Zwift, my journey, my weight and my fitness.

Sheesh, it's a slow process climbing the ranks as a long term C.

I got +4 today for that effort!

So my last 6 have been 4,5,6,3,3,4

That's not many points for lots of effort ha ha. But has seen me from 889 to 960 over the last month or so. Them dnf I had a couple of months back I really do regret now!

That was strangely enjoyable!

Did a WBR 2w/kg ride and spent the whole time dropping back to help people back on to the group. I've refined by setup a bit in the garage an set up an old monitor up in there so i had zwift an netflix on at the same time. Chatting with the others on the ride was something that i've not really done before (on most of the rides iv'e done my phone is unusable with sweat)

Last lap the ride leader told us we were going to race it... can you spot which bit that was?

[img] [/img] #pain

scaled, was it the bit just before your cardiac arrest ?

Anyone planning on doing the first pre-season CVR race tomorrow? Will be the 7pm one if I do it!

Yep, I’m signed up for tonight’s preseason CVR at 07:00 UK time. First time with CVR so placed in bracket D. My proper name is J.Stokes if you want to say hi 😀

I'm scared and intimidated by 3 laps of Loop. I'm not sure i can do Box in anything like a sensible speed/time on 3 laps. Esepcially as if i race it, i'm racing with cat 4/5/6/7/8 which means i'm at the lower end of the ability of the bunch.

I’m relatively new to Zwift racing so I think I’m still in the naive stage so not thinking about what course of distance before entering. Normally it’s incredibly hard for me to make the same time every week due to work and home life, so I normally just ride/race whatever event is up next when I have an hour or 2 spare.

This CVR will be my first attempt to attend any event on a more regular basis, time will tell if it’s actually fun lol

It's all good fun IMO, even the races where you struggle... you just have to sometimes forget how horrific it is and remember the training you're getting and how good it is 🙂

Must admit I hadn’t clocked it was 44km 😯

7am race not very well attended - only 8 riders, all posting 3-5 w/kg. I was under the impression it was a mass start for all categories?

In the middle of the FTP builder programme right now, and today is supposed to be an “endurance” free-ride, so probably wasn’t going to race full chat anyway!

Just watching a bit of the 1pm CVR race on Twitch. Some guy out of his saddle doing 600W+ dropping everyone on the last bit of Box Hill 😯 Then lol'ed as he had to dial it back to about 125W to recover on the downhill and everyone caught him up 15s later 😆 nice to see these guys are human too!!

That will be me later tonight but the opposite way round, being dropped on the up and catching up on the decent. There should be a crazy value setting dependant on how mad you descend

Only 35 riders in for the 4pm CVR race, considering it's not a layout i fancy, or indeed one that suits me, along with the fact it's a group i'm likely to do very badly in.. I'm not thinking i'll bother !

I am wondering now whether the proper races will be quite as long!!

Mmmm thrice up box hill you say?

I predict that i'll either:
*Fall asleep before 10pm and miss the race
*Attack in wildly the wrong place
*get dropped going over the top of the hill because the top isn't the bloody top.

Well more entered, but i'm just not feeling 3 of that today after a few races this week already.

I'll jump on for the short WBR 1 lap event at 16:30 though for a quickie.

Oh by jiggedy ! That killed me as usual.

Went off hard.... Not hard enough as the A/B guys pulled away, "OK, lets see who's about"... plenty of riders around me, so i jumped in the next bunch. Good call i think, we were fairly cracking on with it. I caught a feather, so used it on the first uphill, crested that in 1st in the group and easing off to join the bunch i was in, we were 10-11 strong up to the line. One guy who was a C called Freitag jumped off the front and i don't think he went below 5w/kg for the rest of the race, so i'm seeing him as a DQ/upgrade. Our bunch thinned a little, but happily i was still in there. Up the tiny kick at 2% coming along towards the monuments in the middle of the road often kills me, but i hung in and as we hit Horseguards hill i was 3/10 in the bunch of ours and sitting in i think 30th overall. We crested the hill and i was still 3rd in the bunch but the front 2 riders were 5w/kg and Bs, i knew i wasn't holding that but i did Clayton was around 4w/kg behind only a few meters, "OK, let him pass and jump on the wheel", which didn't work as he then hit 5w/kg and left me... So with 1.4km to go i had 6 riders behind me, the closest was Axelsson who was 13m behind and about 3.5w/kg, so i cracked on around that pace, coming around the roundabout he'd closed to 9m, 8m... He came right up to me at 300m to go and snuck past me... So i jumped on his wheel and nailed it past him with about 10m to the line to beat him ! I also kept the other 5-6 riders behind.

