On one hand, elated that I managed to complete all seven stages. On the other hand, a little sad that the energy, the buzz, and, dare I say it, the excitement, are all over. For now, anyway.

But before I get all teary-eyed, I just want to say a big thanks to Matt Payne and Emma Martin for their live broadcasts and daily podcasts with Hayley Simmonds. I’d estimate Matt and Emma have been spending at least 10 hours a day, maybe more, prepping, writing, testing, organising guests, streaming, editing and breaking down every stage. And that’s before you account for Hayley competing and co-hosting the podcast as well. Well done to all of you ❤️.

If you haven’t subscribed to their YouTube channel or podcast, I have included the necessary details at the end of this post. Do yourself a favour: subscribe and tell them I sent you 😉.

The battle nobody else knew about

Of the 108 Cat 6 men who lined up for Stage 1, fifteen had pulled out by Stage 7, leaving 93 of us still standing. And of those 93, there was one rider I’d developed a “competition” with. Completely unintentional, entirely good-spirited, but a competition all the same. He knew about it, too.

Not Simon Llewellyn, who’d passed me convincingly on the leaderboard back in the middle stages. It was Bjorn, and we were fighting it out for 83rd in Category 6. Read that again if you need to. He came into Stage 7 sitting 2 minutes and 16 seconds ahead of me on GC. As Bjorn himself put it in the comments after an earlier stage, “coming in at 83rd or 84th overall shouldn’t feel important, but strangely enough, it does”. And he was right. The nerves were real. The strategy was real. How was I going to find over two minutes if we ended up in the same group? At what point would forcing a breakaway even make sense, late in the race, with the Bahrain Hills waiting to punish anyone who tried?

The race

I’d hoped the start of Stage 7 would be a more refined, orderly procession. Not on your life. The front went, and went hard. A minute in, I was dropped, no longer a surprise at this point. I clawed into the grupetto with familiar faces, Tim Sharp, Jan Gradys, Oscar H, but no Bjorn. Had he held the front group? Missed it entirely? Was he behind us?

Turned out he was behind, in the next group back, and our grupetto was opening a gap on him. When I say “gap,” don’t picture me sitting in, enjoying the view. I was suffering. Even this grupetto had teeth, and after 25 minutes of hanging on, I was dropped a second time. Nothing for it but to slide back toward Bjorn’s group, minutes behind by then. My grip on 83rd was slipping fast. That’s when fellow Aussie Steven Stolk and Sacha Ott came past, and I hooked onto their wheel, steadied the effort, and got back to something manageable. 83rd was back on the table, baby!

We picked up more shelled Cat 6 riders along the way: Tomi Lepisto, Oscar H again, Thor Kristian Skotte, and Tim Sharp, whom we caught napping on the way through. My lead over Bjorn ballooned back out to minutes, and I knew that if I could just hold this group through the Bahrain Hills, 83rd was mine MUAHAHAHA. The alternative, getting dropped with 10-15 km left and trying to solo it home with Bjorn’s group bearing down, wasn’t a situation I wanted any part of. Every time a higher category rolled through, someone in our group would attempt a breakaway off the temporary draft boost, and I’d curse them under my breath for making me work harder to stay attached. Fortunately, we, and by we I mean me, survived every one of those disruptions.

The sprint finish

Inside the last 10km, six of us were together, and you’d better believe that meant a sprint finish. I started bargaining with my legs about what they had left. The response wasn’t encouraging. 83rd was still on the line, and so was first from our sprint finish.

With just under 1.5km to go, a Cat 5 rider came through and disrupted the whole group. Oscar dug in to grab the wheel, which meant I had to dig in too, and so did everyone else. I wondered if this was the moment I got dropped. Punch, punch, punch again.

Inside the final 500m, the road bent right, straightened, and there it was: the finish, under 300m away. Now or never, legs be damned. I got into the drops and put out whatever was left in the tank, which by that point amounted to roughly two shakes of f*ck all, and drove for the line. I was so cooked I didn’t even register crossing it, still sprinting past the banner in confusion until the results appeared and I realised it was over.

Did I win our group’s sprint finish? No. Tomi and Tim beat me to it by less than a second. I did beat everyone else in our group, so some honour was salvaged.

Did I take 83rd overall from Bjorn? Yes, although it’s a subdued yes. A 2:16 deficit turned into a 12:02 lead by the finish. It was only after writing this post and checking the numbers that I realised I’d been just 18 seconds from claiming 82nd off Jan Gradys the entire time. That aside, there’s nothing quite like the fear and exhilaration of head-to-head racing in the closing kilometres, which is what I was quietly hoping for, but a good 83rd win is still a good 83rd win. Thanks again, Bjorn.

Who likes a good stat?

Beyond the obvious total distance (436km) and elevation (5,463m) numbers, a few things stood out across the seven stages:

• I dropped to 84.2kg by around Stage 4, down from 88.5kg at the start of Stage 1, and I was losing roughly 2kg each race. When I woke up this morning, I’m down three and a half overall.

• Total time on the bike across all seven stages, warm-ups excluded, was 16 hours, 59 minutes, and 33 seconds.

