I did my first Zwift race over lunch yesterday. It was surprisingly crushing, fun, and the time slipped by much faster than a similar style workout. Trying Zwift racing has been on my mind for a while, mostly because I miss the competitiveness of the group ride (stupid COVID!). But I’ve been avoiding it because I generally only have around an hour at lunch to bang out a workout, and the pull of structured training has always won versus the uncertainty of a race.

But, then I stumbled across this video yesterday morning. It was exactly the catalyst I needed to give racing a go, and the tips proved invaluable. And I’m glad I did. If all races are like the one I did yesterday, the intensity was higher than anything I’ve experienced outside of an FTP test; Training Peaks actually treated it as an FTP test, and bumped me up. While that’s not a substitute for every structured workout, it definitively covers some of them in a format that is much more engaging.