That was arugably the most involved at the end i've been in a very long time. Great battle and was blowing out of my well, you know...

Looking at 'live' tab, theere's 3 other Cs ahead, but their power is showing as being over the 3.2... So we'll see how it all plays out in the cards....

Phew... good race though.

Yeah was watching you for a bit, some very impressive numbers from you there! Just gotta drop a bit of weight now & you'll be smashing it in B for sure!! 🙂

Indeed mate, my power is the least of my issues now 🙂 Weight is the killer.

I'm lapping consistently on the 1 lap times, all within 1-3s of eachother, weighted power for that was 316w, which is a decent number for me...

I can't see me dropping the weight though without some radical thinking after Xmas. Either the 5-2 or something more than i doing that's for sure.

2-3 days off for me now as i've got family stuff taking my week up... but it's been a blast as always 🙂

Enjoy the Zwifting guys. !

Provisional results show me as a C win.... Would have been a 10th in B too..

Lets see if i can get more than 4 CVR points for that !

Tonight I tried racing again, my first go about a month ago i went in as a D, struggled to hold on then got dq'd as 2.7w/kg. A week after i then got dq'd by my neighbour for making too much noise. After some training doing a few adhoc rides and a couple of the training sessions i gave the 17:15 4 lap flat a go.
I've just put everything I could do into holding a wheel and crossed the line averaging 3.2w/kg. Looks like it'll be another dq but either zwift is working or I've learnt how to dig deeper! 15W added to my ftp. I'll take that.

3.2, damn, that's more than I can muster. Well done indeed buddy! Nice one.

What's you weight Weeksy? If you'd held that power for another 4 mins you'd have an ftp of 300 so you must be close to B now??

Looking at the results on zwiftpower it has me 7th out of 63 in C but the 3.2w/kg was what it showed me post race in zwift. ZP has my category at 2.7w/kg and my average is 2.8w/kg. Which is the figure to trust? Obviously it's all relative anyway as I'm working with a dumb turbo and no power meter at the mo.

95kg on zwift but could arguably even be 96 currently depending on when I weigh myself.

I'm very very close to B over the short ones, but still 2.9 on 40min+ races.

I reckon in an FTP test I'd be about 285-290w.

Post race is usually higher than later. On screen results I often see myself 0.2 higher than the ZP results end up being.
The ZP results I think come direct from Strava results so are accurate.

Thanks Weeksy. I'm sat at about 76kg but haven't really got the scope to drop much at all as my bodyfat is already as low as im happy for it to go.
You seem in a really good position with an ftp that high, plenty of water, protein and avoiding sugar would soon see you in B territory.

Errrrm yeah, easy. Clearly that's not my strong point otherwise we wouldn't be in this position now. Cakes, biscuits, granola squares, the list goes on and on. Belgian buns are another, croissants of course. Do I need to keep going. Hmmm

Sorry, didn't mean to be condescending. One of my go to snacks is packets of biltong from Asda, dried beef virtually zero sugar and tasty as hell. Also has an added bonus of upsetting people in the office for the smell it kicks out

I didn't think you were mate. Honest.

Shheeesh. +6 on cvr rankings. It's tough getting these points up I tell you!

Ziftpower seems to be taking registrations again but I can't make it link to zwift - any ideas?

Shheeesh. +6 on cvr rankings. It's tough getting these points up I tell you!

Nath explained again how it works 😀

If you want more points- beat better people 😆

Trying my best fella, if I could beat better people I wouldn't be languishing in C.

Thought I did well today in honesty lol.

Really wish I could find some convenient hilly races. Bit confused tonight as my app said Watopia and then I appeared on the London circuit. Flat as usual.

