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My coach did some maths based on my real life race output vs w/kg vs others Zwiftpower results and he reckons top 10 B is easily achievable for me – I’m not so sure
Based on my perception of your output, I'd agree.
@Weeksy actually can I ask for your knowledgable advice on this; he told me to enter as a C first race but expect to bumped up - would doing that once cause alarm bells at Zwift HQ?
I think he said it to aid my mentality tbh, in that I’d react better to being bumped up than smacked down.
If you only pushing 216w then unless your under 60kg I wouldn’t be expecting much in a hilly race.
I've only Zwifted 3 times! Never looked at power before. Weigh 71kg currently.
I'll give a c a go.
Another question, yesterday I was descending the 30min climb from the control tower thing I was still having to pedal quite hard to keep moving, is that normal?
No alarm bells, it's impossible to know unless you know, so the only way to find out is to try.
It's going to boil down to route for you and distance. A lot of Zwift races are 20-40 mins, I don't know how much you can suffer in that time. I think if you pick a decent length one like say 2 laps London loop, you'd go better as it's an hour or so.
What can you average w/kg for 45 min?
Another question, yesterday I was descending the 30min climb from the control tower thing I was still having to pedal quite hard to keep moving, is that normal?
No. Are you sure as it has dips and peaks on it?
If I was going 85kmp down and stopped pedalling it slowed dramatically, obviously I expect to have to pedal up the rises. On that stw group ride the other day I was doing 200w keeping up with the 2 riders I found downhill.
What can you average w/kg for 45 min?
About 3.6w/kg non adrenaline. But my forte and training is for longer outdoor races - 4 hours plus - so in Zwift I’d expect to underperform based on stats for a Crit style race. I’m an “endurance” not power style rider as I have top end issues eg I can sustain 3wkg for 4 hours but 4.2wkg for 5 minutes. Then skewed by a 15wkg sprint lol.
I’ll be looking for the longest race I can find on the day.
Did you stop pedalling completely? you have to have a cadence of zero to get into the super tuck
You shouldn’t weigh yourself so often as hydration and digestion causes fluctuation
I can see your point, I just weigh for often for general trend, I was 75.5Kg yesterday and today I'm 76.4Kg. We had a fairly big Mexican birthday meal last night including tortillas crisps, which will soak up plenty of extra fluid, so I'm not panicking! 😉
@kryton57 Going from memory, your FTP was quite similar to mine IIRC based on 95% of 20mins MAPS, 280W+ (mine has dropped from 297 to 282 and will drop further due to giving up regular sustained efforts since 27th Feb, depressing, but hey ho). Let's say 280W, at 74Kg, that's ~3.8W/Kg... Way over the 3.2W/Kg threshold for C and you would likely be DQed.
For those trying to make turbo riding more like outdoors, https://www.rgtcycling.com/ tells you the overall weight of you and the virtual bike, so you could fudge the values to get a figure closer to your real bike with water etc. you take with you and then get more accurate figures for hill efforts.
Anagallis are you on a smart trainer? I know when I had a dumb trainer I had to always pedal.
Now I'm on a direct drive trainer I can simply stop pedalling on the steep downs and it my avatar goes into a tuck position and keeps the speed. I'm not sure if this is the same with a smart trainer that requires a rear wheel.
Did you stop pedalling completely? you have to have a cadence of zero to get into the super tuck
Maybe not, I'll try.
Anagallis are you on a smart trainer?
Yep a taxc flux s i think its called
Just been fiddling with the app for taxc and it has a calibration, maybe I should do that!
Let’s say 280W
well, 267w at 73.5kg this morning. I’ll sign on as B I think.
^^ I calibrate my Core once a week there abouts.
Yep, you must stop pedalling for the aero tuck and be above a certain speed too.
kryton, I'd sign on as a C and learn the courses and "tactics" - nobody'll care if you overperform; the computer might cancel your result but so what? It has no carry-forward penalty
Always wondered this... What does the figure in orange mean? Female riders or something?
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Trump voters
Quick question, I did a ride in Watopia yesterday, 25min climb up to a KOM, then it dropped and climbed again (why) anyway I looked at Strava segment and people I can put 2mins on over a 7min climb are getting up these climbs on Zwift only 30s or so slower than me. Is my set up borked or something?
