I Picked the Hardest Event to Start My MyWhoosh Journey.
Three hundred and fifty Zwift races and 88 podiums didn’t prepare me for the MyWhoosh 2026 Championships.
Let’s start with the number, because there’s no dressing it up. Stage 1 of the MyWhoosh Championship 2026 had 108 riders lined up in Category 6, and I crossed the line 85th (not exactly last, but I could definatley see it from where I was) and if you’ve followed my racing for any length of time (I have an extensive catalogue of live streams on my YouTube channel), that result probably looks odd sitting next to my name (or maybe not?).
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.