes I am normally fine to hang on until the end. As I mentioned at the outset, when you are faced with a hill, an attack or a big surge and the only thing you have to respond with is a higher cadence, it certainly makes for an intense riding experience. 

So there you have it. If you are a keen track rider I encourage you to try this. Please message me through the blog page if you have any specific questions.

2020 Review; The year that wasn't …

Like a lot of people, 2020 just wasn't a great year for me. Luckily, my family had a pretty good run through this whole COVID-19 thing. The restrictions and various lockdown stages definitely had some impact, but nothing that we haven't been able to work through and bounce back from. I wish I could say the same about my bike racing. It has definitely been a year to forget. Some health issues around the middle of the year the main reason for the bicycle adventure going pear shaped. 

The year started out well enough, with fruitful outings at both the Queensland Masters and Australian Masters Track Championships. Not as successful as 2019, but that was a year to remember where everything seemed to go my way. The two championships did have some frustration and disappointment impact on my Individual Pursuit campaign which I blogged about earlier here.  That aside, the championships would bring some solid results with a win in the Queensland Masters 1-4 Omnium for the fourth year straight and a win in the Australian Masters 4 Points Race for the second year running, being the most significant. The Points Race win would end up being the highlight of the year for me:

COVID-19 hit pretty hard after that and racing ground to a halt. Like most Queensland bike racers, I spent the winter training hard and doing a lot of work indoors. I did plenty of online Zwift racing during that time, preparing for whatever racing may appear in the future. 

It was late July before racing kicked off again. The three round Queensland ITT series should have been a great way to get back into racing after a long hiatus. Unfortunately, I had some health issues related to my heart impact on my performance in the series. I blogged about those issues at length here.  An extract from that blog explains the problem:

The diagnosis was in fact Stress Induced Tachycardia. Something that can and will improve with appropriate rest and stress reduction.

The third round of the series doubled as the Masters 4 Queensland ITT Championships. I did manage to struggle to second place with an engine that was badly in need of a service:

The aforementioned heart issues would keep me out of racing for a while. I missed the entire remainder of the road calendar that Cycling Queensland had built for the latter part of the year. This was very disappointing but my health had to come first. I am pleased to report that my issues appear to be completely gone and I am 100% again. In fact in the last few weeks I have set new power records for the 5 min and 15 min durations, which is a really promising sign. 

The very late stage of the year saw an opportunity for me to race the Queensland TTT Championships with my CompNOW Electrolite Racing Team. With an injured team member and me well and truly underdone, it was always going to be a challenge and we finished well outside of the medals.

The final race of the year for me was the Queensland Masters Madison Championships which I raced with Nick Banks-Watson. I was looking forward to this one as I love Madison racing and Nick and I had been working well together in training before the event. We raced well, but had a couple of unlucky events cost us big time. My lack of racing really showed me up as I struggled badly towards the end. We did enough for second place:

Like most inhabitants of planet Earth I am looking to January 1 for a clean slate and a big psychological reset. I have a change of teams for next year as I will be riding for Koiled Cycling power by Littles. The racing campaign starts with the Rocky Cup on Wheels in Rockhampton on January 8 and 9. Australian Masters Track Championships are in early April. Those championships will have an extra challenge now, as current Masters 3 World Individual and Team Pursuit Champion, Ben Neppl, moves up into my Masters 4 division.  Boooooo!!!

Bring on 2021! 

Getting to the Heart of the Matter; a precautionary tale

 I felt it was really important to write this blog post. Hopefully by the time you finish reading you will understand why I wanted to write it and why I wanted you to read it. 

I have a family history of Atrial Fibrillation (click the link for more information). My father has it and I have always been aware that this increased my risk of developing the condition at some point. I have other risk factors as well. Namely I am tall, I am (almost) a life-long endurance athlete and I have a naturally large heart. Needless to say I am well aware of my level of risk and have always had it in the back of my mind that one day the condition could become  a reality for me. 

