Zwift, my journey, my weight and my fitness.

I'm at 14st 10 at the moment, it's down between 2 and 4lb a week generally. I'm cutting out the 5-2 for a bit as it's affecting my ability to train, but will still be lower calorie days. But on diet days last week I actually felt dizzy a couple of times when standing up etc.

14st 10 is not quite my adult lowest, but it's getting there. If I can maintain 1-2lb a week I'll be happy. I'm going to stay off the scales until the 1st of each month. Target for 1st march is 14st 7.

Saturday morning I was a bit worried as I was rubbish with heavy legs after some tough racing on Thurs. But today even after a night of beer/indulgence I was back to a decent form.

today even after a night of beer/indulgence I was back to a decent form

I'm hoping that's a training tip - I'm on holiday in a week and will definitely have "prepared" for the rides after that

Nice to see you back on zwift scaredy, hope the recovery keeps going well. I am sure it wont take you long to start challenging for podiums again, in the meantime i am more than happy for you to be a free of charge domestique for me to help you along!!

i zwifted a fair bit last week but i actually only raced twice, i have decided to do less racing and just mix up my cycling. I ended up pacing a race organiser after we had network issues so fairly relaxed chatty ride and then i acted as a sweeper in a social ride and then a nice workout/chat and i have to say i really rather enjoyed it. This week i might just solo round the new bits and then try and get round the surrey hills course as i havent done it all yet.

domestique

Lol - any time you want towing round at 220w, I'm your man (for about 20 mins max!)

But on diet days last week I actually felt dizzy a couple of times when standing up etc.

Weeksy, I've only ever done low carb once and to be fair the weight fell off but I also fainted after standing up one evening, so I have never dieted or low-carbed since.

PS - what's up with the Zwift point-scoring? For a brief period yesterday I was top of the heap. Now I am no longer A-number 1.

I don't think the Zwift points system is fully active yet... It only goes about 150 pages which doesn't even take it to the end of the As.

It's all a bit confusing with points/rankings what with Zwift now getting in on it, then you've got Zwiftpower which half the field are not registered for in the races so get DQ'd and then CVR points which seem all over the place at times, sometimes they split cats, sometimes they don't, sometimes the DQs count, sometimes not.... If i race, i just race the names next to me on the screen, the rest, you just have to accept as you're not going to change it.

It's just been more and more of Z2 for me lately... So today after i meeting i thgouth "early lunch then WBR 1 lapper" so did a 30 mins cruise to put the miles in first at about 1.4w/kg then a rest the jumped in.

Great race... Went off with the lead bunch.. Nearly got dropped after 1km but down through the underpass my avatar likes it and works well, so i caught the rear of the draft and got back in.. Along the river and comfortable but working hard. Up the first little climb and the bunch shatters, there's people binned out and several As have walloped off the front, but i've got over the crest near the front of the main small pack and i'm OK, HR sitting at 179-180 which is 98-99% max for me... .but i'm not too bad and recovering slightly down to the hairpin and up over the line. One guy who's a C catches us and passes at 6.5w/kg... yeah sure mate, of course.. he sods off... We're a group of 8... 3 As, 4Bs and a C.... Along we go and get to the little statues things where it always kills me just before Horseguards.... I'm doing OK but again at 179bpm... So pushing hard...Hit the hill and i use my feather... Nice... i get up in the bunch of 8 still (this is rare for me) in fact it's now a bunch of 6.... 2 guys are history out the back.

Along to the last 1.5km and under the banner thing, the 6 is working well and i'm trying to recover and hold position... Onto the start/finish and 2 guys go early.. i'm sitting 4th wheel and OK, so put on a spurt with 350m to go and pass him... but the guy behind me has got 8w/kg on his screen, he's coming past of that there's no doubt. But i'm hanging in... keeping on it...

I end up with a 13th overall and a fast race with my fastest ever lap of the clssique... So more than happy with that. Crusied for a few KMs again then chilling ...

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=41085

We'll see what happens in the shake-up etc but i'm not complaining.

To top it all off, scales are showing 14st 9... which is still slowly going in the right direction. 5-2 has been kicked into touch for now, just on a 'being good' type situation... Lets see. 🙂

So who fancies a STW Zwift ride, say 8pm tonight?

I'll be on at 9ish for the CVR race at 10 (why did i enter the 10pm one ffs)

Speaking of CVR, anyone know what course they're running today? I could do with another flat one!

EDIT, just checked Zwiftpower - 5 laps of London Classique 😀 Time to bring some pain to those 65kg whippets 😀

Was on last night and was doing the London Loop then found myself at Leith Hill, anyone else found themselves in the wrong place when following a course? Not sure how as laptop is out of reach so can't change direction or owt. Would be a bit embarrassing if I find myself getting lost.

Was on last night and was doing the London Loop then found myself at Leith Hill, anyone else found themselves in the wrong place when following a course? Not sure how as laptop is out of reach so can’t change direction or owt. Would be a bit embarrassing if I find myself getting lost.

Nice one Weeksy, it looks like it's all going in the right direction.

