By Ondrej
I thought I would write few lines about my first open road race which took place yesterday. Most of you know that my son races a bit so I wanted to see what it feels like when I stand on a side line and ask him to go faster. Well I signed up to the local NCRA race to test it!
There were 4 groups of about 15 people in each. Starting with the slowest people in group one and the beasts in group four. To my surprise I was in group two. Adding to my nervousness I noticed on the HQ paper that expected average will be 24mph. This was going to be a push I thought but on Zwift I have managed similar things before so was hoping that organisers checked my Strava data before making the choice. After start I quickly realised how far is Zwift from reality. We set of doing about 350 watts and quickly got into a chaing gang formation. Stupidly I started to participate and after about 5k in and my 3rd turn I realised that this was not sustainable and got quickly exited out of the group.
The rest of the race turned into 40km of TT as I never managed to catch anyone from the first group and my only hope of not finishing last (as the other two groups flew past already) was to beat the only one struggler who for sure was also mistakenly put in group two. He exited our group even before me. I tried to work with him when he got to me but he kept trying to ride away. Eventually he did but one lap later I managed to catch him again and drop him. Despite finishing at the tail end I did enjoy the concept and will give it go again next Saturday. I hope organisers will make the right group choice for me this time and I will be able to cling on for more than third of a lap. I know my piece may sound bit negative but in fact it was great experience and I want to try it again. I hope to see some of you on the starting line next week – no chance of seeing you at the finishing line 
. By the way, well done to Andy King who finished on amazing 6th place.
