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Njee20 there is no way i could get down to 11 stone, you can see my ribs now and i am 13 stone. I have broad shoulders which i guess doesnt lend itself to being a racing snake. I will dip under 13 stone by a few pounds and i think that will be as far as i go.
Fifeandy - i have a pin head so if my frame gets too skinny i just look ill then couple that with my ugly face and i end up looking like a drug fiend waiting for my next fix. The wife is already not keen on my size now as my legs have "disappeared" according to her.
Disappeared legs work pretty well for some people:
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They should be offering him food not water 😐
They should be offering him food not water
Nah, still carrying a bit of early season weight at Paris-Roubaix, need to slim down a bit more for the tour!
Excellent photo though that shows what >6W/kg looks like.
Now you see that is not a good look. Heck i am no where near that level and i certainly dont want to be. I would rather be faster through hard work than diet.
I downloaded zwift this week and I thought I would give it a go, I am using a tacx smart flow and pc.
I have managed to do a free ride and a workout, but I am completely clueless about the races! I have figured out I should be in D cat, but when I look at the races lots of them seemed to say you needed to change your name to be included in the results! Not got a clue about how to do that! I thought you could just click on a race and then crack on, but it seems to be a little more complicated than I thought!
I am nenjoying things, I just want to give racing a try!
I would rather be faster through hard work than diet
Hard work alone won't get you much beyond 4.5w/kg.
Phil40 These days, the event module and the way the results are captured by Zwiftpower.com means that changing your name is not essential. But it's easy to do so on the menu screen anyway, just click the little pencil next to your name.
Also, many races remove all the non racers from view now, so you won't confuse anyone by not having the tag in your name.
So basically, just join any of the races that take your fancy on the event module, warm up a little and pedal like mad!
BAck to Zwifting later after a 3 week layoff, i am likely to do the KISS 2nd base race at 8pm i think, i was going to do a race earlier, but i need to spend time in the bath and getting shaved along with just trying to feel a little more human.
Welcome back weeksy, just to let you know that whilst you have been away all of us are now Cat A riders in the elite league so you best crack on and catch up.
I did the ZHR hare and hounds race yesterday and it was one of the best races i have done. We had 10 of us in the group chasing the C group and it was just at the perfect pace and no one tried to go off the front, we just all worked together. We only split up in the last 0.8km when the pace really ramped up. Anyway i went early and ended up finishing in 3rd ( 3rd in group and as it happens 3rd fastest overall) just 2.5 seconds behind the winner. Very enjoyable and strangely i didnt change gear once in the entire race except for the sprint finish at the end with 0.5km to go.
Word of advice:
Don't go straight from 3 weeks off to straight into a hard paced race, especially if you had a late night, early start and have eaten just about everything on the face of the planet and drunk gallons of beer!
It was tough. Hung with lead group for a lap and half but missed 2 pedal strikes as I sat up off the seat and lost the bunch. Hung on as we'd built a large gap to finish 11th out of about 40 but I have a feeling 6-7 will be a DQ. Power wasn't bad but HR was 174+ when it should previously have been 165
Gulp ! I rode outdoors on the roadie !
Wasn't a long one but was trying quite hard ! managed to set PRs on every segment apart from 1.... Pretty happy to be quicker than i was, especially after the layoff. ! Eeeek.
Njee20 there is no way i could get down to 11 stone, you can see my ribs now and i am 13 stone. I have broad shoulders which i guess doesnt lend itself to being a racing snake. I will dip under 13 stone by a few pounds and i think that will be as far as i go.
You should be able to see your ribs, that's healthy! You're probably not carrying much fat on your rib cage, so it's a bit of a moot point. I do think in part we have a warped perception of what 'healthy' is, but anywho.
I did a group ride on Friday, never tried one, was quite pedestrian, but a big field. A load of guys charged off from the go, like it was a race, I stayed with the leader, but did eventually end up ahead in a group of 10 or so, sat up and went back to the group for a while, but ended up 'finishing' 3rd, do loads of people give up on group rides, or do you get kicked out if you get a certain distance ahead?
Actually looking on Zwift Power I got DQd anyway, presumably because I was over the threshold.
Load of people give up if a bunch of mongs go off at a stupid pace 😉
How can you get DQ'd from a group ride ? Why was a group ride in ZP ?
