As last year, I am using the IndieVelo platform for our winter indoor virtual racing. In the Midweek series you have a number of different time slots to ride each week’s race. Today was the first option for September race 1 at 9am and both myself and Robert Gilmour (Hounslow & Dist. Whls) were in the same pen. I recorded this heat and Rob and I ended up sprinting for 6th place after failing to catch the lead break.
The way this series works is all riders are put into various pens according to their ability, Rob and I were both in Pen 5, each pen it then filled with bots so 64 in total in this race. Every IndieVelo bot has their own characteristics, some are sprinters, others are climbers, some aggressive and some wheelsuckers! At the top level of racing, IV users like to race in single pen events with only humans and no bots, but for most of us those races end up as ITTs as it unlikely that similar ability riders all log on to race at the same time, and more importantly, the ability matched pens does mean almost everyone has a reasonable chance to win each month long series.