Where do you look for your peak watt output?

Straaaaaaava 🙂

I’ve won 3/4 cat bunch sprints on the road with less, you’re doing it wrong 😉

Had an awesome ride for the usual Friday night out. Loads of single-track and woods, loads of fun! Ended up at the Pot Kiln pub drinking beer and eating venison scotch eggs, then due to fading light and time we hit road and trails to shoot home, not exactly sober but that makes the woods more exciting!
All of that and we were never more than about 4 miles from home!

Njee20- Yeah- it’s the preceding 1-2minutes that are the problem 😉 My sprint on Tuesday was like 142 out of 1918 on Strava for the last 10seconds.

Yep CH destroys me in sprints – the max I’ve produced recently is like 1200w (working on it). This is why I keep telling him in the racing thread to sit and wait to deliver that payload of 1500-1900w on the final sprint. 😆

Video evidence of him destroying us (3 mins in)

[video]https://youtu.be/wcK8fo32STA[/video]

Balance it out with this though haha

[video]https://youtu.be/xcb3jZDOZA8[/video]

In my defence, that second session was supposed to be form sprints and S drills- not muscular endurance 😀

Doh! Still no jersey.
Didn’t even catch MrBlobby let alone Nath. Might have squeezed a STW top 5 though.

Has anyone entered a max HR into zwift? I notice my Garmin fenix 3 gives different times in zones/ completely different zones compared to zwift. I’m presuming my fenix is reporting correctly.

Decent time there crosshair, i dont think i will be troubling that.

Just did the US Sunday Spin. It’s an A Cat group ride on London Classique today. It started at 2.5, then two laps at 3.0, two laps at 3.5 and two laps race to the finish.

Having now seen Frank Garcia in the flesh, I thought he’d get dropped easily on the last lap but books and covers and all that- I was impressed he lasted until the final climb.

If you want to try a race but don’t fancy a proper race, I’d highly recommend these drop-rides. This one was very well run and great fun.

I rode past your house earlier CH, played a bit in the woods just up from you before heading to Cold Ash, then to Donington, then Snelsmore Common, eventually back to Worlds End for a beer with Mrs Weeksy and then home 🙂

45km or so and barely touched the roads 🙂

I love how big this thread is. Without reading all of it, what is best way to get myself zwift ready? I have a road bike and an iPad – I’m assuming I need a smart trainer. Which one? Is that all I need?

Wallop – if you are going to run it on an ipad you need either a smart trainer that works via bluetooth or a dumb trainer with a bluetooth speed and cadence sensor. Dumb trainer way is very much the poorer option of the two as it is far less immersive but i guess it will be cheaper. Smart trainer is great and zwift controls the resistance so no cheating and it gets addictive. I have a tacx t2240 which was £199 from Halfords and was the cheapest smart trainer availsble.

Yeah I saw on Strava. You only just avoided having a highly strung Gamekeeper chasing after you 😆

I ended up feeding pheasants today so only rode to hit my 100mile Strava goal- I was absolutely knackered before during and after. (Sat on my buggy right now watching them go to roost)

I figured a 25mph group ride was the quickest option 😆

Lol I thought I stuck to the trail as signed, mostly. 8)

Thanks Blader. Just having a look around, the Halfords Tacx is £270, but Wiggle are doing a Tacx Satori Smart for £150. Is that a good buy as well? Seems to tick all the boxes.

Looks like the flow has increased in price…

I’d buy this, with a British cycling code brings it down to the Flows price: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/tacx-vortex-smart-trainer/rp-prod125671

Satori isn’t fully smart – resistance is controlled by a cable not your iPad/pc.

Another tough one last night. I’ve had a fairly busy riding weekend but with the MiL over it made sense to jump in the garage for the 8pm KISS 2nd base so my wife and her could spend time together.

