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LOL it's a good point from Scaled, you'll be amazed how many people go "wow i've improved by 40w in the first 2 weeks.." Odds are, they've probably not... as he says, you just learn and your body learns.... You just get the rsults quickly...
I guess speed is only based on W/kg rather than just W.
Nope. It's more like real life. Your w/kg (power to weight) is the main determinant of your speed on climbs, the steeper the climb, the more it matters. But on flat stuff, the main factor slowing you down is wind resistance rather than gravity, so raw wattage is more important.
That's why a very light rider with a good power to weight ratio can still struggle to make ground on the flat - just like real life - but will fly away from you when you hit a hill. It's also why group rides based on w/kg are a nonsense on Zwift. If I weigh 50kg (I don't) and am putting out 2 w/kg that'll be 100 watts. If you weigh 100kg, at the same w/kg figure, you'll be churning out 200 watts. On a climb we'd go roughly at the same pace once things got steep enough, but on the flat, you'd romp off into the distance unless drafting comes into play.
You can generally suss out people's weight both by looking at their avatar and, if you can be bothered, clicking on their name on the rider list, at which point you'll see their actual power output and can relate it to the w/kg figure. You can then work out where you're likely to be able to drop them (or not...) HR is handy too, in that if they're putting out really high figures, they're probably working hard, though obviously you don't know what their range is.
And ftp on its own doesn't tell you if someone's quicker than you. Maybe in a one hour TT, but in a race situation, you could have equal ftp outputs and weight, but if you're better able to recover from repeated efforts above threshold, for example, you could potentially drag them up there repeatedly until they can't respond.
All of which is pretty obvious once you think it through, but oddly fascinating if your head works that way.
Blackflag - seriously light headed is only the first rung of the pain ladder. The top rung is when you have to ask your partner to pick up your lungs from the floor and put them back down your throat. Thats not a bad start though and you will find as you gain experience of the routes and tactics it will be easier to suffer more and progress through the ranks.
Badlywired is spot on as my experiment proved the other day. I weight doped and flew up the hills like a mountain goat but on the flats in between i was either losing time or hanging on for grim death. Its one of the many reasons why i see it as pointless to cheat by weight as the races are generally a mix of climbing and flat and i would say more flat. I simply couldnt be bothered to alter my weight for every race i went in,its easier to just be fat and pedal a bit faster.
@blader1611 don't forget the 'urgent trip to the en-suite/window/door' rung.
blader - interesting because that shouldn't be how it worked. Your power is obviously what it is - say nominal 300w.
At 100kg you'd be 3w/kg for climbing and 300w / cross section area based on 100kg/height on the flat
At 50kg you'd be 6w/kg for climbing and 300w / a smaller cross section area (or at least no bigger) on the flat
So you'd be much faster climbing and a little quicker on the flat
In theory at least
I thought avatar size, i.e. your frontal drag had an effect as well. So taller/shorter would make a difference as well as more drag for a heavier rider (based on more weight probably meaning a larger profile). Clearly this will not be as pronounced as weight on a hill.
Also don't forget equipment variance.
Sure so assuming he kept height the same, the frontal area would be at worst the same (or less if Zwift modifies it for weight too which I suspect it does - eg fatter = more frontal area for a given height).
Either way, it's surprising if it really results in the flats being harder.
@blader1611 don’t forget the ‘urgent trip to the en-suite/window/door’ rung.
I was eyeing up the builders trug next to the bike the other day, there were a few tools in it that i'd have had to clean the sick off but I figured at least I could take them out to the hose pipe and clean them off there, where as if I just puked on the floor of the garage it'd stink for ages 😀
With regards to avatars, mine has a HUGE arse (76KG and 6'2)
just rejoined after seeing the weather forecast for the next week
looking forward to an e-kicking sometime soon
HUGE arse (76KG and 6’2)
unless you've unlocked some Kardashian implant, yo' ass ain't all that, sister !
Either way, it’s surprising if it really results in the flats being harder.
Yeah, I suspect it's a relative thing. If you're flying past people on the climbs, the flats probably feel slower by comparison. And obviously it's a continuum as far as climbing goes, the steeper the hills, the more w/kg is going to be the prime determinant, but on gentler gradients, it's going to be less of a factor.