One of the main symptoms of Atrial Fibrillation is tachycardia (sudden acceleration of heart rate well above established maximum).  The first time I raced bikes (from the ages of 16 - 25) I never experienced any tachycardia. Now in my second crack at bike racing (from the age of 39 to now at 47) I have had three isolated issues, until recently. I remember them very clearly. Two occasions in 2013 and another in 2016. Hardly anything to worry about and not a blip (no pun intended) for four years. That all changed a few weeks ago.

It was a very cold Sunday morning, nearing the end of a bunch ride on the online platform Zwift. I was climbing hard at about 168 beats per minute (bpm). My absolute maximum is close to 180 bpm. Without a single warning sign my heart rate accelerated up to 192 bpm and I could feel my heart nearly exploding in my chest. I immediately backed off and my heart rate dropped as fast as it went up. In a minute or two I felt like I had recovered and believed this was just a 'one-off' tachycardia event, similar to what I had experienced a few times in the past. A few minutes later it happened again. This time not quite as bad at 185 bpm, but the horrible sensation in my chest was the same. I backed right off, warmed down slowly and carefully and then stopped. You can see the two events as plain as day in the heart rate graph below.

In the days after, things just didn't feel right. I was experiencing minor flutter sensations in my chest, very heavy heart beats and some occasional mild vertigo. At the time, the three round Queensland Individual Time Trial Series was about to start. Three time trials over three consecutive weekends. I had barely raced all year due to the COVID situation so I was keen to pin a number on. I was hopeful that the symptoms would subside and I would be able to race well. This was a mistake, medical advice should have been sought at this point. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The other critical part of this tale is a situation that had occurred in my professional life. I can't go into a great deal of detail as I will breach my employer's confidentiality guidelines. What I can say is that a part of my job is managing a boarding school. I had two occasions over a six week period, where I was almost the first adult to respond to critical situations where I truly believed that the child in question could lose their lives. This was without question the most challenging period of my twenty-three career in education and the impact it had on me was significant. I had some time off work and counselling as a result. The second situation I dealt with was actually the night before round one of the time trial series in Purga. 

The Purga round went average at best. I was tired and distracted by the events of the night before. I had little ability to push myself and kind of muddled along to a very average time. People who I normally beat were faster than me. People who I normally beat by a lot, I beat by only a little. It didn't go well.

Leading into the second round of the series at Elimbah I had been experiencing the same heart sensations as previously. The big heart 'thumps', the flutters and that general feeling of something not being quite right. Again, I should have been receiving medical attention by now and I wasn't. On race day though, it actually went okay. I managed good power numbers and a course personal best time by five seconds. In terms of where I finished versus the other riders it looked like a return to normal. I was hoping this heart 'stuff' had vanished. That couldn't have been further from the truth. 

The third and final round of the series at North Arm also doubled as the Queensland Championships, which I had won in the 45-49 years category the year before. I was keen to defend my title. My heart had been playing up the same way all week. If anything it was actually getting worse. I realise I was self-negligent and naive to not seek any help at this point, but in my defence the symptoms were never major and they would always go away. A 'thump' here and flutter there, then nothing for hours. 

Race day came and it could not have gone much worse. The first few minutes were okay but then my heart rate was creeping up way higher than it should have for the effort I was putting out. I felt absolutely woeful and just suffered terribly for the entire race. I actually eased of off the pedals twice when I was cresting hills based on the sensations in my chest and my heart rate numbers. Yes Dean, you are an idiot and I should have just stopped. I ended up second in the results but in the end this is a race I would rather just forget.  For comparison:

• Round 2 Elimbah: 375 watts @ 162 bpm average.
• Round 3 North Arm: 352 watts @ 167 bpm average. 

Light years apart. That is the impact this issue had on me in terms of performance. 