Big field at 17:15/ 40 riders in A over 200 all in. Bit of a change from back in October and things have definitely got harder. Noted that we had Russ Downing in the mix which was quite nice although I think he was on a recovery ride.

Usual CX sprint start which suits me at this time of year. Got established in a small bunch. Some people got off the front - seemingly assisted by some dubious riders who later got DQd. Tried to bridge and blew up. Recovered and sat in for the finale. Managed 10th on the road which was bumped up to 8th on ZP.

Definitely better with more riders. Hoping to do some of the longer races and hilly races after Xmas. Still CX racing at the weekends so don't push too hard in the second half of the week.

I notice ZP still hasn't done all the upgrades although I now have a rank on there.

No, I mean beat better C's. You can't expect low-key afternoon races with small fields to have the same points up for grabs.

103 total was a good bunch.

Life choices dictate my riding generally. I like my evenings to relax.

Well, that’s was erm interesting 😆

Certainly a very strong field, goodness, after a mad first 10k ended up in a group of 5 riders and we pretty much rode together for the rest of the race.

Rode hard, 3.1w/kg, PB up Box Hill and average HR of 171, hitting a new record high of 195 in the final sprint 😯

Finished in place 118th, whatever that means 😆 where do they show the CVR results properly?

Have a word 😆 I feel I can say this as you are actually a real mate-
You want all of the rewards with none of the responsibilities.
You want power to climb hills- but heaven forbid you have to train for it.
You want the points on offer in the flagship races- without actually racing anybody worth beating.

If the points are worth having then surely some kind of commitment, dedication or sacrifice needs to be involved in achieving them???

Or as I say, just cut and paste the results to Excel and give yourself all the points 😆 Go Weeksy 😀

Get off the sofa and race some proper races!!!!!!!! 😉 😛

Have a word I feel I can say this as you are actually a real mate-
You want all of the rewards with none of the responsibilities.
You want power to climb hills- but heaven forbid you have to train for it.
You want the points on offer in the flagship races- without actually racing anybody worth beating.

If the points are worth having then surely some kind of commitment, dedication or sacrifice needs to be involved in achieving them???

Or as I say, just cut and paste the results to Excel and give yourself all the points Go Weeksy

Get off the sofa and race some proper races!!!!!!!

I've got no words for that

Well, finally got a cheap PC setup tonight. Downloaded Zwift, checked everything working ok, then entered the KISS C race. Then just zoomed off the front of C and got comprehensively DQ'd!

Oh well!

Lol what power did you put out?

Erm, I averaged 395w!

I'll check everything again tomorrow, re-pair everything. I double-checked my weight etc, and that was all ok. The strange thing was it was the first time ever that I'd done a session where if I attacked, I went faster, when I eased off, I slowed. So, the new PC has definitely improved things.

Lol are you racing for Sky next year?

I need a new PC 😆 😯

Reminder to myself to not race with gavinb as his average is my sprint.

I wish his average was my sprint.

Actually I wish I had a sprint. 😀

night off for me - long day at work and lots of crap food to be eaten 🙂

good work from all the racers, esp the newbies with the MASSIVE POW outputs. Straight out of the nathb farm ! 😯

Well, was in bed well before the 10pm CVR!

On the other hand (and I can't attribute all this to Zwift, I am riding a faster bike*) but I set 3PRs this morning on the commute in to work, that I've been doing for 5 years now and felt really strong. I'm thinking about getting on to one of those training plans as I think i'll probably have an easier life than just racing all the time.

*Escapade (stolen) to borrowed carbon roadie.

Everyone who seems to do the Zwift thing then seems to go out and destroy their best times on road/trails.... I've moved from someone who was middle of our local group on the trails, to a rider who can even pick up a few local KOMs (admittedly on small numbers of rider segments), but simply, i'm quicker than i was pre-Zwift.
Whether that's just down to the number of hours, the increase in intensity or a combination, i'm not so sure... but Zwifting seems to 'work' in the real world too.

Yeah, there was a lot more in the tank as well 😀

The one thing I am finding though, i'm much less tolerant of all these traffic lights, other vehicles on the road and things like that! And brakes, what are they all about?

