Zwift, my journey, my weight and my fitness.

Having tried to get Zwift running on my ten year old laptop and failing miserably, given its silly sales season can someone point me in the direction of a cheap machine that runs Zwift well?

Cheers,

The ipad version is in beta and due for release in the next few weeks. Might be a more convenient platform.

The ipad version is in beta and due for release in the next few weeks. Might be a more convenient platform.

would mean bluetooth only sensors though.

would mean bluetooth only sensors though.

Sounds like KISS C @ 8pm tonight will be busy, theres also a PAC SUB 2 a bit earlier which usually end up about 2.5w/kg.

@harrytoo a desktop may be the answer.

Sounds like KISS C @ 8pm tonight will be busy

Watopia figure 8 doesn't really suit my riding style/weight much, but i'll see how i feel when i get home later and whether i ride earlier or wait till 8pm.

yeah like you'll be able to resist the call!

I peaked last night with that power/effort... not sure i've actually got it in the legs to try hard tonight too !

ZTR Tuesday Night Worlds at 18:30 for me tonight. More chance of doing better on 5 flat laps of Watopia then going up the hill both ways at 20:00.

Anyone else?

boom. strava results updated/uploaded, and i just scraped under the FTP limit.

4th place. (although the same time as 3rd place)

now where do I collect my prize money...

That's your last.... you've got 2 ticks now.... You're done next time you put in over the limit 🙂

did you stop at times ?

3.17w/kg 3.61w/kg 4.35w/kg 4.92w/kg 4.98w/kg

That's your 5, 2, 1 etc mins power... but you ended up at 2.57

I can't actually work that out lol. You must have been cruising the other times ?

i need to get on some scales and see if my weight is still right.

if its dropped, which it probably has, then I guess my W/kg goes up and I go faster for the same effort?

jam bo - Member

i need to get on some scales and see if my weight is still right.

if its dropped, which it probably has, then I guess my W/kg goes up and I go faster for the same effort?

That's correct.

Surely your weight only has a bearing on climbs/descents? W/kg is irrelevant on the flat? (which the course last night largely was)

Yes, w/frontal area are the metric for the flats.

Weeksy, that's where racecraft comes in. Use big power to hold faster wheels then sit in the draft at 2.0w/kg and let them get DQ'd 😉

Weeksy, that's where racecraft comes in. Use big power to hold faster wheels then sit in the draft at 2.0w/kg and let them get DQ'd

Hahahahaha.

Yes - no 26" support on zwift which is annoying!

So now I need a t2240(£200), a new 700c rear wheel and turbo tire - £100. Got the other bits.

Presumably a late 2013 retina MBP will run swift without an ant dongle?

Thanks for help - looking forward to joining Zwift, hopefully before the summer miles in my legs expire.

Presumably a late 2013 retina MBP will run swift without an ant dongle?

I have a 2011 imac and it can run the graphics at top setting at a reasonably acceptable refresh rate. The gpu is an AMD card , which I think a retina mac book should be better than.

Won't be riding tonight lads as I've just done 80 min of Pretzel.

Well, I think I got caught up in the 1830 ZTR Cat C. I'm a lightweight (67kg) and was doing 3.2 w/kg to keep up on the flat, so raw power obviously counts more than w/kg. The little climbs were much more fun for me. FTP is about 3.7 at the moment, so probably need a Cat B hilly/mountains race to be competitive in any way.

Can you Tailor Zwift?

By the way, for those waiting for the iOS app (or for those without bluetooth/ant+ on their laptop/pc) there's a kind of work around here (sorry if it has already been mentioned). My laptop isn't powerful enough to run zwift (doesn't support opengl), however I've got a big ole powerful desktop, so here's my setup:

- Desktop in the study runs Zwift & teamviewer application.
- iPad attached to bike in the garage runs teamviewer application - I can now see and use the PC (it's basically a monitor and mouse)
- iPhone runs Mobile link (zwift app) and from that I can now see my bluetooth devies: Tacx Vortex trainer, heart rate/cadence/speed sensors

Works perfectly! The only thing I don't have is sound, but I listen to music anyway. Hope this helps someone 🙂

Joined the Sub2.5 (read: pretty much 3) group ride just before 7 tonight. 2 and a half laps and the Bluetooth connection failed, which was mildly annoying. Need this dongle to arrive.

I like the sub rides they are almost never actually sub whatever but start of at a reasonable pace then develop which seems to suit me unlike category races which nearly always seem to start at 4w/kg after which its attrition until the end.

Defo no sound for me btw, usually just have the radio or music or occasionally netflix if its a workout.

SZR Race tonight for me then at 6pm. It's on Richmond flat roads which should suit me about the best i can find. So will likely give me the best possible entry into C cat i can think of.
6 laps and 5km per lap, so 30km which is about a decent sort of distance for me to hold around 2.5w/kg or possibly more if i can.

I certainly won't be winning it at that speed/power... but hopefully i'll give a decent account of myself.

Been feeling a bit low for the last few day - dodgy guts, mega tired etc. but really wanna get back on it. Feel like a winter slug at the moment.