Where it's interesting is, say, on a stepped climb, where if you're heavier but capable of putting out more watts than a lightweight climber, you can maybe hold them on the steep bits, but then hammer the flats, to put time into them there. And vice versa.
Definitely. With my lardy arse but high power output (when sprinting at least) I've used that in races - up to about 5% I can burn off the skinnies so long as the climb isn't too long -eg the little hill in Innsbruck - and then if there's a flat or better still a DH the other side, really set that gap in - useful tactic I find. Doesn't look so smart on Alpe du Zwift though 😆
That hill, hell, every time up it I need 4.5w/kg or more just hold hold the group of B/C I find myself in. That's 410w or more up it for me, that's just a killer.
If you do more power though weeksy you don't have to hold it for as long 😉
That hill is only 60s of effort......
And your point? It takes me from 165 to over my red line at 180. After that, I'm struggling ! It then has a domino effect of killing me for the rest of the race.
Yeah me too, I max out my HR on that hill most times up it. I force myself to push the extra 5-10s out around the corner as the payoff is worth it but it's a killer overall.
Did the BRT Criterium race tonight. Managed to keep in a Group of C's/D's for the first 5 miles. My HR was about 160-165, averaging just under 260W but I couldnt keep the pace and was dropped. I then sat around 220W for the rest of the race generally on my own apart from when the A's came flying past. I was ahead of quite a few D's but I think they must have dropped out as by the end of the race I was 47th out 62 but wasnt overtaken and I thought I was last across the line.
Still a hell of a work out though!
Nath was in the same race flying along as well.
Good job. Keep it up and it really won't be that long till you can hang on for the duration :).
Subbed a workout for a race, carrying a lot of fatigue as I’m trying to cram in 3 intense workouts into 4 days as away at the weekend. Worked a lot and couldn’t sprint at the end, think that just about sums up the race but it was in line with expectations.
HR was crazyyyy high throughout, looking forward to a few days rest now!!
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=88428
Gave you a ride on Robbo, keep at it 🙂
So close Nath, you're in the right ball-park for sure in the results.
Minor change up for me once again. As i've scrapped the idea/plan of keeping the Scott CX bike, i'm back needing a slightly revised plan for Zwifting. So the Parkwood is still the beast of choice, but i've just purchased a 42T front ring for it. With the 38T fitted i was only using the bottom 2 gears, even for the hill at Insbruck (Admitted it was a click/2 more for the long climb), but for any flat tracks i was spending 90% of my time on the bottom cog... So a 42T has been shipped and i can then give it a decent go 🙂
Ref getting dq'd, keep an eye on races using the enforced ZP categories. This is different to Wkg cat's. The bigger races are now using these such as the chop, Kiss and WBR to stop people sandbagging in the lower cats.
If you go over the limits you are moved up and cannot go back down(unless you underperform for 90 days) if you enter a lower cat no matter what your power in the race you will be dq'd for dropping below your level.
You will be moved up if you hit the 20 min levels or the 5 min levels. This can be in different races. If you do a hilly race and perform well expect to be moved up. I strongly believe that all races will adopt this soon.
Weight proof is not part of Zada approval by the way. Just real life rides.
Excellent news on the DQs stuff. I'm getting proper fed up with riders hitting 4W/kg average in Cs... I don't actually care they're quicker than me, hell, many people are... I just want fair racing based upon my ability. If that means people get bounced out, sure, that's ace.
Does it stop them entering the lower Cat next time ? or just auto-DQ ? Becasue i'm not convinced these people know/care about the Zwiftpower stuff, they may just race who's on screen at a given time etc.
Don't think it stops them entering a lower cat but does mean auto DQ from the ZP results.
WBR are turning off the position board at the end of races like the KISS ones. Only way to see a result will be in zp. With WBR running over 50% of races this might encourage people to both sign up (many still haven't) and to race in an appropriate cat. All good from my viewpoint although I ďo hate racing without the in race position table.
Its a shame that the two can'e be controlled independently, turn off the final one but leave the in game one as a approx position indicator.