• Of the 46 riders registered as Category 6 Masters (the old guys), only 38 finished. I placed 34th.

• I burnt 11,393 kJ across the series, roughly the equivalent of 5.5 large Big Macs or 30 cans of Coke in calories.

• And the latest I finished any stage was Stage 5, at 1:02 am Melbourne time. It took me 3 hours and 42 minutes. I didn’t get to bed until 5 am later that morning.

What I learned, and whether I’d recommend it

MyWhoosh is no joke. But I never thought it was; having completed all seven stages across a genuine range of routes, I can honestly say I was woefully underprepared for the mental effort and physical endurance this demanded.

Drafting on MyWhoosh, initially so different, is something I’m growing accustomed to, and it’s started to feel closer to real-world riding than I expected. I’ve also learnt that the 2026 Championship probably wasn’t the gentlest event to kick off a MyWhoosh campaign with.

And I’ve learned that the MyWhoosh community is every bit as vibrant, understanding, and welcoming as any I’ve found on any platform, which made this whole experience far more memorable than the results alone would have you believe.

As for recommending this to others, that’s a more nuanced call.

If the goal is simply to push through and complete all seven stages, forgetting about the racing entirely, then yes. Absolutely. Just be prepared to endure what is, in my opinion, one of the most brutal virtual cycling series currently out there, where just finishing is the reward.

If the expectation is to actually race it, to be a legitimate front-group contender just within Category 6, you’ll need to comfortably hold 3.5 watts per kilo for an hour or more, with plenty above that on the bumps, pinches, and climbs.

Would I do this again? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t already considering it, but only after the nightmares have stopped.

Now, what’s the SRC route this week?

Inside The Race (Website): www.insidetherace.com

Inside The Race (YouTube): www.youtube.com/@mywhooshracing

Inside The Race (Instagram): www.instagram.com/mywhooshracing

Hayley Simmonds (Instagram): www.instagram.com/hayleyrsimmonds

Emma Martin (Instagram): www.instagram.com/biking_emma

Matt Payne (Instagram): www.instagram.com/mattfixerpayne

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Frames were neutralised for everyone, the same rig across the board. Wheels were our own choice, and even though most people reckon it barely matters, I’ll take whatever mental edge I can get. ENVEs stayed on. Discs be gone.

Now “confidence” isn’t a word I’ll throw around quite as lightly again after this championship, but Sunday’s rest day had me feeling slightly more optimistic, even if my legs still felt like rubber and the stairs at home still required both handrails.

Stage 6’s parcours was the closest thing to my kind of course I’d seen all week (besides Stage 1), and I was coming in with one advantage: I’d been effectively time-trialling large chunks of every stage already. I knew exactly how this was going to hurt.

Did my new friend Bjorn chase me down in the second half of the race? Yes. Did I post my highest average power of all six stages, a whopping 208W? YOU’RE GODDAM RIGHT I DID!

Lap 1 took us straight into the first of three ascents up Camillien Houde, 1.63km at 5.9%, a real pinch, broken up by a short downhill that gave me just enough time to reset before going again. Michael Andersen and Tomi Leptiso matched me watt for watt the whole way up. Climb ticked off, and my focus shifted to the first sprint, the first of the series not decided by who crossed the line on the front.

FTS, hallowed be thy name.

My DS, Jessica Hamilton, called it perfectly: go full gas before the sprint zone starts, then hold it to the line. I ramped up and gave it everything.

Sixth

That’s where I crossed, briefly. It decayed to 8th once others had their turn (I’m lookin’ at you, Tim Sharp, and your 5ths), but as far as I’m concerned, I was 6th. Even Emma Martin sounded surprised to see a backmarker mixing it up. That meant I had to go again on lap 2, back to the fight with Michael, who’d used my recovery window to pass me. Tomi went with him, and that was the last I’d see of either. Still, I was sitting 75th, my best position of the series thus far, and I was going to defend it as best I could.

Deep into the second climb of lap 2, Bjorn Indal appeared behind me, chipping away second by second. The gap went down to 30, 20, 19, then back up to 23. That fight was coming, but it would have to wait because sprint two was approaching fast.

Jess flagged that my cadence had been too low the first time. I corrected, and as I crested the pinch into the sprint, Bjorn was now just 15 seconds back. Can’t I just have one easy lap?

I attacked in a slightly lower gear, veins bulging, shaving nearly 0.3 seconds off the effort. BOOM. I’ll take 7th in this field, on lap 2 any day of the week.

And that’s when Bjorn made his move, sensing I’d cooked myself a little too much. He shut the gap fast. By the end of lap 2 it was just 8 seconds, then he was past me, trying to pull clear. Not today, Bjorn, not today! While he freewheeled the downhills, I kept the power on, a gamble I wasn’t sure would pay off heading into the final lap, but I was going to find out.

Lap 3. I couldn’t shake him. It felt like he had me on an invisible rope; I’d lift the power, he’d lift his. Building for one last move. I wasn’t going to give him the chance. Near the top of the final climb, Bjorn passed me again, laying down 3.0w/kg. But where his strength was the climb, mine was holding the power on the flats and descents; his attack got shut down again.

