They came from behind. In the rules, if a team is going by you, you need to slow down and let them pass. But the interesting tactic here was that the first 4 people in the team kept riding at almost 3 w/kg while the other 3 people slowed down massively (1 w/kg) and they were telling us via messages to stay away from them (if we get 3 warnings we can be DQ’d) and because they overtook us, we can’t pass them at first. We have to let them go but if we catch them afterwards they will be the ones having to slow down. Interesting, right? If it was not a team tactic it definitely looked like it.
So I thought that it wasn’t a “tactic” but just ran out of gas. Now I realize why you were so adamant about slowing down!! If it was on purpose, that was kind of shitty on their part!!
I’m not sure a team is supposed to do that. I would report that to the league. The object of the team time trial is to do your best as a team and not interrupt the other teams.
I race with Revo and we have a few teams that race the different time zones. We use racers at all different levels and race in the E category.
We use the time trial to practice drafting and taking turns pulling. The more riders you have ( no matter the level), the better the drafting works.
I do not do it every week but it has helped me learn how to work as a team and get to know my teammates better.
Congratulations @Covi, @Marmen21, @adm0629 on your first TTT event. Personally, I’m with @Petals on this. I note that this particular tactic is not covered in the rules but that’s probably because no one considered that anyone would try to pull this dodge. Definitely a cheat-to-win jerk move. In an individual time trial if you are overtaken you must drop back out of the draft zone before attempting to overtake. At the same time, it is equally illegal to block someone’s overtaking attempt. It seems to me that the other team was taking advantage of one clearly specified rule while breaking another not so clearly specified rule. Whether or not you choose to lodge a complaint, I would suggest that if you encounter something like that again, ignore their actions and comments and just power on. If they choose to complain to the league they will need to supply some evidence which would look pretty bad for them. If they make a practice of this some public shaming is likely to result. I hope you all enjoyed the event even with this crappy behaviour and it doesn’t discourage you from doing another event.
So strange because they came from behind us so were clearly going much faster, at that point. That team (2 riders + 1 who dropped back to pull them and issued us warnings) did end up coming in just ahead of us in the standings (mid-pack for all time zones). I saw on Strava that several pictures were posted of the two riders comingled with our trio. Odd indeed.
-Angie
Congrats @Marmen21@Covi@adm0629 !! well done!!
Sorry about what happened - seems a little sketchy - if you don’t report it this time, please do if they do it again in the future. I don’t understand people that want to win so badly they are willing to break the rules or push the envelope. I would rather lose being honest than win by cheating.
Thanks everyone for your comments and support! It was our first team time trial and we loved doing it so we won’t let that experience take the fun out of it. I’m going to think that they didn’t do it on purpose and if we see a similar behavior next time we will definitely let the organizers know.
But for now, who wants to race on Thursday? 5:35pm MDT 3 laps of Astoria line 8. (21.4 miles / 1275 ft of climbing)
OK peeps, one more shout out in case you missed previous messages. We have a team trial race. Thursday, 5:30 PM MST. If you want more info, reach out to us. The more the merrier :-). Go team Velo 360 C!!!
Not ready to try this with you ladies (very low cat d here) but i will check it out on Zwift and Zwift power to cheer you all on and give you ride ons!! Team Velo 360 rocks!!
I want to congratulate you all on racing the WTRL team time trials. I hope you are enjoying the challenge.
The team time trials are a great way to practice drafting and trying different racing strategies. The biggest thing I have learned is 8 riders ( of varying strengths) racing together will give you a better time than 4 strong riders. It’s also important to find ways to recover during the race. I am not one of the stronger riders on my team, but racing in the team format is helping me push myself.
Thanks @Petals! I have really enjoyed the races. Every week I’m looking forward to Thursday to race with my teammates. In my opinion it’s much more fun to do a team race than an individual one. We are still learning how the virtual draft works and I think that for the first time last Thursday we understood a bit more how to conserve energy and it was noticeable how having 4 people was better than having only 3. We would love to get to 8 so if anyone wants to join the fun, just let us know. I promise you won’t be disappointed! These TTT are great to push yourself and practice all the things we’ve learn doing Theia’s workouts.
I got the email last night. I think it’s pretty ridiculous that Zwift is threatening the WTRL organizers. I had given my consent before and gave it again last night.
@Marmen21 Are you registered in the WTRL website? If not, that’s probably why you didn’t get the email.
It’s probably fall out from the Ironman Virtual/ sports hero’s and Strava. Apparently IM contacted SH to set up the interface. Strava requires a unique something (API?) to access data per user/group. SH was lazy and just used an existing own they had for another vendor. Strava told them to fix it, they didn’t and IM got mad at Strava.
My guess is its two-fold - 1. Strava protecting its APIs - especially if entities pay anything to use them, 2. Privacy concerns depending on the agreement we all sign with Strava (even as someone that works with privacy stuff for healthcare, I’m not good about reading the fine print myself ) it might not have us all say that we agree to Strava releasing data to a third party or may have restricted what the 3rd party can do with it - might also be WTRL is in the same boat with Zwift and Zwift Power - privacy stuff is even more sensitive now with everyone working from home and cyberattacks have increased - supposedly there were breaches into our internal use of Webex this week - kinda like the zoom bombings. - the hackers have way more time to play than they used to
Update - i just read the post in Zwift Hype - not defending either party either way - its definately an issue with privacy concerns and the lawyers for both sides probably have different interpretations of the various requirements. Again, not a lawyer but i spent a lot of time looking at how the GDPR (European Union) might impact us in the US and every conference i went to one of the only things that was consistent, is that there is a ton of different interpretations of that law. Plus Zwift is in CA which has its own version of GDPR.
Doesn’t my job sound exciting? No? I get it - but know you know at least one reason i often want to pull my hair out while working.
@covi, I don’t think I am! Do I “need” to register or can I still ride without being in there? That is just one more place to register/have a password! (my age is showing I guess, but I am so tired of having to put all of my information everywhere, get a bunch of emails and such)
It was not a requirement to register on their website so for now you are good to race Maria! Not sure if they will change that to get everybody’s consent on using zwift power data for the results.
) it might not have us all say that we agree to Strava releasing data to a third party or may have restricted what the 3rd party can do with it - might also be WTRL is in the same boat with Zwift and Zwift Power - privacy stuff is even more sensitive now with everyone working from home and cyberattacks have increased - supposedly there were breaches into our internal use of Webex this week - kinda like the zoom bombings. - the hackers have way more time to play than they used to