I did a ride round the Surrey Hills course today with a mate. I managed to finished the first Everest Challenge to get the Trek Emonda bike and I'm now at 18% complete for the Tron bike. I modelled that with my training spreadsheet and I'm on course to complete by September - LOL! Something to aim for I suppose.

A funny thing happened today though. On the ride my mate's avatar was climbing all the hills out of the saddle. After the ride I spoke to him on the phone and asked him why he was climbing with a low cadence. He said he wasn't and his avatar never got out the saddle but mine was also always out of the saddle on the climbs. My cadence never dropped below 80 rpm on the whole ride and my avatar was seated the whole time.

Why would Zwift depict other riders climbing out of the saddle when they are obviously not? - weird!

Forza,

Thank you... It seems due to the DQ rules and sign on etc... I got the race win in B lol. Not sure that's a fair representation though, but it did get me +28 CVR points... which is my greatest in a race ever !

I've wondered about the standing climb too, obviously below 70rpm you stand, but i often see legs going quicker but still out of the saddle and wonder what others see me doing etc... Interesting you had a way to check/test 🙂

What did I do wrong?

I entered the CVR World Cup League Race Zone E this evening ... I was the only rider on start line; no sign of any other riders all way around, but it had me as 91st rider out of 91 other riders on first lap .... even though I didn`t pass any other riders, it had me finishing in 70th place ... bizarre!!

weird mooman, no idea what that's all about

weeksy, you're a proper playa these days !  It's all that Z2 rest you're getting

off out myself, for an "elderly gent bimble" in a bit, when my tea's settled (I can't go mashing out a huge 200w on a full belly, now can I ?)

Gah, starting to get into the races a bit more now and making improvements but completely hashed up my sprint tonight. Tried going from 400m and couldn't hold on to it till the finish.

Hoping this translates to some real world improvements this year. Normally I'd be hibernating this time of year and playing catch up all summer.

Just did my first group ride, quite good, no idea what the etiquette was though but did get a bumble bee costume to ride in 🙂

oh and does anybody know what the little green magnifying glass means on Zwiftpower?

Think it means you are looking to be recruited by a team, although not actually sure what being in a team does for you.

Whoop, green jersey and A win in CVR 10pm.

Was entered in B but what does it matter. Last two laps were way too slow for the whippets, my heart rate was down to 160 with about 5k to go and my glutes were barely warm. I think my HR went up more just from thinking about the sprint!

I knew I had the beating of the Bs if I could be near the front at the top of the hill so decided to mark the fastest As and had a good run at them before the line and did them all 😀

Greeeeeeeeeeen

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You sandbagging in B cat now or have you got a new turbo? 🙂

CVR B so it's based on my points ranking or something equally arcane, I really don't understand it all but I'm not getting dqd for doing 4.x w/kg in B cos that's where they told me to be.

There's some proper quick lads up the hills but none of them have got guns heh

Incredible stuff Scaled.... You're our new hero 🙂 Well done buddy.

Wow, just.....wow

🙂

Scaled knocking it out of the park, that is now the best result of the year, you put some big names to the sword there. Great riding. I bet that was a great race to watch with so many in the sprint finish.

Race is up here:

I don't think they like B's beating A's in the sprint 😛

Nice work Scaled! Timed to perfection 😎😎

I just finished a 3-lap Volcano Flat, entered Group B for the first time and didn't finish last! :o)

Settled down into a group of about 12 after letting the proper racers go and this eventually whittled down to 4 by the last lap. A couple of lighter riders tried to get away on the couple of short 4-5% climbs on the last lap but I managed to reel them in on the subsequent descent where my extra weight helped.

I had a drafting power-up which I used when the pace went up in the last mile and lit the after-burners with about 100m to go and won the 4-man sprint LOL!

At just over an hour a great workout mainly at sweetspot with a few FTP+ manic bits thrown in for good measure.

Forza, excellent result sir. So will you be sticking with the B’s from now on? We seem to have quite a lot of B racers now.

Thanks for the encouragement blader1611 but I've subsequently been filtered out presumably because I'm on ZPower. I really can't understand their reason for penalising ZPower users because I am on a Kinetic Rock and Roll trainer which has a known power curve extensively tested I understand by Zwift back in the day before a lot of the Smart trainers came along. I use an HRM and have my Strava account linked to Zwift Power so don't know what else I can do.

There is no way I can alter the power output of the trainer but I could of course cheat in any number of ways if I wanted to just like anyone else on Zwift even with the most expensive power meter or Smart trainer. Putting out 2.59 W/kg to finish 25th out of 27 unfiltered riders in Group B is hardly Lance Armstrong levels of skulduggery though is it? :o)

I only treat the races as a good training regime really, probably like a lot of people. Racing against other human beings even in the virtual world is very motivating and a bit of a laugh.

I think the groupings in the races make no sense really. I was actually 43rd out of 59 on time alone so I think that's the result I'm going to go by in future. After all, that's the way they do it in the real World.

Well I learnt a valuable lesson last night. My ant+ dongle started playing up and when I looked at the extension cable the end was rusted up!