Coming into the final sprint zone, we reeled in Javier Bertin, gaining another position. Bjorn had fallen 5 seconds back, but I knew that wouldn’t hold him off for long.

Now with under 2km to go, a gap that had ballooned to 16 seconds had disappeared again. Bjorn passed me and took 2 more. He wanted this as badly as I did, maybe more. Everything went red. I could have let him ride off and told myself a nice story about why that was fine. I didn’t. This wasn’t over.

1000m left.

Cadence up, power down. I passed him again inside the Flamme Rouge, sounding like a whale giving birth, through gritted teeth and pure adrenaline: 2.9 w/kg... 3.1 w/kg. If Bjorn wanted this position, he’d have to fight me for every metre of it.

Inside 400m, my gap was out to 5 seconds. Not safe, not with a possible sprint finish this close. I got out of the saddle for the last bump, eyes closed, heart hammering, watt bomb after watt bomb. The finish line seemed to be moving further away. “Keep going. Don’t sit down until you’re at the top,” I told myself. My legs had other significantly different opinions.

292... 298... still 400m out. I couldn’t see straight. Couldn’t read the time gaps; sweat was stinging my eyes. All I knew was Bjorn was right behind me, somewhere.

200m left, I had to sit down or I was going to fall down. And then, finally, the finish banner came into view. But where was Bjorn? Anyone who knows what it’s like to be snaked on the line by a chasing opponent knows it’s never over until it’s over. And so I left everything I had out there.

I crossed in 1:31:51, 21 seconds in front, and that was my best finish of the series. That final-lap battle pushed me hard enough that my lap 3 average came in 4 watts above lap 2.

This was redemption, not against Bjorn, who’s been a class act through all of this, but for my previous self, the one that was left shattered after stage 5. I wanted just one clean, honest effort to hang my hat on, and this was it. I paced it right, had something left to give at the end, attacked the sprints, and mixed it momentarily with the front group. I lifted when it would’ve been so easy to just roll over.

Tomorrow is stage 7. Whatever happens, thank you to everyone reading these moments from inside my head. The comments, feedback, shared experiences, and friends I have made have made this a really memorable experience. Genuinely unexpected, and greatly appreciated.

Time to finish this the way it started: with a smirk of determination and a glimmer of confidence.

The pens

It was 9:20 pm on a Saturday night in Melbourne, the temperature sitting around 10 degrees Celsius (or roughly 50 (F)reedom Units), and I remember thinking I would rather be anywhere else in the world right now. I was already dreading what was ahead.

My eyes flicked between the countdown in the pens and the A3 route profile printed in glorious colour, perched in front of me. This is the Colombia Mountain Route: 57.9km, 1,669m of elevation gain, three climbs, with a few flat kilometres scattered between these nightmares like false hope. And let’s not forget the side and headwinds thrown in to keep everyone honest. Averaged out, that’s 2.9% for 57km, with 43% of the time spent battling shitty wind of some description.

To whoever at MyWhoosh HQ decided this was a good idea for Stage 5, I have just one question: who hurt you?

Small mercies

There’s always something positive if you look hard enough, and in this case, it was Tim Sharp inviting me to join his Discord channel. Fantastic. Listening to the banter, the chat, the effort made the suffering slightly easier to carry. Bjorn was there, Scott too. Other names I recognised from previous stages, Rune, Tomi, drifted in and out. I’m sure there were more, but the voices started to sound the same after the first hour. I was silent for a lot of it. I could talk, or I could breathe. Rarely both.

Some might say Stage 5 was difficult enough on its own. But hearing that one of the guys was completing this stage on his wedding anniversary, which he had forgotten (and therefore purchased zero gifts for), reminded me there’s always someone who has it worse.

The first climb

The stage kicked off, and it actually felt like a race for about ninety seconds. Even the front recognised this would be a difficult day before I was gapped.

I averaged 10.6km/h and 200W for the first climb, just over 30 minutes, nothing I’ll be hanging on my wall anytime soon, especially knowing the bigger climbs were still ahead. I eventually caught up to Tomi as the Cat 5s caught up to us.

Through the flat section between climbs one and two, I reeled in Javier. Passing another Cat 6 back marker on a climb usually gives me mixed emotions, but I’ll admit I was secretly pleased to claw back a position wherever I could.

Paso Alto

The Paso Alto Climb started just before the clock ticked over one hour, and this one was going to take a while. Every subtle flat spot, even 40 or 50 metres of it, was anxiously awaited and gratefully received, even after I sacrificed a spot to Sacha Ott early on.

Tim Sharp was about three minutes up the road, so I fixated on the gap, watching it fluctuate. One moment it was 2:50; the next, it was 1:30 and then it was back to 2:40. My vision tunnelled, and when I wasn’t locked on the time gap, I was watching the names chase me. Bjorn is doing 2.5 watts per kilo while I’m grinding out 1.9. How is he doing that? I blocked it out and went back to Tim. Ohh, 54 seconds, awesome. Oh wait, it’s actually 1:18. WTF? And it went on like that for some time. Each swing encouraged me and made the day feel less manageable at the same time.

