50% for a nice balance. Downhill is a pain on higher settings. And lower is pointless.

I used to have it at 50%, but now run it at somewhere nearer 75%. Not sure what I prefer to be honest.

If my not-really-cyclist wife uses my Zwift account, is it going to screw up some of my stats if I then want to do a race or two?

Shouldn’t if she is only doing a bit of freeride around. it would only matter if she tried to do a race as would mess up your categories.

Tried that with my other half and she ended up getting her own account. Power to weight ratio with her on my account was so far off she could barely get anywhere.

Rouvy has a ‘realism’ setting that you can adjust to simply make yourself faster. Does Zwift have this in open riding or do you have to just mess about with the weight?

Trainer difficulty – All I have are rollers with resistance setting of 0,1, or 2, and I usually race on the highest resistance, otherwise I spin out before doing anything resembling sprinting but also anecdotally I believe the higher resistance helps to get higher FTP type effort because like climbing a hill in real life there being more resistance to push against helps to get smooth power output from the pedal stroke rather than it being an acceleration in the middle of each stroke like when going downhill.

Realism setting – I don’t think Zwift has one, but it has a ‘sticky’ double draft setting which can be turned on for casual rides I think.

The boss complaining that the garage smelt a bit sweaty after I’d been on the turbo in there. Any suggestions for maintaining man cave freshness?

Got a fan?
I tend to leave the fan on for 30 mins or so after a session. Gets rid of the stink pretty well.

No fan. I might have to pick up a cheap one from somewhere.

Smell turned out to kids’ crabbing bait which they’d slung in the shed and forgotten about. Whoops.

^^ Lol 😂

Anyone else get caught out with the change from BST to GMT ? I assume I did as I signed up for a SZR ride that started at 17.03 in my calendar entry all sorted. 16.50 start warming up but no join event, check the diary all good, switch off and back on – still no joint event. Then disappears from the calendar so I go back into events on companion to see what else to join – there is the SZR ride at 18.03 – I had a nice ride but had to finish early as I was now late.

Any idea how you join another event once you come out of one ride – do you always have to log out and log back in?

Have another stupid question. This time about my FTP.

I did a ramp test back at the start of the Winter race series and it came out at 212 watts. Since then three trips up big Zwift hills have bumped that up to 242w, 266w and now 286w. So I am obviously able to put out a significantly more wattage out the saddle and stomping on the pedals with uphill resistance than I can while staying sat down on the flat.

I don’t do races because there’s no way I am actually a mid-to-high B cat (75kg puts me at 3.8 w/kg). Putting a lower FTP on Zwift feels like I’d be cheating, and I have no idea what to actually lower it to anyway.

Do you know of any way to balance this gap between flat v uphill FTP levels? Or any specific training I should be trying to do to focus on increasing my performance on the flat, if this is even possible?

Many thanks in advance.

Are you sure it’s not just a case of your perceived effort during the ramp test? I.e. you thought you couldn’t go harder, when actually you had a lot more in you?

I did a ramp test before the current series and during the TT managed to up it by 3w.
There is no way I could manage a 70w+ increase just on the basis of a hilly route.

At the end of the day, the ramp test is like going up a progressively steepening hill, so if you think it is a case of putting the power down better on a hill, it should be representative. I think it would be worth re-doing the test & seeing where you end up.
I suspect it will be nearer your current values, than the 212w you managed at the start.

I have another stupid question. If you are a big lump do you go faster downhill than a normal weight rider?

I am really fast downhill (without even pedaling) and much more understandably very slow uphill. I am convinced my avatar is larger and has more drag than the whippets around me or am I suffering from racer paranoia?

@svladcjelli putting a lower FTP in your zwift profile isn’t cheating…because it doesn’t make any difference to your performance in races. It’s just a number in a database.[*] For the Tuesday series, @robbo1234biking uses your FTP to calculate your handicap, which informs one strand of the many ways he slices and dices the results after the event. So don’t worry about it there either.

