MyWhoosh Championship 2026

First things first.....
This will be a bit long. I like rambling. But I wrote it all myself. No AI here.

I am not a regular MyWhoosh'er. The Sunday Race Club time is a huge clash for me and I simply never race it for that reason alone. I value my family time on a Sunday morning more.
Despite how many years I have spent in Cycling Esports, my knowledge and understanding of it all. I still class myself as a total noob on the MyWhoosh front. Which I actually wanted to use as a positive thing for competing in MWC and forming a better rounded opinion from my experience.
The noob'ness to it all is what caused my first issue though. Through my own doing and fault.

The Power Passport Test (and weight).....
I have not done a PPT since 2025 Worlds Semi Finals. So, I had to do a new one in order to enter MWC.
Typical Dean fashion, I left it to the last minute. Didn't even inform my coach Alex that I was committing to MWC or needing to do a PPT (which pleased him greatly!).... But I essentially set about doing the PPT 24 hours before the deadline set by MyWhoosh.
Not that bad a thing in itself, but I'd also been in Edinburgh for a long weekend. No training and eating/drinking ALL THE THINGS. And I don't regret it. I would do it all again. In fact, I would eat and drink even more!

The fun of it was the 73.8KG on the scales for the PPT. A full 3KG heavier than I have ever weighed for a cycling esports weigh in over the years. I honestly did not care. No shame what so ever. But I also didn't realise the consequence of this weight being taken only a week before MWC starting and the rules MyWhoosh have around weight loss.
With a natural settled weight during training of 68/69KG (which I have weighed in at upwards of 10 times in recent year for races) - You can see I was in for some bad realisation when discovering I could not drop any more than 2KG in MyWhoosh.

I was 69KG on the scales the morning of the rider briefing. Then when they covered the rules on this in the pre-race rider briefing I thought the only thing for it was to eat loads and not care, as anything less than 71KG was a waste of time.

Pre race weigh in = 71.4KG.
Which MyWhoosh set as 72KG and is the weight I'd need race at the whole week.

I absolutely endorse and support the rules on weight loss. We saw some extremely worrying behaviours not so long ago with many riders and weight. Some of the weight cut antics still ongoing these days is ridiculous and I entirely support MyWhoosh in making rules that prevent or discourage such actions. Rider health is the most important thing. However, in a very selfish and personal situation for myself here, the rules ensured I raced heavier than I should. The rules are good for some things, but also make no sense to others. Such as taking a bit of time off the bike and weighing in at a weight you have healthily been for a year once back to training. The rule on weights does not account for that in any way. Much like it would not account for a rider who is actively losing weight in a healthy way when they have it to lose. But I still support the rule and would rather see it in place, than not.

Category 3.....
MyWhoosh placed me in CAT3 for MWC. I thought that was fair. I had been put in CAT1 and CAT2 in the past. Both of which resulted in me getting my ass handed to me very quickly.
The level in CAT3 did catch me by surprise. Based on what I can do outdoors and what I have been capable of on Zwift in the past, I was very surprised to be one of the weakest riders.
I can only account some of it to the extra weight and lack of understanding of the physics/dynamics of the game itself. But the general standard of rider in CAT3 is very high. Those guys are super strong and it only took about 30 minutes for me to realise I was in a survival/training week and not one where I would be competitive at the pointy end of anything.

The Organisation/Admin/Comms.....
Was exceptional from start to finish in my opinion. It was a very well run event and I have to commend MyWhoosh for that as it could not have been easy at all.
There were I think 7 to 800 riders registered for MWC. Across 6 categories. All of which have verification in place as well as having to administrate daily rider weigh ins for CAT1 & 2.
Very, very impressive.
From my own category and personally, I had not a single issue all week. It was smooth, no drama and the information stream from MyWhoosh during it all was spot on. Not too much, but also never felt uninformed.

Having been very active in this sort of space for so long and having run multiple verified tier series myself also, I 100% deliberately stepped way back from analysing much of anything in this stage race. I just worried about racing myself and not about all the other uncontrollable stuff. Which was a delight and a great decision on my part. I cannot actually remember the last time (if ever) where I have just been able to race and not have so much other stuff to take care of team/org/race org wise.

The Seven Stages. Courses, Climbs.....
Overall I thought the courses were all a great length. And mostly a good variety. I enjoyed all of the stages. I'm a big fan of "proper". Long stages, big days on the bike. We do not get much opportunity for those things ever in Cycling Esports, so I did genuinely love that aspect of getting on the bike every day, working super hard and then needing to try and recover for tomorrow.

If anything, I would say there was too much climbing. And I love climbing. But indoors, climbing so much is not so appealing to me personally. And I then consider the folks in CAT5 and CAT6 for example, some of those stages must have been well over 3 hours for them and that's a different story. Nothing but respect to everyone who finished, but even more so to the people who effectively spent double the time on their bikes to finish the whole race. Massive respect to your efforts and your commitment.

Stage 1 & Stage 7 were my best ones. Basically because I got VERY close to the end of each of those stages with the bunch and had pretty decent legs plus a good ability those days to dig deep and keep with the group when I was almost dead and buried.

I scored some sprint points in stage 1, 2 and 3. But other than that, I had no notable results or power achievements to write about. As I say, the goal quickly shifted for me after stage one, where it became a case of big fitness gains/fatigue load and finishing the race.