I eventually caught Tim at the top of Paso Alto, and with two climbs ticked off, I started to believe I could actually make it to the end of this stage. But you know what they say about the light at the end of the tunnel.

Climb three, and the cracks forming

Having someone to ride with always helps, especially into an 11km/h headwind. The chat got a bit more animated, and it was genuinely motivational to watch my speed climb above 15km/h for a change. Anything to stay ahead of Bjorn and Michael, only 50 seconds back by this point.

Just as the flat section between climbs two and three had lifted my average speed, it did exactly the same for Bjorn and Michael, who came sailing past at the start of climb three. That’s fine. I know who my friends are now.

We’d been at it for two hours and eighteen minutes, and with my speed, power, and heart rate all gradually dwindling, I knew the finish was still a long way off. That’s when the mental struggle started to make itself known. Really known. I knew I just had to keep turning the pedals and I’d eventually reach the end, but the combination of remaining distance and accumulated fatigue was doing everything it could to convince me otherwise. I kept pushing the thought out of my head as I kept trucking along with Tim. But with every turn of the pedals, every metre of elevation gained, the intrusive thoughts came back, and the doubt started to feel louder than the effort.

And then it happened

At 3 hours, 6 minutes, and 54 seconds, I did something I have never done in six years of virtual cycling.

I stopped. Only for about a minute, but it was enough.

It wasn’t the distance remaining, only 7.1 km at that point with half of it undulating. It wasn’t the gradient, even though we were sitting on a 9% segment at that exact moment. It wasn’t the four other stages already sitting in my legs. It wasn’t even the fact that it was 12:26 am. Honestly, I’m not sure what it was.

It’s easy to point at those things and call it an answer. Sure, this has been tough, double tough. But really, it’s nothing I haven’t done before, in some form or another, indoors or out. Whatever it actually was, mentally, I had cracked. I could have stopped the ride right there, recorded a DNF, and moved on, and no one would have cared. No spectacular headlines. No calls of commiseration. The world would have kept spinning regardless.

Instead, I sat up, I took a drink, reassured the others I was okay, waited about a minute, then took three attempts to clip back in before I started turning the legs again. I didn’t feel better. I just kept going.

The finish

Eventually, I reached the top, and with about 3.5km to go, I caught up to Tim again. We pushed to the line together, and yes, I did snake him on the finish, though something tells me he eased up, most likely out of sympathy, I suspect.

At just over3 hours and 40 minutes, Stage 5 was done. I’ll remember this one for a while, with a mix of accomplishment and disappointment. I guess whatever doesn’t kill you, right?. Anyway, the rest day can’t come soon enough.

Stage 6 is the TT, which people seem to have feelings about: the lack of a draft and how that will factor into their strategy. However, riding solo isn’t new to me, so it’ll be business as usual.

There are only two stages left. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and I genuinely don’t care whether it’s a train or not. Either way, I’ll finally be out of my misery, and that’s something I can look forward to.

The numbness

In my last post, I talked about the anxiousness and dread of lining up. That’s no longer the case, because you can’t feel anything when your legs are numb. I stare glassy-eyed as the countdown reaches zero, and only then am I flooded with panic, because now I actually have to turn the pedals.

Pain shoots through me like electricity, zapping my peripherals with a jolt of adrenaline as we push out. I’ll admit I was momentarily happy with the start of this one: a straight flat into a downhill. Naturally, the front of Category 6 took that as a personal challenge to drop the biggest watt bombs of the series. And like the night just before dawn, they were gone.

The real race

That’s fine, because the real race was never at the front. Sure, the heavy hitters were setting the pace, and why shouldn’t they? Qvickstrom, Rademacher, Ivanov, Montoya: quality racers, all of them. When you have that kind of engine, it isn’t just about completing the stage; there’s real strategy, tactics, and a specific pre-race structure involved, because the difference between them is often the finish, the placing, and the points on offer. Essentially, you can make choices. There’s a lot on the line for those few, and they’ve earned it.

But the real race, the unspoken one, the one that hides in a few live streams with 5 views, that aren’t broadcast with fancy graphics, was somewhere deep among the back markers, the second-half finishers. Using every ounce of experience and every scrap of motivation, not just to line up but to keep turning the pedals, not once, not twice, but three times up Dragon Fury. No fancy training plans, no coaches, no custom dietary requirements. Just Dads, sons, husbands, brothers-in-arms. Framed that way, the commitment takes on a whole different meaning.

Repaying Bjorn

On the first climb, I managed to repay some of my Stage 3 debt to Bjorn. We rode up Dragon Fury together with Oscar H, alternating turns and working to bag the first ascent. Even that early, my shoulders were hunched, and my head was dipping, never a good sign, but we made it to the top. I shouted encouragement to Bjorn, and although I knew he couldn’t hear me, I liked to think the positive vibes somehow translated through the app. Or that he’d at least catch it on the Twitch replay.

The Tim and Nathan show.

After that first ascent, I caught Tim Sharp, and it became the Tim and Nathan show for the rest of the race. We descended, ticked off lap 1, and suddenly there were only two laps left. Echoing the climb with Bjorn, Tim and I traded turns at the front as we headed back up. The climb was mercifully punctuated by a short, very short, flattish section about halfway, which I eyed hungrily every single time.