I signed up with a budget Zpower setup too see if I like it before spending money on a smart trainer.
Having some knee issues recently I just went for a ride. Got sucked in to starting a race in cat D. 1-2.5 W/Kg Eh. Went off way over that trying to keep up and still got dropped. Blew up and bailed out disgusted.

Tried again the next night. But this time I had a plan. 200W and no more from start to finish. Everyone jumped off the start again but within half a lap i was starting to pass people on the road and on the roadside. I imagine that was people bailing. Got to the finish and felt quite pleased. 200W for an hour is not hard. Going to see if I can do 220 tomorrow. Just need to lose 10 Kilos next.

Hi - new zwifter here. I just want to say thanks as I was inspired to have a go by this thread. It's taken me a couple of weeks to get the technology working but it's all sorted now and I've put in a couple of rides these last two mornings, and I love it!

I had planned to take it easy this morning, but I got to the bottom of the first hill segment on the figure 8 course so I thought I'd have a bash and see how quick I could get up there. I would very rarely do this IRL as I'm not great on the hills (107kg) but having the leader board and information about how long the climb is spurred me on to have a go. I surprised myself and finished 8th on the live board, albeit 1 minute behind 1st place. As pleased as I am with how I did on the climb I know I could have done better. I've got a feeling this could be addictive 🙂

Everyone jumped off the start again

Don’t necessarily worry about keeping up with the front runners, they’ll probably get DQ’d anyway! Having said that will provide you with a good tow to get ahead of the legit cat D riders!

It's always a tough one, if you go with them you can pull out a massive lead on the others in your group, but you can also leave yourself empty in the tank before the time it actually matters at the end... Sometimes you get it right, sometims you get it wrong.

Thanks for the words. I did wonder if it was just Cat D being a load of first timers and Cat C sandbaggers. If I can do 220W for an hour that gets me in the Cat C range (just). Might that be a better option and experience?

All races ride differently on given days, i can do a 4 lap race on the same layout on 2 different days and for whatever reason, one day will be 3 mins quicker than the other, it just depends how the groups, rides people turn up on a given day. Some days 220w will be fine, some days you'll manage on 200w, some days you'll need 230w.... Time, practice, drafting and experience of when to go, when to hold etc all play a big part.

Going up a group too soon back have downsides if you get thrown out the back too early. But it can also push you along quicker than before.

Double whammy with a vicious cruise this morning on zwift. I did a 1 lapper of watopia flat and finished 5th in B,10 secs behind winner and 47 secs behind A cat winner and avg 294w and 3.7w/kg,that hurt. It was then 35 mins to next race so i ended up riding with Mark Cavendish up Watopia mountain,that hurt some more. Then on to 3 laps of watopia hilly at a fair old pace it has to be said. It was a brutal start and i think a bunch got out in front of mainly A riders and then a small group of B’s were about 15 secs ahead of our bunch of B’s and a few A’s. We caught that bunch at the end of lap 2 so only the A’s now out front and every hill and ramp required at least 450w to stay with the group so it was hard going. Ended up about 10 of us in a bunch sprint but i possibly went about 10 secs too late and ended up in 4th!!! We were only a 1m 20 secs behind the race winner but wow i was wasted by the end (273w avg and 3.4w/kg). That was all done fasted so i am now going to tip the entire contents of my fridge down my throat.

Nice session Blader 🙂

Just looking at my stats for the races this morning and i was just wondering what cadence would be classed as a good sprint on a turbo? I know that it gets very unstable out of the saddle so i back off going full out and i am not sure i did a full sprint today but it felt ok yet i was surprised to see my max cadence was 117 which i thought was quite low.

That's an absolute blur compared to me 😀

My max was about 110 in a KISS A race the other day, average was 58. I do tend to grind a gear though. One of my zwift goals is to get better at spinning a lower gear.

We all love a good graph, dont we

[img] [/img]

Holy cow!! That is some serious grinding at those wattages 😮
I think my knees would explode at that 😆

I usually end up 115-125 in a sprint but I could do with gearing up ending up at around 110-115 I reckon.