There were 98 starters it said, although ZP lists 70 (of whom 21 were DQd), about 10 went off fast, not insanely so, but clearly had no intention of staying with the group! I ended up about 3 minutes ahead of the leader. Obviously they did just give up, hence disparity between ZP and the side bar at the time.
Why wouldn't it be on ZP, isn't it for all "events", not just races?
Generally the only group rides that go on ZP are the ones with a race final lap. Often they DQ people for starting the race lap ahead of the ride leader.
It's a tough one with group rides. If your ride leader is a woman, the pace can be well lower than advertised. (2.5w/kg is slow if she weighs 50kg!) and if that doesn't fit with what you have planned then hooking up with 5 or 10 like minded souls off of the front can be a good way to get the pace you had hoped for.
People take it way too seriously IMO and one or two seem to get off on a)having a huge pack and b) typing smug rebukes at those doing something different.
I've yet to notice the behaviour of others affect my ride- the ride leader being a control freak is way more annoying than a few people riding off into the distance.
Agreed, didn't bother me. The leader put a few messages saying "ease up at the front", but wasn't pushing it. The group ended up hugely spread out.
You've only got to look on the Facebook group for how ridiculously serious some people take a bit of fun. It's crazy!
Thought i'd do a nice ride today.... Jumped on the Aussie Hump Day Ride... It went nicely, was sitting at 120bpm for most of it, with an average of about 200-220w, so fairly comfortable. At the end was a 2 lap race... It was chaos as there were 300+ riders... But i was holding a decent pace of about 280-300w, then.... Puncture ! I just noticed it starting to slip, then more, more..... Bollox ! Had to bail out 🙁
Today i passed 5000km for the 2017. My target is 7500km in my head but not sure how realistic that one is this close, so 7000 would be nice.
Am i right in thinking all I need for this is something like the Wahoo Kickr a laptop with bluetooth 4 and obviously a subscription to Zwift to get going? Also am I right in zwift just has 3 maps? Need to get something sorted ready for winter.
Watopia for example has 10+ different routes, some flat, some climby etc. So while Watopia is only 1 map, it's not just a single route. You can also start on one, go on another at a junction, then another, etc etc
I did a WBR race today, 4 laps flat, pushed proper hard. Finished well, but lost 10 ranking points!
My Zwifting/form has turned to crap after the time off recently. My biggest mistake i think is that i'm trying to ride at my old power, but my HR isn't allowing it after 20-5 mins and i end up blowing up badly... Today was one of them day, my HR was sitting at 170, then 174, then my tempo pace it was still 170, i can't maintain that ! I need to lower my expectations slightly. It could partly be because i'm using the Parkwood, not the Isaac to a small extent, but i still think i'm off my pace.
Will need to reign it back a bit and either stop racing for a week or two and build fitness instead, or lower the expectations and sit with the next bunch back instead.
Tomorrow is outdoors anyway, but after that, Mrs Weeksy is away so i'll have loads of time to pedal while my lad is playing and i'm looking after him.
I have found that somewhat surprising to me, fitness does seem to hold over time thanks to training and zwifting, my times all round are still near/better than my PRs, but more importantly, if we go back to pre Zwift, then I'm 15% quicker on all tested sections. Which can only be a very good thing.
Mrs Weeksy is away in Greece for a week now, so I've got complete zwifting week and nothing outdoors.
Decision time later on which bike, whether I ride or race, etc. I do find the incentive to push more when racing, so ZHR afternoon tea race at 4pm is looking good. It's outside of my comfort distance though so will be a hard one!
Weeksy - what i find after an absence from cycling is the first ride back always seems difficult and statistically lower but the next ride is almost always back to normal parameters. I have just had a break for four or five days and just pigged out, first ride on zwift was awful, i pushed incredibly hard and i still had lower stats. Did the PRS race last night and smashed out avg 290w and i was quite comfortable for the first 1.5 laps. This happens virtually every single time, second ride always back to normal, i have no idea why.
Anybody have any ideas why i keep getting a stitch when on zwift? Doesnt matter if its a fasted ride or one after a meal but i always seem to get one these days. It doesnt get bad enough that i have to stop but its uncomfortable and takes quite a while to ride it out.
Any younger guys or women signed up for the zwift academy then? First group ride done that will count. Had a rest day yesterday so it's ftp test time and another group ride later on.
Oh my word was that tough!