Race started off at a tough pace (As they all do), but i was fairly OK in the bunch and a big bunch it was too ! about 15 of us…. We dropped a couple, then flew round and as usual on/after Horseguards hill i lost the wheel, i managed to claw it back, but it seems i used up the reserves an d i lost the wheel again on a break and i was history, out of that bunch. I put in a spurt of 400w average but that was only enough to maintain the gap, not to claw anything back, so i eased slightly, Did the next 3/4 of lap on my own and noticed a fella called Price was closing in rapidly on me… Really rapidly… Don’t know if he fell asleep on the start line or something, as he caught me he was averaging about 3.8w/kg, so i upped the pace and jumped on his wheel. We were now 1min 10 behind the bunch. Another guy out riding joined us and we were a bunch of 3. Me and Price had a few chats and i informed him i didn’t have anything to lead out at 3.8w/kg, so i just hung on his wheel, he seemed OK with that, so between the 3 of us we set about closing in on the pack. Price took us to within 30s of the pack, sheesh, that was some riding from him, we also caught 2-3 riders who blew up late on and lapped a couple of guys.
Coming into the final 1.5km i told Price to leave me as i couldn’t hold his wheel and i stayed with random guy as Price powered off and left us… Good thing was i managed to jump on another wheel along with the random and we held a decent pace to the end.

Overall result was 8th, which i could argue should disappoint me, but as always i gave everything that i had and left nothing, so it’s hard to be unhappy. I knew my legs were not 100% after a 3.5 hour ride the day before, but the ride was good anyway. Somehow i managed to get +4 points on the Rankings, which puts me on my highest points ever, which is all good.

Couple of days resting now and then a decent ride on Sat morning. That will be pretty much it then until the White Roads Sportive.

Just done the KISS crit series which i think was streamed live. It was a brutal start but stayed with the front group till 10km when i dropped off. Just no let up in the pace to recover so jumped in with a couple of riders and a pretty fast random group and we ended up passing a few riders who had dropped off the front group later in the race. I dont think the results have been finalised yet as it was a huge field. It has a LOT of fast riders in it.

Wallop – i am not sure about that Satori, i seem to remember there was a reason why i didnt go for that one but cant think why. I wonder if it cant be controlled by zwift? One of the other guys on here might be able to help, i shall have another look at it to see if anything jumps out.

Edit: Nathb has already answered it. This means the satori is only a smart dumb trainer so it can be used but it will be far less enjoyable experience.

Shitting hell !
Just nearly blacked out in a KISS race – waaaay too hot (my trainer’s in the roofspace of an uninsulated garage and it’s boiling in there, plus a thousand percent humidity after an afternoon’s rain).

I was dripping in sweat just setting things up before the ride and then a fastish start meant I totally lost it about a third of the way up box hill. Genuinely thought I was going to fall off.

So, did I read on here that you can suspend a zwift account ? How might a chap do that ? I’m buggered if I’m doing that again before about October

Scaredypants – dont suspend your account just move up north!

I was going to try and break the 7 minute barrier for box hill but decided i had a bit too much riding in my legs so did the wbr race around Richmond flat. I thought if i pootled along i could treat the race as a warm up for box hill attempt but still wasnt sure if i had the legs. Suffice to say whilst in the lead group in the race it was obvious i needed a rest as i struggled up the 2.2% gradient! I hung on for the rest of the race but it was incredibly difficult so message received from legs to rest up, box hill attempt will now be Friday.

Arrrggghhhhhh. Made a mess of that. Short 1 lap race, pack of 13 of us, sitting pretty in group. Dropped back a bit near back of bunch and suddenly the group split and 5 rider went between some back markers and when I noticed we were 3s off the group! I sprinted but they blew us away!arrrggghhhhhh.

We ended as an 8 group I think. I piled the pressure on with 900m and we gapped 3, so a 5 man sprint for the line. I got 3rd.

Fun little race.

+1 point on rankings lol.

Going to jump on the 12.15 race today, 3 laps of Volcano Flat. Should hopefully have a reasonable number of riders, 20 in it at this stage, which should mean 30+ come race time. Will then be taking tomorrow off to rest the legs a bit, but have a bit of free time for lunch today so quite fancy this one.
It pretty much suits me as a rider, i end up getting dropped on the exit of the mountain usually on near the village, it’s only a 3-4% climb but if i’m going to go pop, that’s where it happens. We’ll see though, will give it my best as always.

All training at the moment is on the Parkwood as that’s the chosen bike for my upcoming events in a week or so.

I have promised myself a rest day today but i do quite fancy a spin but i shall resist and thankfully the 12:15 is feeding time at the zoo here. Box hill challenge tomorrow is the main goal so i MUST resist. Got get them weeksy, i fully expect you to be troubling the cat b riders.