And that’s the real gold in events like this: the sense of camaraderie that emerges from shared suffering. We aren’t competing with each other, and we definitely aren’t enemies. (Simon is the exception, but you’ll need to read my Stage 2 recap to understand why. I joke, Simon. Mostly.) There’s something unique about these friendships, even the virtual, online kind, that form through suffering. An unspoken bond develops, and when I sit down and actually think about it, I think it comes from a place of honesty. There’s something to be said for experiencing something that pushes another person to a place where there’s no pretending, no excuses. You see the real person.

The finish

After the second and third descents, we found ourselves bearing down on the final few kilometres. The front had finished a while ago, the broadcast had packed up, the metaphorical lights had been turned off. Our race was still going, with our own places and finish still on the line.

With a kilometre left, I won’t lie: I was quietly thinking about putting the power down for one last kick. I knew there was nothing left in the tank, that I’d be calling on emergency reserves I didn’t actually have, but the would-be racer in me wanted something, even if it was just one more place at the tail end of a race everyone else had already gone home from. Turned out Tim wanted the same thing. We both kicked with 900m to go, and only one of us had the legs to keep the foot down. It wasn’t me.

The numbers

I crossed the line about 30 seconds behind Tim, who I suspect was quietly chuffed with that last effort (and if he wasn’t, he should have been). Congrats, sir. I finished 83rd, my best placing of the series so far, and I’m very proud of it.

Stage 5 brings 57km and 1,669m of elevation. I’ll wait for the numbness to return before I decide whether to line up. But something in me has already decided. I just need to accept it, and at some point, understand it.

At 66.6km and “only” 442m of elevation, you’d be forgiven for thinking this couldn’t possibly be harder than the California Hilly Route. You’d be wrong.

Like Stage 2, I sat in the start pens with my usual cocktail of anxiety and dread, my personal barometer for what counts as “hard” in this series having been reset completely, yet again. Sure enough, there was a bump less than a kilometre into the race, and my fatigued legs did what fatigued legs do; I was instantly dropped.

I soon found my people: the second-half finishers, the battlers... the unsung heroes. I settled in as best I could and tried not to think about what was still ahead.

What was ahead

What was ahead, you ask? Not one but two trips up the Hudayriyat Climb, 5.6km at 2.4%, adding 134m to the ledger each time, none of it gratefully received.

Over the 10km run-in to the climb, I shared the workload with Gareth Skw, Oscar H and Bjorn Roar Indal, names I was becoming increasingly familiar with as these stages wore on. This was also the first stage, and really my first time on MyWhoosh full stop, where I actually felt wind, proper headwind, the kind this course’s long flat sections seem built to deliver. Our little group breathed in and out like something alive: three riders, then five, then seven, back to four, back to seven again, right up until we hit the climb.

kgself, in the chat, informed me that the climb contained nine distinct steps and hairpins, with the gradient kicking up and then flattening off. Put that way, it sounded almost manageable. Almost.

The climb, and the man who saved my stage

My aim was clear: stay with the small group for as long as humanly possible. Remarkably, I actually managed that for the first 1.5km, before three of the group rode clear, stranding me in the middle with a couple of riders trailing behind, including Pawel Twardy and my soon-to-be best mate, though I didn’t know it yet, Bjorn.

Pawel eased past me around halfway up, right as the Cat 6 leaders started flying the other way on their descent. I pressed on regardless, reaching the 16.6km mark and the final kick to the top, then the U-turn, then the quick way back down.

Jessica Hamilton, who’s been in my chat the entire series, feeding me tips, intel and general encouragement, was cheering me on as I hit the bottom. And this is where Bjorn came to the rescue.

I was struggling. No point pretending otherwise. Bjorn slowly reeled me in, catching me around the 26.5km mark, and then did something genuinely kind: he eased off, sat on the front, and towed me for the best part of the next 8 kilometres, handing me whatever scraps of draft he had against a 12-13km/h headwind on the flats. It helped more than I can really explain. Thanks, Bjorn. I owe you one, and I hope I get the chance to pay it back.

Back on my own

After that, it was back to a solo time-trial effort, with the second ascent of the climb looming somewhere in my near future. My goal was to hold 90th or better, and when Oscar H came past me, I’d more or less resigned myself to another disappointment, right up until I passed Franklyn Vergara, who I suspect was dealing with some kind of mechanical issue. 90th spot was back on the table!

I’d love to tell you I found a second wind and the second climb felt easier than the first. That would be a lie. If the first ascent took 15 minutes, the second was even slower, but I made it to the top and back down again. No man, including myself, was left behind.

Cat 5s, Cat 4s, Cat 3s (you get the idea) streamed past me both up and down that climb, a steady reminder of exactly where I sit in this platform’s food chain.

Back on the flat, I passed Tommy Watts, somewhat to my own surprise, picking up another place I hadn’t expected. Tommy messaged me afterwards to explain he’d had technical issues of his own and limped to the finish somewhere between 30 and 90 watts. Ouch. Genuinely, ouch.