Obviously I had managed to sweat all over it which was a real surprise as I thought I had it a decent distance from me. Luckily the cable seems to have taken the brunt of the sweat and the ant + still works.

So I need to get a longer cable and/or make sure the end is covered up.

Was going to go on tonight but my Mac refuse to see the Speed & Cadence sensors, can only assume the ANT+ dongle is fubar

forzafkawi, you need one of these. Works a treat on my road machine.  https://www.evanscycles.com/kinetic-inride-pod-EV254035?esvt=59460-GOUKE4720188&esvq=&esvadt=999999-0-1312634-1&esvcrea=223311366161&esvplace=&esvd=m&esvtg=pla-309125110497&esvo=EV254035-NA-NA&esvaid=50080&gclid=CjwKCAiA5OrTBRBlEiwAXXhT6GxubwxlPKISk48j3n-kFpeEhoAMen2-eT8HyxkYwaHCJnZe-XnRcxoCo_4QAvD_BwE

I've got one of those jambo but if I used it I would consider it cheating. In extensive testing of the Rock and Roll (using the Kinetic Fit app) I found it gave readings of 270W at 20 mph (32 kph) whereas the published power curve suggests the trainer should only be putting out 250W at that speed. This is after careful spindown calibration following a decent warm up.

I contacted Kinetic Support about it but they weren't really much help. They confirmed the inRide module I had was a v2 but should be accurate to +/- 3% which I personally don't think it is. They also confirmed my spindown calibration figures were valid as well. Maybe other inRide modules might be more accurate but their power figure is only calculated anyway so I don't see why Zwift or ZwiftPower should accept that as accurate.

Maybe you'd like to comment if you have any further information.

Forza, regardless of zpower or not that was still a great effort, you still had to turn the pedals quickly.

Thanks once again blader1611.

Apologies if I'm boring anyone with this but this will be my last post on the matter in case any other Kinetic trainer users out there are interested. I've just discovered the Kinetic Fluid Resistance Power Formula on the Kurt Kinetic website:

P = (5.24482 * S) + (0.19168 * S^3) where S is the speed

At 20 mph P = (5.24482 * 20) + (0.19168 * 20^3) = 258W

Therefore the stated accuracy range should be 250W-266W so maybe the upper range is not too far from the 270W I have (consistently) found in testing at 20 mph.

On Zwift my ZPower reading is around 250W when the bike is travelling at 20mph according to my Garmin and the Kinetic Fit app when on a 0% gradient. Zwift speeds are usually a little higher which seeems to be normal I gather.

I have also just seen part of DCRainmaker's 2012 review of the inRide module which has a screen shot of the Kinetic Fit app showing 268W at 19.8mph.

There also seem to be a lot of people having trouble with the inRide module dropping out during a ride (see the Amazon user reviews especially). I don't have an iPhone and linking the inRide via my Android tablet to Zwift all seems a bit of a faff but I will get round to it one day and see how it pans out.

Until then I'll stick with the Ant+ dongle and speed and cadence sensor which so far have been 100% reliable in my Zwifting experience.

I’ve never looked into it that much. Works consistently with the iPhone zwift mobile link app, gives me much the same numbers as the tacx flow I had for a while did.

Maybe I should just use the inRide then jambo for an instant 8% boost in power! :o)

I thought the idea was that the inride should be more accurate as it’s measuring the flywheel speed, not the wheel speed?

Yes, that is true. I'm going to try an link the inRide module to Zwift tomorrow and see how I get on.

I'm scared to face you out there now !   Funnily enough, i just bought a Kawasaki this morning too 🙂

Rest day here i think, woke up a bit heavy in the legs. I've got 210kms in the legs from the first week of Feb, so arguably a little excessive, only Friday of last week was a day of rest... So today is the chosen day it seems.

I look forward to the reports from you lot though... Keep going !

Spotted a 19:05 ride I fancied. Got dressed, set up the garage for a sweatfest (hot and humid here today). Zwift decided to update and then will not go past the log in screen.

Re-installed and now got another 20 min download to do. I can feel the sub being pulled if this carries on.

Spotted a 19:05 ride I fancied. Got dressed, set up the garage for a sweatfest (hot and humid here today). Zwift decided to update and then will not go past the log in screen.

Re-installed and now got another 20 min download to do. I can feel the sub being pulled if this carries on.

That's why I moved to the ios version when I could.  I only used it twice a week last year and it felt like it took twenty mins at least to get going every time when using my laptop.  Now its a case of phone on, tv on, good to go!

jambo,

I managed to get the Kinetic inRide module paired up this morning (after calibration) and at 20mph (on the Garmin) Zwift was reading 258W - bang on the money! I guess I'm going to be using this from now on ;o)

Thanks.

Just did the BikeRadar race.... My first ever race

My God!!!!

That was hard, not seen a HR like that since I did my last XC race...

Anyway did alright but I just got bumped from CAT D to CAT B which I've no idea how that works.

It means you are twice as good as you think you are - well done! :o)