With WBR running over 50% of races this might encourage people to both sign up (many still haven’t)
How will they know though.
If you sign up to Zwift, you won't necessarily know about Zwiftpower though, they need a way to encourage/force people into signing up for it... At the moment it may simply be they're not aware.
As people re-join zwift after the summer they will see notes on the race brief informing them that results can be seen on zp and they need to sign up. If people don't notice this they will probably ask the question "how do I know where I came" to which most will say to look on zp 😊
Had a crack at the 8.10pm EVR 5 laps of the hilly route tonight and moved myself up to group C after my solid performance in group D earlier this week. Holy cra.... that was fast. Most of group C were over the horizon in the first quarter of lap 1. By the 3rd lap I was on my own, adrift from the next group C rider by 2 minutes and the rider behind me, also a C, by 3 minutes. The group A’s lapped me near the end of my fourth lap, hauling out 11 - 12 wkg as I watched them catch me on the leader board.
I finished 9th, 5 mins adrift of 8th place and 9 minutes down from the top 3 C’s. At 33 miles that was a long ride and a bit tedious towards the end. Good to get it done though.
view of weeksy's garage:
(morning, mate ! 😉 )
LOL far from it... I've got the lappy mounted on a shelf connected to my vice, mostly made out of an old shelving unit 🙂
I'll be on for the 3pm P race today.... Sadly i won't be getting very high in it anyway as Richard Dalen is in it who seems to be 110kg of pure power ! He is just an absolute animal. I'll also be back on the Parkwood again as i'm waiting for the Scott to sell...
Best race in many many months that.
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=88982
3pm 'P Race' A/C cats.. 50km race.
I expected it all to go compltely nuts..... but amazingly it was an exceptionally even race... bunch of 15 of us stayed together for 47km ! Yes really... .No major attacks and when someone went, the bunch dragged em back.
For me, it all fell apart about 3km out... there was nothing left at the volcano kick... i was just walloped... When they went, i never... i then trundled home...
But it was cat and mouse for the whole race, little surges, hiding in the bunch, making up ground, dropping on a kicker, catching up again... Brilliant racing. Made all the better by the fact it was very very even.
Snap, my laptop is on top of an upside down drawer tray that's clamped in a bench vice.
Forecast looks poor tomorrow so it may be my first Zwift session since spring.
Just did the 20km World Champs TT which is 2 laps of innsbruck. I noticed in the results section there were a couple of stw members, one of which finished 5th! Sadly that wasnt me but i did come 10th out of a couple of hundred i think. I didnt really enjoy that as it hurt too much, i did a 55km warm up which probably didnt help.
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=88160
Mid pack finish for me in the 20k TT 45th. Happy to average 260W for 30 minutes though. Welll done to the STW top 10ers.
Yeah, I did the World Champs TT too. It was quite nice to have such a big field for a TT; meant there were always people to race against.
Just getting back into Zwift after the summer, quite nice to see that my form is pretty similar to when I was last racing on there.
Quite like the Innsbruck flat circuit; just enough undulation to make it interesting.
Good work fellas... Pinguino has been proper fast for all time on Zwift... Often see him near the top of STW leaderboards.
Outside for me again today though, needed to check out a woods route i'd lost.
Good efforts all.
I've been taking a few days rest after killing myself Karting for an hour straight over the weekend. So stiff!
The winner of my race avg 494w, can somebody tell me how on earth you do that. My mind/brain is too small to comprehend that level of effort, i can do that for about a minute max not half an hour.
He was also on ZP so may not be what it seems.
Innsbruck 20k TT tonight, bumped FTP to 349.
Felt well wobbly at the end but managed to hold off the guy that was about 10 seconds behind me at other 5k to go, was about 12m ahead of him at the end!
4th out of 300 odd. But the fast lads had minutes on me!
4th. Sheesh!
Well done Kai. I tried to keep up with you.......... for a couple of hundred metres, then just settled into trying to get round the course twice. Got to say, I seemed to get up that hill better than quite a few of the riders around me which was a nice surprise.
Depending on weather and legs I may do the midday 28km TT world's race.
349!!!! Nice. Good job.