Might see how I feel & pop on for a bit this evening, but not sure if I'll just do a ride or see if there's a race that suits the time I am on the bike.

I looked the other day at the workouts - there's a 12 week winter training plan I was thinking of doing, but it's ~4 rides/week which I will never be able to fit in. I'll have to tailor my own cut down equivalent.

Oh, and...

P-Jay - Member

Can you Tailor Zwift?

HA HA!! 😆

I did the ZTR race last night, didn't plan on finishing it, as I didn't have the time.

Being in the B group, i'm not sure I would have been able to anyway. It was brutal.

So many attacks, we were solidly over 300w even when not attacking. All the attacks were 5/600w. I literally got torn a new one.

Enjoyed it though - I find it considerably more interesting than standard turbo work. I love the randomness of it.

I'll do the ZTR on Thursday again, should only be an hour that one so will have time to finish it. The KISS races at 8pm are too late for me to be motivated to do anything.

So many attacks, we were solidly over 300w even when not attacking. All the attacks were 5/600w. I literally got torn a new one

Well, i'm not going to be troubling B's for many many moons based upon that. 🙂

I'm not going to be troubling most C's for the near future anyway hahahaaha.

Well done fella... nice work.

I'm right at the bottom end of the w/kg for the banding so it's always going to hurt I guess - I just expected it not to be quite so tough!

The only way is up though...

There does seem to be a need to automatically enforce the w/kg limits for the various categories. Zwift have set up a good race/ride system where you can see your competitors etc but it is a bit of a kick in the nuts when you see Cat D riders smashing out 4w/kg for over an hour.

I miss the days when it was closed beta and it was basically me and two other riders battling to hold all the jerseys!

Reckon I will have a crack at the SZR Race tonight @ 6, cat C. I take it even though it says cat E on the calendar, going by the description it's open to all cats who start at the same time? Just put your cat in your name to differentiate?

Zwift have set up a good race/ride system where you can see your competitors etc but it is a bit of a kick in the nuts when you see Cat D riders smashing out 4w/kg for over an hour.

I take it even though it says cat E on the calendar, going by the description it's open to all cats who start at the same time? Just put your cat in your name to differentiate?

Yup, that's the one matey.

You'll have to ping me over your Strava/Zwift info and i'll add you.. would be good if i can find you and try and hang onto your wheel. I'm likely to be only just over 2.49 cat limit by the end of an hour race... hopefully... Will try and start hard and hang onto a few wheels as long as i can.

I've done a few races where the DQ threshold seems to be very high - Cat D was up to 2.5w/kg and it seems that only anything above sustained 4w/kg would be DQ'd.

Nah, not seen anything like that. It does it over race distance average, so even if you've maintained a 20mins of 4.0w/kg as long as you've not exceeded 2.49 for the overall average @ 95% then you're OK.

I've seen/found a lot of Zwift racing is about tactics.

I've got a bit of an on-going battle with a mate who races and does mid-pack C's... He recently moved up after winning regularly as a D. When we compared Strava segment times i'm now quicker than him on 75% of our segments we've both raced/tried on... but he's finishing races about 3 mins quicker than me ! He's attacking climbs better than me, which makes a massive difference, he's sitting on wheels and the right wheels better than me... hence he's finishing quicker in races than me... It's all pretty interesting. You notice it more on hilly courses than flat, hence me seeming to pick the flatter layouts for my racing more than the hilly ones.

You'll have to ping me over your Strava/Zwift info and i'll add you.. would be good if i can find you and try and hang onto your wheel. I'm likely to be only just over 2.49 cat limit by the end of an hour race...

I don't know I'll be much use to you though, you finished a good couple of minutes ahead of me on the race on Monday! Good point about the length of the race though, hadn't thought about that. I was only averaging 2.69 on Monday for a half-hour-ish race so like you might be right on the border or possible under 2.5 after an hour!

Scared now! Don't think I've beaten any c riders in any other races.

lol yeah, might do this one at D 😀

You big girl. Get on with it. Ha ha. I'm lined up and just watching spongebob with my boy. Be warming up with 5 to go.

Arrrgh. Tried and tried. Lost 5 places in last 300m. Nightmare

Slight delay in getting my turbo set up so I was still faffing with my shoes when the race started!! Didn't matter though, no way could I have kept up with the C pace the entire race! I let you guys lap me and then hung on to your group as long as I could (couple of laps maybe!) Need to up my game I think 🙂

Weird, my strava is only showing 6 segments. All long ones.

Using the 'live' button shows me as being 155th between Salamon and Rydberg. But not showing on the results yet.

Salamon showing as 41st out of 72 currently... so i know roughly where i should be.

Thanks to this thread, I will be visiting my local branch of Halfrauds in the morning and then waiting for the Amazon bloke to arrive with an ANT+ sensor.

Seems like a really good bit of kit. What with my shift work, the weather and a 5 month old at home, I've only been out riding twice in the last month. I'm hoping that Zwift will change that to at least twice a week, which can only be a good thing...