The days after this race my symptoms worsened and I finally saw my GP. He was immediately concerned and very interested in the stress I had been experiencing in my professional life. He was equally as interested in my family history of Atrial Fibrillation. He arranged for me to wear an ECG Halter Monitor for 48 hours, which was a very annoying piece of kit to have on night and day let me tell you. A cardiologist would go through my data after that and then forward the results to my GP.

It was an anxious wait the next few days. It's amazing how quickly you stop caring about bike racing and start focusing on your long-term health and future when something like this happens. My symptoms were very frequent when I was wearing the monitor, but things actually started to improve in the days after that. Even before my results came back I was starting to feel a little relief that things seemed to be getting better. The results would prove to be 'best case scenario' with no indication of Atrial Fibrillation, which was an incredible relief. That diagnosis would have had life changing implications. The diagnosis was in fact Stress Induced Tachycardia. Something that can and will improve with  appropriate rest and stress reduction. It still amazes me that significant workplace stress can have such an impact on an extremely healthy cardiovascular system, but it is entirely possible and in my case very real.

I feel like this was in many ways a lucky escape. I am still worried that Atrial Fibrillation is in my future. My long-term risk of developing this condition still remains. I am now kicking myself for my ignorance at continuing in a race series when these underlying health issues were at play. Again, in my defence, it honestly didn't dawn on me how serious this could have been. 'She'll be right mate!' 

So please, dear readers, especially those of you who are my vintage or older, play nicely with your heart. You only get one so look after it. Seek medical help early if you have issues. It's just not worth the risk. It's only bike racing and in the end meaningless when compared to the ability to live a long life as a husband, wife, brother, sister, mother, dad and friend. Stay well people.... 

In Pursuit of the Pursuit

Rather than give a long and boring account of the track campaign just gone, I thought I would do a deep dive into the 3000 m Individual Pursuit. Both the Queensland and Australian Championships would prove to be frustrating affairs for that event, for reasons I will unpack. But just in summary, this is the end result of the two championships:

Queensland Championships:
Gold - Individual Pursuit
Gold - Omnium
Silver - Time Trial
Silver - Scratch Race
Silver - Points Race

Australian Championships:
Gold - Points Race
Silver - Individual Pursuit
Silver - Team Pursuit
Bronze - Scratch Race

So to the Individual Pursuit... I race in the Masters 4 division (men aged 45 - 49 years). The Individual Pursuit has been a focus for a few years now. I have a fairly good fit from a physiology perspective and I like the fact that the event looks so simple, but in reality is very hard to execute perfectly. My personal best leading into this campaign was 3 min 32.6 sec, which I set in the qualifying round of last year's Australian Championships, on my way to winning my first ever individual Australian title. I was hopeful and confident I could go faster at one of the two championships I was about to compete in. My coach Mark Brady had continued to fine tune my training for these championships and I felt like I was ready. 

Queensland Championships:

The Individual Pursuit was held on the final day of the championships and was straight after the Omnium. The Omnium is my favourite event on the track. My physiology is just about perfect for it so I take it seriously and always give 100% in terms of trying to win it. Unfortunately, there is no masters Omnium at the Australian Championships and this fact continues to disappoint me. Needless to say, my legs were a little on the tired side coming into the Individual Pursuit qualifying round but I was still of the belief I could set a very good time.

I started on a 3 min 33 sec schedule (called by John Eder) and was quite comfortable as the round progressed. I actually had good legs and was hoping to lift near the end and dip under my personal best time. I am always conscious of the weather and the impact it has on the Individual Pursuit. The atmospheric pressure was at 1015 hPa, which is definitely not conducive to fast times. The other consideration was the humidity. It was an exceptionally humid day and although that has minimal impact on the actual air conditions, there is a huge physiological cost for most people in terms of the effort required to go fast.