I was at 120-160 TSS every day. Even as cannon fodder. Tuesday to Tuesday I was just under 1000 TSS which includes the Sunday which was a rest day. 1000 TSS for 6 days is good no matter the result for me.

Heat (yes, even in the Scottish Highlands) was a nightmare. I was seeing 28c and 80+% humidity in my garage. I even bought a new blower fan to join forces with my Wahoo Headwind and other huge floor fan.
But I was still seeing 39c and upwards almost every day on my CORE body temperature sensor.
No matter how cold the drinks were and using cold towels, it was impossible to keep cool enough to perform at your best. It was however, a major factor for most riders as most of them had much higher external temps in their countries than I did.
That's another nod and kudos to everyone who managed to see this race out whilst suffering 30c in their trainer rooms.

The Platform/Game.....
I'm very Scottish and can often come across as very negative. Especially in the heat of the moment.
However, I do always try to find positives and encouragements within negatives. I would not do all of the things I do/have done in Cycling Esports if it wasn't for this.
And if you have read everything to this point (well done, like seriously!), then I hope you see in my writing here, that I am actually positive and encouraged by many aspects of this race.

That said. I am going to have to get a bit negative here and it is for no other reason than it's the truth from my perspective. Honesty is important.

I absolutely admit to and understand I am a MyWhoosh noob. But much of the negative issues I have with MyWhoosh as a game are deeper than that. They are not just things to "get used to" or "learn". They are fundamental problems holding the game back as far as I am concerned. Problems I am only putting here to express them and hope for better. As I do genuinely want MyWhoosh to improve, get better and continue to advance in this space. I have a lot of invested interest to Cycling Esports and MyWhoosh lead from the front on giving racing a proper space. So, we need to support that and that is what I am doing here. I am not just calling out issues for the sake of it, I want the game to improve,

1. "Feel" - There is none. It is rooted in the lack of speed perception. 70KPH and 20KPH look the same. You are passing road furniture at a snails pace at all times and I just cannot get used to it at all. This in turn leads me to really struggle with the feeling of draft and momentum.
We do not have any physical body language from riders and virtual avatar animations in the game are very odd. So, with a lack of feel to it all, it really is quite difficult to gauge effort and race on the game in general.

2. Visuals - The game and maps for the most part do look very nice. It's pleasing on the eye and I do like looking at the backdrops and roads etc. However, the gradients often look way out of whack. Downhills that look like uphills. This enhances point 1 above and results in the lack of feel to the game, or immersion. As none of it really ties up with reality. Perception and anticipation are thrown out of the window down to these two issues combined.
No word of a lie, in stages 1 & 2, there were points where I felt light headed and sick. It was motion sickness. And I do not suffer from motion or travel sickness at all. It must have been something I did get used to as the stages went on as it didn't happen again. But during those two initial stages I was questioning whether I could cope with a week of it visually.

3. Trainer Resistance - I thought this was likely specific to me. But I have since had multiple riders say the same thing to me and they, like me, just attribute it to being a "MyWhoosh thing".... The trainer resistance feels muddy/gritty in MyWhoosh. I am riding an Elite Justo 2, which is a great feeling trainer. I've tried so many trainers over the years and the thing I love most about the Justo trainers is that they feel really good. They are the closest to ride feel of outdoors in my own opinion.
I do not have this dull/sandy/false resistance all the time in the pedal stroke on Zwift or TrainingPeaks Virtual. But it exists in MyWhoosh.
One rider told me it was the in-game wind. But I contest that, because the false resistance is there ALL the time. Even downhill with a tailwind in game. It is constant and just feels very fake/false.
It's not just the feeling though, the RPE for efforts is higher. The dual recordings match very nicely, the power seems totally correct. But the effort for said power is higher than it should be and I can confirm this in my own data with heart rate for even z2 during these races. It is higher for efforts I have been doing for years because I am pushing through resistance that shouldn't be there in the trainer.
At this point I have no idea if it is just normal in the game. Is specific to some setups with some connection protocols. I have no idea. But it is extremely frustrating.

These are my main points of concern and things I'd like to see improved with the game.
As means of balancing things out though, I do have to commend the stability of the game throughout. I didn't have a single dropout with my equipment, I didn't see any performance issues or any disconnect issues the whole race. The game was extremely stable and solid.
Pen entries, bike assignments. It was perfect and resulted in no input from me for those things to happen. It really was a joy to have that assurance, jump in the game and get on with your race. That makes a huge difference to tired riders having to pair so much equipment and worry about so many things for their race. I was very impressed and we all need to thank the MyWhoosh staff behind the scenes for this. It didn't happen by accident, it happened because they done a fantastic job!

Closing Out.....
I am really glad I took part in MWC. It was a great event. The community feel/vibe was excellent, the commitment levels from MyWhoosh as a company, and from all of the riders was something to behold.
I had quite a lot of moans about things. But that's me. On reflection when sat down writing about the whole experience, it is 90% positive for me and I am glad that I done it.

If you raced the MWC, I hope you had a great week and it went well for you. No matter what your level is, where you finished. I hope it was beneficial to you and that it gave you a good outlook and hope for events in Cycling Esports.

Let's all keep supporting each other and pushing this discipline of cycling forwards!

A massive thank you to my coach, Alex Coh. He is always there. Always! Watching. But he has my back at all times and knows exactly how best to handle situations with me. He's genuinely a huge driving force behind all of the things I do and I rarely tell him such things as I prefer calling him names "for the banter". Thanks Coachy Bear.