Everyone who seems to do the Zwift thing then seems to go out and destroy their best times on road/trails

Went out and did an undulating 80km road ride at the weekend at an average speed of 30.5km/h. Typical average times on similar terrain for the rest of the year have been 26-28km/h. That's after 3 weeks of zwifting.

Holy ruined drivetrain Scaled, what gear are you grinding for that graph? I am not sure what would burst first,my knees are my thighs.
Crosshair - i know from the racing thread that you have a major sprint in you but what gear are you using to get 1000w+. My sprint today was 117rpm on 12t on a compact and it stated that my max watt was 706, i thought my trainer was limiting my sprint as its only good for 800w but now i think i might be the limiting factor. Not sure i could generate much more otherwise i might end up cycling through the garage door.

Scaled do you have a cadence sensor? Didn't think the turbo muin had one so these must be estimates? How does zwift work them out? Presumably uses the speed/power curves then calculates the gear and hence the cadence?

Zwift is beginning to piss me off. When I installed it a couple of weeks ago it ran fine almost daily with no problems and I created a custom workout. Then there was an automatic update last weekend.

I've done a couple of rides since then no problem but when I tried to create another custom workout the system crashed. I opened a ticket with Zwift support and they suggest that my graphics driver needed upgrading. When I examined that it was up-to-date already so they said they would investigate further.

Today I went in to do a race this aftenoon and I couldn't even get in to Zwift. It gave me the message "Zwift requires OpenGL 3.1 or higher to run" and threw me out.

When I ran the graphics driver update again it said that it was already up-to-date. My driver is Intel HDGraphics 4000 which is supposed to support OpenGL 4.0 on Windows so I don't understand what is going on. I have forwarded this to Zwift support again. I'm running Zwift on a Dell i7 laptop in Windows 7 which as I said previously was OK until the automatic update.

Anybody else experiencing any problems lately?

None here. But no idea what spec my laptop is, it's pretty new though.

Automatic update of Windows, or Zwift?

Blader- 50/13 or 50/14 @ 110rpm for about 1200w outdoors.

Would usually be in 50/11 most of a flat Zwift race so generally sprint in that gear.

Automatic update of Windows, or Zwift?

Zwift

Ooo. It seems Nathan Guerra dusted off his bike for the Zone H CVR race and won it! He's a strong rider- he beat Si Richardson back in the day.

Hi - new zwifter here. I just want to say thanks as I was inspired to have a go by this thread. It's taken me a couple of weeks to get the technology working but it's all sorted now and I've put in a couple of rides these last two mornings, and I love it!

I had planned to take it easy this morning, but I got to the bottom of the first hill segment on the figure 8 course so I thought I'd have a bash and see how quick I could get up there. I would very rarely do this IRL as I'm not great on the hills (107kg) but having the leader board and information about how long the climb is spurred me on to have a go. I surprised myself and finished 8th on the live board, albeit 1 minute behind 1st place. As pleased as I am with how I did on the climb I know I could have done better. I've got a feeling this could be addictive

Welcome Lucas. Yes it is definitely addictive and yes you often end up doing more or better than you expect. We can also guarantee it will hurt a lot at some point (if not most points). 🙂

It is always good to read what others are up to.

Good luck.

Ours definitely does cadence, Daz.

No idea how but it seems to be pretty accurate. I tested it with a stop watch 😀

Might explain my dodgy knee then as I too have been grinding. Given I’m doing the puffer singlespeed though I need to grind :-/

Another try tonight. Joined the 5:15 (Aus time) race.
I have heard it said that there are five P's to help ensure things going smoothly.
I filled the water bottle, checked the bike over. switched on the fully charged laptop, switched on the fan and started the phone app.
3,2,1 and bang i was straight over 300W trying to keep up. That was not going to end well on a three lap race, actually that was not going to end well after more than a minute so I gave up and decided to cruise and see if anyone behind me was going to be traveling at a speed I could manage. Sure enough someone came along and a lap and a half later we were still together. He was not in the race as far as I could tell but no matter, it was the first time I have got to ride with someone on Zwift. It is quite hard to hold a wheel isn't it? Very easy to either overtake or drift slowly back. Is there a visual tell that you are drafting? Thought I saw the avatar sit up when I was close to the one in front?
Anyway 5K to go got the 10% battery notice. 3K got the switch to another power source. So annoyed with myself but I had to hop off and save the Ks for Strava otherwise it didn't happen right?