In the last kilometre things started to get very messy. I was qualifying against Matt Murray from the Kangaroo Point Cycling Club. A little up on schedule, I caught Matt at the start of lap 9. I am not sure why, but as I came alongside of him, he accelerated and kept me up on the bank. He informed me after the race that it was always his intention to lift at exactly that point and I can only take him on his word. Whatever the reason, the outcome was me riding almost halfway up the track for nearly a full lap, having to almost sprint to get over him. This ended up being a 17.177 second lap which was one of my quickest. Amazing when you consider the extra distance I must have ridden being such a long way from the black line. An effort like that doesn't come without consequences. If you look at my last three lap times (below) I was clearly smashed from the catch and it showed. 

I was astonished to see I had ridden a 3 min 33.482 sec time. Well inside one second off my personal best, in tough weather conditions and with a catch that was nothing short of a disaster for my schedule. Frustrated much? You betcha. 

In the final I was up against Dave McAdam from the Balmoral Cycling Club. I had a good gap over Dave in qualifying and I was already thinking about the Points Race that afternoon. I wanted to win with a catch and not go on for a time, to give my legs some much needed relief. I managed to make that happen and secured the title. 

Don't get me wrong, I was delighted to win this title, but a great opportunity for a personal best went begging, and that annoyed me no end.

Australian Championships:

Six weeks later the Australian Championships were held. The legs were good and the Individual Pursuit was held on the first day, meaning I should be fresh and fast. The weather was still no help, with 1018 hPa for the qualifying round and 1016 hPa for the finals, but at least the horrible humidity was gone. I knew the field well and could see that Damon Malek from Penrith would be my biggest competition. He won the NSW Championships in a 3 min 34 sec time, which was two seconds slower than my personal best. I was also lucky to be qualifying in the last round, meaning I could aim for a specific time to make the gold medal final, rather than  having to put in a huge effort in qualifying.

Damon qualified in a 3 min 36 sec time and the next best was team mate Craig O'Connell in a 3 min 41 sec. As long as I was under Craig's time I would be in the final. With John Eder calling me I went out on a very conservative 3 min 36 schedule. I actually found it very difficult to ride 'deliberately slow' and struggled with the gear, In hindsight I should have actually dropped my gear. I slipped off the schedule at halfway but knowing how much time I had to play with I tapped out a 3 min 39 sec ride to safely make the gold medal final. 

I had plenty of time to think about the final. I noticed that when Damon qualified he had an exceptionally fast start. His first kilometre was 1 min 09 sec but he faded considerably after that. My plan was to ride a 3 min 32 sec schedule, get on top of it and stay there, because Damon had simply never ridden that quick and I didn't believe he could on that day. I expected to be down after the first kilometre, but to claw it back by the end. I didn't expect what actually happened. Damon started very quick as he did in the first ride, this time with a 1 min 10 sec opening kilometre. This put him in a position where a massive effort would enable him to scramble across to my back wheel and end the pursuit. CAUGHT. John (my caller) did see this unfolding and warned me but it was all too late. It was all over at the halfway point. A risky strategy from Damon, but I must give him full credit. It is a pursuit after all. He rolled the dice and he won. I can't fault him for how he rode in any way. Amazingly, I was sitting smack on a 3 min 32 sec schedule when the catch was made. A faster schedule than either of us had ever ridden; with a silver medal. That's bike racing huh?

It does raise an interesting question for both me and my coach, in terms of how I deal with such an opponent in the future. My approach to an Individual Pursuit is to start well (not too fast, but not too slow), hit my schedule within two laps and then sit there until the end. My lap times have very little variation across them. So what should my response be? Ride a much faster opening kilometre and then slide down into a more relaxed schedule? That's a tough ask, given that I could barely ride a 1 min 10 sec kilometre if the race ended there. Ride a super fast second kilometre? To be honest I'm not sure and it is something I will continue to work through with my coach.

So there you have it, the Individual Pursuit campaign for 2020 done and dusted with a gold medal, a silver medal and truckload of frustration to go with them.