Eventually, I crossed the line. Another stage done.

Oh, and where was Simon, you might be wondering? He was well clear of me for this entire Stage, finishing minutes ahead. I’m still in 85th place, and Simon has edged closer in 87th. Well done mate, but neither you nor I are off the hook yet!

The question I didn’t expect to be asking

Everyone keeps saying the stages only get harder from here, and for the first time in this campaign, I found myself genuinely wondering whether I can see this thing through to the end.

That’s not a sentence I write lightly, and it’s not really like me. I’ve ridden 250km, 5,000m Audax events in the Australian heat. I recently finished FRR’s own Triquetra series, 21 stages in 23 days. Just the other week, I climbed for 12 hours straight, 5,000 vertical metres (through the night), for charity. Against that record, I’m standing in front of the mirror asking myself whether I can line up for Stage 4, let alone finish all seven. That’s confronting. It’s forcing some genuinely uncomfortable questions.

And I’m not acting overly dramatic about it. Well, maybe a little. Stage 4 is 68.3km with 1,110m of elevation across three climbs this time. When I say three climbs, I mean one climb we do three times, because why not. For those that know it, it’s the Dragon Fury Climb, an apt name I’m sure, same rough distance as the stage 2 climbs, but considerably more difficulty with a 4.3% average gradient. The question tonight isn’t the course.

It’s getting back on the bike at all.

Twitch Live Stream

You’d be forgiven for reading the name “California Hilly Route” and picturing something gentle. A meander. A pleasant undulation through wine country. That is not what this was. In reality, it was a soul-destroying 320m ascent into the depths of hell, the gradient flashing red in my head, if not literally on my screen, as it routinely touched 10%. One could be forgiven for seeing that number and turning around immediately, leaving this whole madness behind. I did not. I continued on. This will be a running theme.

The climb

Thirty-three minutes later, I made it to the top of the Country Climb, but not before donating several places to riders who were, let’s be honest, simply more capable and more courageous than me. Tomi Lepisto and I traded blows for the 84th spot for several kilometres before the road tipped up; I did briefly pass Simon Llewellyn at the 36.8km mark, which felt like a real achievement right up until he took the spot back a few hundred metres later. Then Michael Banke Andersen sailed through, followed shortly by his teammate Bjorn. That’s three places gone inside the first kilometre of climbing, with over 5km still left, and every one of them hurt the overall result. Christian Tovar was next to go by, though not before an entire wave of Cat 4s came screaming past me, which did wonders for my confidence and rather less for my ego, since for a moment I was fairly convinced I’d started pedalling backwards. Robert Cronje and Pawel Twardy claimed two more scalps as we hit the 40km mark.

I managed to cap the bleeding at seven lost places, mostly by keeping a nervous eye on Oscar H, Gareth Skwarczek and Tim Sharp, all three of whom were breathing down my neck as the final ramp to the summit kicked up to 12%. And yes, I haven’t forgotten Simon. He will become relevant later. This so-called “Country Climb” felt like false advertising on a criminal scale.

The descent, and the return of Simon

I finally crested the top and allowed myself the small mercy of free-wheeling down, scraping together whatever strength, energy and dignity I could find lying around. I think I lost an eyeball on the way up, because I was having a hard time seeing straight. Eight kilometres to go, surely the worst was over?.

Or was it?

Simon, by the summit, had opened up a lead of 3.5 minutes on me. So imagine my surprise on discovering that lead had quietly decayed to just under a minute, not that I’d noticed at the time. I was simply grateful to not be turning the pedals quite so hard anymore, while also knowing the gap was suddenly small enough to make the finish matter.

The descent was over far too quickly, and within minutes I was at the bottom, and so, infuriatingly, was Simon. That 55-second gap was now down to 10, which meant the next move could decide whether I recovered a place or lost the chance altogether. Two kilometres left. Could I claw back one place? I decided to find out.

As the road flattened, I put the power down, painfully dragging my watts past the 200 mark. I caught him with 1.6km to go, and rather than sitting up, I kept the power on and rode straight past, hoping he wouldn’t try to latch onto my wheel.

Of course, that is exactly what he bloody well did. Sat right in my draft, as if he’d known all along I was already at my limit.

The tunnel, the standoff, and the finish

By the time we hit the rainbow tunnel, Simon was glued to my back wheel, and a change of plan was very much required. I was not going to sit on the front and hand him a free lead-out to the line. With 1km to go, I eased off and let him drift past to the front. Game on, a proper game of cat and mouse, with the place now hanging on this next move.

By 600m, he was still leading, and I was quietly working out when to launch my sprint. Sprint. A generous word for what was about to be little more than a sustained, slightly desperate effort.

At 300m the road kicked left, and the finish line came into view. Go now, or hold a beat longer? The sprinter in me (or what was left of him) said go, so as the road straightened I got out of the saddle and put everything I had into the pedals.

I would love to tell you I demolished Simon with a blinding turn of speed. I would love to tell you that after 53km of racing he simply had no answer as I stormed across the line. I would love to tell you anything of these things.

