I led our GGCC team on a grand tour of the virtual streets of Makuri Islands today — no passports, just power-ups. We took on the “Fine and Sandy” course on the Zwift riding platform, four laps of fun (and a little bit of suffering). Each of the first two laps came with not one but two sprints, because apparently once just wasn’t enough. To top it all off, we had an optional mini-race at the end for anyone who still had legs left.

As always on the ride towards the first sprint, we warmed up properly at around 2.6 W/kg – higher on the climb, of course, because gravity insists. The first sprint came already after around 3 km, giving the sprinters a chance to show off their legs before they were fully awake. The second sprint followed after 3 more kilometers, just in case anyone had forgotten it was supposed to hurt. Basically, the course is split into three sections.
The fun part is the two climbs in sections one and three – “fun” meaning your legs complain while your brain calls it training.

During the sprints our sprinters delivered some pretty snappy numbers. Both tracks are 350 m long, but the gradients aren’t twins, so the times aren’t either. Let’s see what the stopwatch tattled on us after four sprints:

Congrats to Motoyama for such good numbers and both green jersey 🏆

The optional mini-race kicked off at the first sprint banner of the fourth lap, because why not start suffering early? The course was properly mean—just the way cyclists secretly like it. The race felt a little salty 😈, with legs burning and lungs filing complaints, but the racers tackled it with impressively strong pins. It was a good scrap all the way to the finish. I had a solid group with me as we rolled toward the line, pretending not to be tired. The climb and the following downhill did exactly what they were designed to do: blow things apart so a few lucky riders could sneak away.
Now, let’s see what the results have to say about all that heroism:

Congrats to Motoyama 🥇, C. Li Kai 🥈 and Martin B. 🥉 on the podium – good race guys 👍🏻

Thanks to all riders for coming today and having fun with us.

For more details, check out Zwift Power.