It could be you, it could be them. They might be weight doping - ie: under-estimating their real weight. Or have an absurdly optimistic power source. It could be you: you might have an under-reading trainer (yes to calibration). It could be both. It could be that they have got fitter. Or in the real world you have a much lighter, faster bike.
Are you running a decent fan? Power output falls off markedly as you get hot and that's before you factor in any potential dehydration.
There are lots of variables, both your own and other people's. The most obvious one from your point of view is whether your trainer is accurately measuring power. You can't really control what other people do 🙂
Poop...it's the zwifters you follow, it means they are in that event.
^^ Ah, cheers bud!👍
kryton, I’d sign on as a C and learn the courses and “tactics” – nobody’ll care if you overperform; the computer might cancel your result but so what? It has no carry-forward penalty
Ok thank, I think my lack of tactics knowledge will be quite detrimental!
Yes I'd go C and see how you go.
If ZP then says you're a B be a B.
anagallis_arvensis
MemberI’ve only Zwifted 3 times! Never looked at power before. Weigh 71kg currently.
I’ll give a c a go.
As a reference; I weigh 72kg and race in B category. My last race was a flat 37km and I averaged 279w ... in the 17km Stage5 race prior to that I averaged 292w. Whilst on occasion I have got podium finishes, these have typically been in slower races. When there is a good field of B riders I typically finish well outside the top 15.
Point to remember is that there are a lot of zwifters who are strong enough to race in A cat - but choose to race B to be at sharp end collecting cups. So they can sit comfortably just under the B cat limit, and them smash an A cat like sprint to finish.
Well I free wheeled down a hill in the stw meet up today and the turbo switched off and wouldnt reconnect!!
Crikey it's busy in there! After suitably freaking myself a week past Monday I've given it a rest until today. Did the basic circuit of the island. Z1 / Z2 took 26 minutes, bit in Z3 by accident and had to back down. Since it's better than last time I'm happy. I'll give it a go in another go in a couple of days - time to start the road to rebuild.
Well that surprised me! Did a B Cat race up the Alpe today, only just stepped up to B and a field of 600+ across all cats, so didn't have high hopes.
First time racing up there and using the avg power on the segments to help me treat it as a ftp test. Was feeling strong and had the motivator of getting in the top 100 on the road to keep me plugging away.
Finish up with increasing FTP from 247 to 265. So was pretty chuffed, just checked back in on ZwiftPower and looks like everyone above me was bumped/dq-ed and I got the gold as well.
Pretty shocked to be honest!
Finally got stage 5 out of the way, pooling as I've felt rubbish all day (back to bed from 1000 until 1400). Strangely high numbers from Direto power compared to my 4iiii, approx +35W, but I'm not competing so I carry on...
After race I launch Elite app to do calibration check and something goes "click." Now no resistance, not even sure flywheel is turning so maybe belt gone but I'm too tired to look tonight, but it appears my turbo is at least temporarily dead after not using it for a week. :/
New to Zwift and got a problem I can't find an answer to.
My set-up is a Wahoo Kickr, with a mountain bike on it - so mountain bike gearing. I want to ride in group road rides but find that with the MTB gearing, I cannot get enough power out to keep up. I have turned the feature that makes it harder in settings up to 100%, which helps a bit but not enough: On the flat, I'm spinning out in top gear finding it impossible to keep up with groups.
Is there a way to set up so that I can start off with more resistance on rides (ie pre-loading my Kickr in some way?) so that my work in any one gear has to be higher, and then this would translate to speed?
What front ring mate ? I run a 38T on my MTB setup and can win C races regularly, my average W in a race is 280-295w.
As far as i know, no, you cannot do what you're asking.