Heartbreakingly, none of it was true. I did kick first, and I will proudly report I drove an anaemic 500-odd watts into the pedals for my trouble. That was, unfortunately, the full extent of my heroics, because Simon then unleashed a 12 w/kg beast of a sprint and gave me an unambiguous lesson in how it’s actually done. Fair play, Simon. Genuinely well played.

The numbers

So that was Stage 2. I came into the climb sitting 84th and finished the stage 90th, which made the losses feel very real. Climbing, I think we can safely say, is not my strong suit. Though racing on MyWhoosh has made it increasingly clear that I don’t really have a strong suit at all (thanks for that clarity, Simon) beyond a fairly unwavering determination to simply finish this series, whatever it costs me.

Will I be lining up for Stage 3 tonight? Yes. Do I now have a new mortal enemy? Also yes 😉. We’ve got two climbs to deal with this time, and combined they still have less elevation than that one country climb managed on its own, which doesn't make me feel any better about it.

Wish me luck. Or better legs. I’ll take anything I can get.

I’m not new to this. Four years of Zwift racing: 350 race finishes in that time and 88 podiums. I know what a race takes, how to position, how to pick my moments and what it takes to win. But none of that mattered last night. MyWhoosh, it turns out, hits different, and the real question I found myself asking was “Is MyWhoosh harder than Zwift?”

The plan that lasted five minutes

Stage 1 was 70km with 424m of elevation in Switerzland, not a monster on paper per se, but shaped to reward early commitment. Four intermediate sprints were on the table, and I’d mapped my race around them. My theory was simple: hold the front group to the first descent at 10km, survive the first real test, the Zurich Climb (a short 1.4km ramp at around 3.5% starting at the 12km mark) and I’d be in position to contest at least one or two of those sprint points.

It was a reasonable plan, and I assumed I’d get the chance to execute it.

I never reached the Zurich Climb with the front. Two kilometres in, on a bump so minor it didn’t even carry a category, I was off the back. Not dropped on the big test, dropped before I had even reached the test, on terrain I hadn’t flagged as a threat at all.

Why the small stuff is the real story

This is the part I keep coming back to. I’d done my homework on the climb that was supposed to decide the race. I’d done none on the uncategorised rise that actually did (not that it would have made much difference in the end anyway). And I think that’s the honest lesson of a first MyWhoosh race for anyone coming from Zwift with a pile of race experience behind them: your route sense doesn’t transfer. You can read a Zwift profile like a book after a few hundred races; you know where the moves go, what the platform is like and where the climbs tend to bite, but the pace, the speed and the effort of those on the front in Category 6 was at a level that, I’ll admit, I’m simply not used to.

Whether that’s a genuine difference in how MyWhoosh’s platform and pack dynamics behave under power, or simply the gap between a course I know intimately and one I’d never turned a pedal on, I honestly don’t know. But what I do know is that one race isn’t a sample size; it’s an anecdote, a useful anecdote nonetheless, because it’s forcing me to ask the question rather than assume the answer. The lesson is still provisional: can I be competitive on MyWhoosh as a Zwift racer, or do I need 350 race finishes under my belt on this platform before I can confidently stand toe to toe? I hope not, but I suspect so.

The long, lonely unravelling

What followed was the part every racer knows, and nobody enjoys talking about. I found a group, sat in, got dropped. Found another, sat in, got dropped again. Each pocket of riders I latched onto held for a little less time than the last, which is its own kind of sadness. I wasn’t just unlucky once; I was consistently on the wrong side of the numbers for the rest of the stage.

The moment that summed the race up best came when the Cat 5 bunch came through. There’s a particular flavour of hope that shows up when a bigger, faster group rolls through whilst mid-implosion. The fantasy is that you can grab the wheel, shelter, and claw back position by proxy. I chased that fantasy for a kilometre, maybe two, before it ended exactly how these things usually end. Off the back again. Alone again. Just me and another 350m of elevation, with none of the pack-assisted pace I’d started the race counting on.

What 85th actually tells me

I’m not writing this to complain about a result. 85th out of 108 in a field I’d never raced against, on a platform I’d never raced on, isn’t a disaster; it’s an honest appraisal of where I am when it comes to racing on MyWhoosh. What it tells me is that MyWhoosh racing rewards a kind of course-specific sharpness that you take for granted after years of racing on Zwift, and that I’m starting from zero on that front, regardless of what my Zwift results suggest that my legs or my racecraft are capable of. The lesson is not about the placing itself; it’s about what this platform seems to demand from the rider. The result matters less than the lesson: I need MyWhoosh-specific sharpness, not just form and a plucky attitude.

So did I pick one of the hardest possible races to kick off a MyWhoosh journey? Probably. A championship-format stage race against a field I know nothing about, on climbs I’ve never seen, isn’t exactly a gentle introduction. But six more stages remain, and now I’ve got something I didn’t have twelve hours ago: an actual read on where I am and what’s in front of me. That’s worth more than an easy top-20 on a stage I’d raced a thousand times before. The lesson for me is simple: start with the data, then build the result.