Note to self: Rides dont have to be a TT and the laptop battery will not run Zwift for an hour. Other than that a very different experience from the first two goes.

Rider sits up when in the draft. Once you get to the right distance you can ease off by a good 15-20% and sit there, it's something you just get better at over time. In a 40 min race I think I usually spend 1min on the front of a bunch. That's all

Battery stuff, yup, been there. More than once. I now plug it in.

I have heard it said that there are five P's to help ensure things going smoothly.

The drafting thing is just something you need to get the hang of. Keeping an eye on the rider's w/kg helps. Bear in mind that maybe the difficulty in holding the wheel and not overshooting is because the rider you're drafting slacks off slightly so you go past so he can draft [i]you[/i]. This is definitely something I do sometimes 🙂

I like to use the first person view (#3 on your keyboard) to make it more realistic and help me position better. You get a 1-5 meter guide as to when you are drafting but I think you get some benefit right out to 7-10m.

In most cases, in a reasonable size bunch, nobody actually picks up the full tab for being on the front. 27mph on the flat??? Try it in real life and tell me you've been pulling on the front in a Zwift race 😆

KISS/Zwift Ecrit series kicks off tonight with 430 already entered! Single Cat, mass start! Get in the pen early if you're planning on racing as the servers may get tetchy.

After doing the team worlds i would say if you are further back than 200 you will have no chance as the front end is just too far away to sustain the ridiculously fast start to catch them.

Tried the first person view today - got on with it better than the normal one. Did the 19:20 szr watopia 4 lap race - managed to hang on with the leaders of cat c for a lap and a bit, but then blew up a bit - ended up 13th out of 35. Longest i've zwifted for in one go - wasnt too bad with some music going.

Was a good race that Ewan,

I was in the lead B/C group for the first lap but then dropped back into a small group a minute back, we were never going to catch the front group and even after a couple of laps we had a minute on those behind so it became a bit of cat and mouse, no-one was in a particular hurry.

It was my forth race on three days so didn't have a lot in the tank, four laps was probably one lap too far.

So how to the new ZP rankings work? great idea, adds another level of competitiveness, but can't find any details anywhere.

I'm having a bit of a sulk with Zwift at the moment.

My last two goes have had some sort of technical issue - WBR 4 lap race ended up with no results, either live, or on ZP. I think the Zwift server died for a bit. Nevermind though, good race and it was just a little niggle at the end. I missed a 2 man break though, despite putting out 1200 watts for ~5 seconds trying to chase them down (and hitting a rather worrying? 198bpm). Just couldn't get close enough to use my drafting PU.

Then last night I signed up to one of the 3T/QM 3 hour missions at 21:30, I really wasn't sure how this was going to go. ~3-3.5w/kg for 2 hours with 4 x 15 min 4-4.5w/kg efforts. Signed up a bit late as I ended up faffing but was logged on 5 mins early, but didn't get a call to the start pen like usual. As the event was starting i got ported over to the line as everyone pulled away. All good, apart from the chat was broken, not a problem I thought.

Then everyone disappeared for a minute, then reappeared 30 seconds ahead of me. Obviously I couldn't ask someone to come get me cos of the broken chat, arse. Cue 5w/kg effort for about 5 mins to get back on to the group, it's the bloody jungle loop from the ramp again, Bastards. I get back on just as it kicks up to >9%.

I got dropped again down the other side, but that was entirely my own fault for not warming up and taking my trackies off before setting off, another effort to get back on 😐

The thing is, with no chat and no music I was getting a bit bored. There was no way that i'd be able to sort the music situation without being dropped again so threw in the towel at just over 30 miles and 1:15 mins or so.
Strangely the worst thing about it was everyone else was getting a load of 'Ride on's every lap, hill etc. I wasn't (presumably the same chat bug) and it was really getting to me. I might just have to head over to facebook and put up an attention seeking status for some 'likes'