It's a 36 Weeksy. There's no issues once we start climbing, it's on the flat I'm having problems. When you see it on screen, it looks like I'm riding a Boris Bike in The Tour the way everyone flies past me
and im back here,
christmas/break/uni exams took me to Feb,
so thought about bit of structure, target hammers8 at Hamseterly in late April, lost some kg just by eating better, but that's creeping back with what being locked in and drinking a bit too much after crowd control of 4 challenging under 9's during the day, but its justified !!
did Traineroad SSBLVII, then just 2 of the sustained power build workouts, before flying out to NYC on the 13th March, almost got Trumped with his outward EU ban on the 11th, in and out and home by the morning of the 17th, a beautiful weekend was had, and in retrospect, probably one of the last people to get a weekend break away for who knows long, we needed it, quite odd being there while it was gradually shutting up shop around us.
back, all events cancelled, traineroad binned, couple of orders to sort the bikes outs, job done, few hours in the sun last week to blow the cobwebs away, and back on Zwift tonight
started with Zwift Stage 3, whole lot of lava, from the beginning it said 22km lead in, made a comment and no one replied, small start, only 17 i think, kept together until the volcano climb, off they went, no chance of staying, one was 20 seconds over the top, made the chase to the bottom fun, and i wheel sucked for the last km and did him up the climb into the volcano, rest of them were well over limits so got the win
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=421551
then straight onto stage 1 - 2 lapper Watopia flat, missed the front group, did get back on at one point but it split again and no one helped bridge, settled into a big group, had a burrito, made a big long effort down the ramp to the finish, figured the burrito would allow me to get a gap coupled with being a heavier ride meant i might not get followed, got 25m which i just held as the group closed in on me in the flat run in, perfect tactics
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=421204
Well my drivo arrived yesterday.
Quick once round the flat/intro course and I can imagine this is going to be very bad for me.
Daft question mind - am I stuck on certain loops when just "riding" or is there some directional control?
My Drivo came yesterday too!
I went on RGT this morning and I’m in a group ride tomorrow morning, I’ll probably give zwift a try on Thursday.
Did the paterberg this morning, with 100% feedback the 20% section was crippling especially with a 36/27 bottom gear. I rolled it back to 70% feedback for the 2nd and 3rd laps
Hi, i have a non-smart turbo, with a Lezyne speed/cadence sensor and lezyne Micro (and CooSpo heart rate monitor), which can report direct to the Lezyne app on my phone/send a link out so my wife can see if im still alive when out on a ride. Has anyone got this set up to work on Zwift, preferably on a tablet as i don't want to take the laptop into the shed...
Tried one of the crit city races yesterday - nice short and sharp event. Was reasonably comfortable in the front group but last lap was hard, didn't really know when to go on the course, so got swamped in the final sprint. Powerups were fun - not used them before.
Binned out of the results on zp - fifth race and it nudged my w/kg average into B, so guess that's what I'll enter from now on.
DOn't forget Gary, any longer races you'll likely be a C if you're on the borderline.
What's your Zwiftpower profile say you are now ?
I'm B by an arsehair on zp - 3.25wkg
Reckon I'll be ok racing B on the flat - just need to swerve the hills.
Another island plod today - on the up my weighted average power was upto 127watts! Mostly sat around 125-155 on the flat and nose dive as soon as hit any resistance. Not done the FTP test just take it off what ever the ride give me. At the moment it looks like I've lost 30watts, down to 171watts. There's a whole lot of ho hum going on at the moment. On the up things are going in the right direction. Couple of days and go again.
#dangeourbrain no you can use the arrow keys at the junction to change which way you go and down to do a u turn.
Completing routes is a handy XP bonus to bump your level up quickly.
Garry_Lager
Subscriber
I’m B by an arsehair on zp – 3.25wkgReckon I’ll be ok racing B on the flat – just need to swerve the hills.
You will be surprised how fast you will improve your W/kg racing the higher cat. Just force yourself to hold on that little bit longer ..
Good luck!
Thomas DeGent banned from Zwift racing for pushing 8.4w/kg!!
^^Fun little back story behind that one.
Nothing bad im glad to say.
@dangeourbrain it is strangely addictive and quite easy to level up without going too daft. I'm still relatively new to it - started mid Jan and got to level 10 by the end of Jan then level 12 by 16 Feb. You get more routes opening up as you go through the levels. It's worth doing the routes for the points - there are also different bonuses for power and speed. I went a bit nerdy and watched some of the YouTube content and read the blogs. It's surprising how quickly you get up the levels to start with. Not tried a training plan / group ride or race yet. Currently backed off as the mind is willing but the body isn't.
😆
Zwift programmers got bored by the looks of things on there today