The changing numbers

After the race finished, things took an unexpected turn. Post-race, MyWhoosh bumped my FTP from 237 to 244. Fine, that’s a normal outcome of a hard effort. What’s not normal is that 237 was MyWhoosh’s number for me in the first place. My most recent Zwift FTP test (less than a month before) has me sitting at 258. That’s a 21-watt gap between what one platform thinks I can hold and what the other says I can do, before I’d even turned a pedal in anger. Is that the difference between the two?

And then Strava threw its own observation into the mix: my highest 30-minute effort of 2026, 245 watts, set during a race where I spent a good chunk riding alone off the back of every group I found, in an event I objectively didn’t perform well in, position-wise or performance-wise. But like anyone else who feels like they are drowning, I’ll cling desperately to anything I can, and these two results are just enough to encourage me to get off the floor and line up for the next race.

Stage 2 is tonight. Time to reset, take what I have learnt and go again.

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So before you do anything else: if you even think you might want in, go and complete your Power Passport now. We’ll get to why.

The Basics

The MyWhoosh Championships 2026 run from 7 to 14 July is a seven-day virtual stage race you ride from your own pain cave on your own hardware. Lowest cumulative time across the seven stages wins the GC, just like a real grand tour. The routes span flat, hilly and mountainous days, a Canada time trial on stage six, and a final showdown in Arabia.

The headline, of course, is the money. The prize fund sits at $1,000,000, split equally between men and women, and spread across six competitive categories rather than just lobbed at the overall winner. There are sprint and climbing classifications on top, plus team prizes.

The pitch from MyWhoosh’s esports director, Matt Smithson, is accessibility: the idea that an everyday rider who can hold around 3.5 w/kg (men) or 2.5 w/kg (women) has a real reason to line up and a real shot at a result. For one week, you get to find out what a pro’s stage-race week actually feels like, from your spare room.

That’s a brilliant hook, and it’s not a lie. But it’s worth reading the rest of the page.

Behind the press release

Here’s the number the announcement is quieter about: the size of the field. In 2025, the Championships drew around 650 starters from 47 countries. For an event built around a seven-figure purse, 650 is a somwhat dissappointing turnout. MyWhoosh’s stated ambition this year is to roughly double it. Whether they hit that target is the real measure of the 2026 event, far more than the dollar figure, which hasn’t actually changed since the inaugural 2023 edition.

And that dollar figure deserves context. MyWhoosh is free to use and funded out of the United Arab Emirates, the same backing behind the UAE Team Emirates squad that Tadej Pogačar rides for. Unlike Zwift, which has to fund itself through subscriptions, MyWhoosh doesn’t need to recoup a cent of that million. The purse isn’t a self-sustaining prize pool built on sponsors and media rights; it’s marketing spend. It buys attention, it pulls competitive riders onto the platform, and it gives MyWhoosh a flagship event to anchor a calendar around.

That’s not a criticism exactly, it’s just what it is. A million dollars of someone else’s money being handed out to cyclists is still a million dollars of someone else’s money being handed out to cyclists. But it does reframe the “anyone can win” messaging. Realistically, the GC money goes to former pros and dedicated esports specialists. The 2025 MyWhoosh men’s champion, New Zealander Michael Vink, is an ex-WorldTour rider with 12 major wins under his belt. The honest expectation for most of us isn’t a payday. It’s the gift pack and the “experience”.

The rumours are that gift packs will consist of real-world and virtual kit, as well as exclusive discounts. While a comprehensive line-by-line breakdown has not been published, a recent facebook comment suggests the pack will most likely inlcude: jerseys, bibs, a nice bag, gloves, a bottle and socks as well as exclusive digital avatar items for use within the MyWhoosh Platform and discounts from MyWhoosh partners and cycling brands.

Does it actually count as fair sport?

To MyWhoosh’s credit, they take the integrity question more seriously than some. Entry requires the Power Passport Test, a one-time verification of your power and weight data, and if you’ve raced their Sunday Race Club recently, chances are you may already be cleared. The platform’s anti-doping and integrity testing from SRC carries over to the Championships too.

In a world where weight doping and dodgy power numbers are the original sin of virtual racing, mandatory verification is the bare minimum done properly, and it’s a point in MyWhoosh’s favour.

The bigger picture

There’s a strategic story here too. With Zwift having swallowed Rouvy, FulGaz and Bkool, MyWhoosh is now the last big independent in indoor cycling and the only one with the financial firepower to throw a million dollars at a marquee event. The Championships are how it plants a flag: free platform, pro-sized prizes, equal pay for women, open to amateurs. That’s a sharp contrast to Zwift’s subscription-and-acquisition model, and it’s a contrast worth watching as the market consolidates.

So, should you enter?

If you’re a racer who has two seperate power-meters and likes a structured goal, absolutely. A seven-day stage race with classifications and a finisher’s gift pack is a genuinely fun way to spend a winter week down here in the Southern Hemisphere (or to keep the legs honest if you’re up north). Set your expectations around the experience, not the prize money, and you’ll have a great time.

Just don’t sleep on the admin. Registration closes 30 June, and you’ll want your Power Passport sorted well before the gun. The million dollars is mostly marketing, but the stage race is real, and it’s a good one.