Zhr c race. Went off OK, sitting in bunch then wham, everyone disappeared! Everyone! I had 3.0km left of warm up before 6 lap race, so I thought I'd pedal to the line, then happily as I crossed the line everyone appeared. I was 7s behind a group of 10 and 35s ahead of next bunch.
So, hammered it for 1.5km and caught the group ahead, HR was up at 175 so needed a recovery!
We had 1 chap who seemed to be on a dumb trainer, as well as being strong, he called out 3.3w and sat dead on it for a lap, we were 17s behind the group and 2 laps later mainly thanks to him but with a few of use also helping, we caught them, next group up was 19s and with 1.5 laps to go we caught them too.
We must now have been a group of about 25! The pace was high, maybe too high and the group shattered with 1 to go.
I ended up in a 3 man sprint which I won, but for 30th overall.
Cracking race, terribly hard
Barf!
Weeksy - Zwiftpower and ZHR races have been slow updating lately so results might take longer. I always ignore dumb trainer users as you just cant compare to them as its so vastly different. Good turnout though, i think numbers are increasing of late.
yeah, some real big-hitters are coming back after a summer off 😉
Did a spontaneous KISS race this evening. Finished 6/31. The drafting is so realistic these days! It's a proper racing simulator (apart from bike handling of course 🙂 ) IMO. Especially when you get an attack and everyone looks at each other! I let somebody else close the gap. See- just like real life 😆
Crosshair - when you were drafting on zwift was your avatar in an aero position or arms locked straight, now thats a test of realism for you? Good result by the way
Hopefully easier to "catch" somehow? - I've always been crap at thatThe drafting is so realistic these days!
Always fun to read this !
Oz West Coast Tour stage 1 @ 12.00 today for me.
In the interest of curiosity, i've set up the Isaac and given the KickR a spindown test. I think in the last week i've got enough data out of riding on the Parkwood to see that if i'm faster/powerful today then it must be down to the bike/tyre etc rather than me just having a good/bad day.
It's a tough one as i prefer the riding position of the Parkwood and the tyre noise from the commuting rubber doesn't worry me, but it's only about 70psi and obviously has more tread than a GP4000.
We'll find out the answer about 12.15 i guess lol.
[quote=scaredypants ]yeah, some real big-hitters are coming back after a summer off
think I might hold off until october...
ARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH That was going so well.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1167653132/analysis
Was siting in a bunch of about 20 of us, mid way through lap 5 of 6 and my turbo went nuts and bombed out, first showing 0w and then -- for a few seconds... it came back in, but i'd lost 15s to the bunch and was standing still.... That was it, game over ! Really frustrated.
Regarding the Flywheel, it's not necessarily about that, but the riding position too. I was clearly sitting 5bpm lower today on the Isaac than the last couple of turbo rides, i was back to cruising as 160bpm
178 and 165, Max / Av were from last race the other day, today was 175 / 163. Maybe not as much as i thought before checking, but the riding on the Isaac felt easier.
Hoping Wahoo have an answer for me, mine is under warranty so should be easily replaced if necessary.
@Blader- 😆 Nope, 90degree elbows on Zwift and in the dining room 😉
@Scardypants- I found myself able to coast into the draft when closing gaps with a hard burst.
I think it's as good as it can get without steering (which is oft-talked about but no sign of).
Cheers. Had a bit of a try tonight. Does seem a bit easier to "hit" but we'll see next time I do a race. Presumably makes it harder to ride away from others ??@Scardypants- I found myself able to coast into the draft when closing gaps with a hard burst.
No harder than real life 😆
Rejoined this evening and did the FTP test.
FTP last feb 275w ish, FTP test today was averaging at 140w before I gave up three quarters of the way through in a sweaty wheezy mess. Checked calibration of trainer and thankfully it was way out - will have another go on Wednesday and hopefully normal service will be resumed!
I don't "[i]do[/i]" real life, CH !
Did the XRS race tonight and i reckon that was the hardest i have pedalled other than the breaking 7 minute box hill challenge. I was ruined by the end and it took over half an hour and a shower to cool down, i felt like the ready brek kid for a while, just glowing red. I ended up 2nd (missed out by 0.25s) in Cat B and just 18 secs behind the overall winner, finished with 3.53w/kg and avg 305w.
Scaredypants - were you in the race or just passing by?
Edit: Cat B winner finished a bike length in front of me but on zpower he has been penalised 60s for using power ups yet is still ahead of me, how can that be?