LOL i’ll do my best mate, but the legs don’t seem to be working like they were 6 weeks ago. Back then i’d be averaging about 290w for the race, i’m now struggling to finish on 275w for a length of the same distance. It seems that sitting up in the higher range of power is a LOT harder at the moment for some reason. Wish i had more answers

For those of you not following my racing thread I just wanted to say wow to Zwift as a training tool!!

Bar my weekend rides (longggggg) and Z1 rides outside all my structured training has been done using Zwift.

In 2 months** I’ve now increased my FTP from 315W (4.5w/kg) to 332W (4.74w/kg)!!

** I got a new FTP of 316W in a race 1 month ago

So yeah, Zwift can have my £8 a month regardless of use. What an amazing tool!!

Holy Moly ! That was gruesome at times !

Held onto a fast bunch for 3/4 of a lap but couldn’t stay with them, there was a bunch closing on me who seemed to be averaging about 3.7w/kg and i was on about 2.9, so thought “if i can hang on their wheels i may be able to use the slipstream”… Sure enough, they came past part way in lap 2 and i hung, after 5 mins i thought “we’ve got 40s on the group behind, if i can hang on for this lap i may be able to fend off the ones behind on my own on last lap”, so i hung and hung, sometimes at my limit, sometimes doing OK on the HR…. I made it onto lap 3 and we went up the incline after start line, i held them but got dropped by 8m as we went down to cross to the volcano… BOOM ! 600w for 10-15s saw me close back on… but the HR hit 176 which is close to death for me ! With max this year being 180 i was struggling, but i hung on and on. Along the volcano and up to the village, weird, i actually went past and pulled out a few meters on them, putting out 4.8w/kg up the hill…. then recovery on the flat… I was doing OK now, we had 1min 20 on the group behind and we’d caught 2 guys in front down from 49s to 15s, 3km to go…. We had a bit of a chat on screen “i don’t have a sprint in me” typed me…. “me neither…” LOL. Up the final kick a had a feather, used it and it did OK, but coming along towards the line it was a 4 man battle… 1 guy went for it, it took me 600w again for me to hold his wheel, but we were too early ! Still with 500m to go and both going hard at 5.5w/kg, i went for it… i didn’t have any kick in me, but i could hold this…. Looked to see where the others were, 8m, 9m.. Hmmmm…. 6m, 4m…. “wheres the line !! “, 3m, and i made it, held the 3 other guys off, sure it was only for 28th place out of 61, but the results show it was for a Cat C win ! Which i’m more than happy with. It would have given me 11th out of 18 in B, which TBF isn’t bad at all for me… But i’ll happily take the Cat C win 🙂

Strava has me at 278w which for an hour race i’m more than happy with. It seems about average for me these days. I was a selfish rider today and barely took a turn at the front, but hey, that’s how it is sometimes.

Weeksy that sounded like a momumental effort. I had a peek at the live scores about half way through and it looked like you were in a group of four going a good rate. It always a nice feeling when you find a group that can really push you. It was a big field so thst result is very respectable indeed considering the top dozen were going at a fair old rate.

Nathb – whats involved with zwifts ftp test? Never done one before so might have a stab at it next week.

Thank you, I think i used a little more common sense than normal, i’d usually have tried to hang longer with the guys in front, ending up burning myself out. But i thought “nah, lets ease a touch and get this other group”… Whihc seems to have worked well looking back.

I still think i’ve got a bit to go before i’m a proper B and i’ll hang in the Cs a little while longer as in anything over a 40 min race, i’m 100% a C… Admittedly, quite a strong C in the right type of race.

Looking back, i hit 179bpm ! which apart from when i was trying to actually get my HR as high as possible using interval sprinting, is the highest i’ve seen this year !

Sometimes trying to hang on to a fast group doesnt make for an enjoyable race and for me always ends up being slower as i gas out before the end so you just limp over the line with nothing to aim for. Max heart rate suggests you were close to the limit so it was a good decision to hold back and keep pushing for the line.
I am looking at getting a cheapo bluetooth hr chest strap from the bay, will any pair with zwift on ios or do i need a specific one?

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=371981639005&globalID=EBAY-GB

but the legs don’t seem to be working like they were 6 weeks ago. Back then i’d be averaging about 290w for the race, i’m now struggling to finish on 275w for a length of the same distance. It seems that sitting up in the higher range of power is a LOT harder at the moment for some reason. Wish i had more answers

Weeksy, I think I tried to give you a solution to this the other day. Basically, your intensity work has stagnated. To within a few watts and a few minutes, your races are the same. Long drawn out efforts of around Sweet Spot up to FTP.
Your body has basically hardened itself to these now. It’s adapted, strengthened and now is just getting through them.

To trick it, you need to change something. Either go longer at just under the same pace to PUSH your FTP up, or go harder at over your FTP to PULL your FTP up.

The hilly Watopia climb KOM or the Volcano climb could both be good or even Boxhill. But basically, you want to get to around 20minutes of work spread over the various intervals (So 2 or 3 Boxhills or 4 or 5 Hilly KOM repeats)

I’m not saying this with no evidence either. Team TFC has got loads of guys who joined Zwfit, got addicted to racing, progressed to high C’s and are stuck there. They all do pretty much nothing but Zwift races and are stagnant.
The ones who have carried on and progressed are the ones racing less and training more.

Whilst that may clearly be correct, the problem I have is with the structure of that, the dedicated training and following a plan etc, as you know, it’s just not me. Throughout all of this, the main goal apart from fitness is pleasure. I enjoy Zwift racing, I wouldn’t enjoyed structured repeated efforts at all.
I totally accept what you’re saying, but it’s not likely to happen.

I’ve now got 3 weeks off Zwift as it’s event time instead now, so we’ll maybe revisit thought after that.

It doesn’t need to be a structured plan though- it just needs to be different.
Put some good music on and do the Hilly KOM flat out four times. Aim to get your power even for all four efforts. The downhills will give you the recovery you need.
Bingo- a Vo2 Max interval session without even realising it was training 😉

Two days later, do a Zwift race but set a timer and attack hard for 30seconds every three minutes or attack every single climb flat out.
Bingo, tricked yourself into another session.

Once a month, do the KISS 100 but race it as hard as you normally race a short one. Bingo- a tough Endurance session with SST intervals in the bank.

Race the Saturday morning KISS pursuit races- bingo, another Vo2 max effort for ‘fun’.

But if you keep doing more or less the same old thing, you won’t illicit a different adaptation from your body.

+10000 for what CH is saying.

I was skeptical at first too, ALL my riding for the last couple of years was long and at one pace (hard).

Now I’m genuinely looking at breaking the magic 5w/kg barrier towards the end of the year by mixing it up!

Actually the training is believe it or not quite fun!

Weeksy – i am just starting to do what CH says. I have realised the last few weeks that i am just repeating the same kind of cycling over and over again with zwift and thus my results are pretty stagnant. This is why i have set myself the boxhill challenge so it messes with my body and mixes it up. I struggle to get out these days with weather,time and family so mix it up in zwift which you can easily make fun.

I get the impression Weeksy that you could get more training from the races, you regularly seem to say “I realised I couldn’t hold the pace of the group, so I sat up”. It’s a virtual race, there’s one 20 minutes later! Crucify yourself to stay with a group, if you get blown out then pack up and climb off, or spin your legs out.

Hill reps needn’t be boring either, not on the mountain, too long IMO, but Box Hill is a decent length. Try it!

Did the WBR flat race at 6.05 this morning, only 11 entrants, was strongest in the group of 4 that formed, it was a bit pedestrian, so I was doing loads on the front, attacking and sitting up etc, attacked with 3 miles to go on the last lap, got a 10 second lead on the other three, then screwed up totally and got caught in those annoying rollers at the end of Watopia flat lap, ended up second. Annoyed at myself! Totally overlooked the fact I had nothing in the legs having rolled out of bed onto the turbo without even having a drink first!

FINALLY CRACKED IT! Thats right folks the elusive (to me anyway) 7 minute barrier for box hill has been broken. Rest day yesterday and fierce determination i managed a 6:47 exactly and it was horrific, nothing left at the end and felt a little bit sick too. Gonna do a wbr race now just to cool down.

Gonna do a wbr race now just to cool down

I think you’re possessed by the ghost of weeksy !

(well done on the climb)