Neither does it make any difference on zwiftpower, where category enforcement (again, after the event) is based on your actual performance in recent races. If you are right that your performance will not live up to zwift’s overestimate, you’ll be fine to enter races and get full results where you feel you fit better.

[*] Its only role is to set the power required in workouts (do you do structured workouts?) so if they are too hard with that 286 you might want to lower it. But I’m guessing that doesn’t affect you either?

FTP tests should be taken sitting down, sounds like you need to redo

I’d second that you bailed out too early on your ramp test. I had a similar issue when I first joined Zwift back in the first lockdown with my ramp test giving me 200w but the first race I did bumped me up to 220w. This winter I had to do a second ramp test as I knew I had more to give, first was 220w with the second moving up to 230w. The race series has pushed me gradually up to 257w as I’ve realised just how much harder I can push before collapsing in a heap!

The basic FTP tests on Zwift work well for most people but they’re no comparison to a proper, lab-based full FTP test that measures loads of other parameters at the same time. Add in that you will naturally push harder in a race situation compared to a test scenario and you can see how the results can vary.

So I am obviously able to put out a significantly more wattage out the saddle and stomping on the pedals with uphill resistance than I can while staying sat down on the flat.

A) what’s your cadence like on the flat?
B) what’s your gearing like?

The hills are nothing more than additional resistance which is to say higher gearing. If you’re topping out on the flat you need to either pedal faster or increase your chain ring size.

I’m a masher so find “high” (read sensible roadie) cadence hard to sustain. I’m happy mashing along at 75rpm in my highest gear for yonks though and winching up hills at 60.

Not being able to produce the same power on “the flat” vs “hills” is just your pedaling style not being suited to spinning along.

(further to the above, if you’re a masher like me the zwift ramp test isn’t great. It needs you to hold a steady 85-95rpm to be really effective, at low cadence you may find it difficult to produce enough power to keep the test happy before you simply spin out. The ramp test I invariably come out at about 20-25% down as I simply can’t hold the requisite spinning. The mini ftp test gives me a much more believable result.)

@jaminb Yes: https://zwiftinsider.com/rider-weight-speed/

I use my laptop for Zwift, so how do you navigate back to the main ride menu once you have finished or stopped a race or ride without having to restart Zwift . Every time I save the ride and the app closes down.

how do you navigate back to the main ride menu once you have finished or stopped a race or ride without having to restart Zwift

You don’t. This seems like a really glaring oversight to me. Another one is that you can only access the garage bit from one place, which is surely the most inconvenient place.

@jimr80 – yeah, that’s one of the annoying features of Zwift. I don’t think there is a way round it.
You just have to start it up again.

That’s a pita. Sometimes when I have pre enter a race/ride and the start notification fails to appear I end up missing the event due to the faff of restarting the App .Arghhhh

Don’t restart when that happens @jimr80 – just use the companion app to cancel the event and then immediately enter again and that should prompt the notification to pop up. That works for me at least.

@savoyad- thanks for that info . I’ll give it a go .

Some advice for a semi out of touch tech luddite please. Have been looking at getting into Zwift, have an old turbo that could use with basic ZPower setup, but may get a full direct smart if I get into it. Trouble is I have no spare screens for the mancave, was going to use an old iPad but it’s gen 4 so not compatible.

So options seem to be:

a. Upgrade to new iPad 8th gen and mount it on a stand in front of noggin.
b. Buy an AppleTV system and a portable/ gaming monitor (I don’t watch much TV though so AppleTV may be a waste…didn’t even know what one was before yesterday).
c. Screen mirror from an iPhone SE with an HDMI to Lightning port lead..or a wifi dongle, to cheap monitor as above (battery life killer?)

Is there much difference in use between these setups? a.& b. would end up costing about the same…

Cheers

I’ve got an AppleTV into an old TV in the garage. When I started off, I used an iPad in a handlebar mount.

I really like the AppleTV setup. Bigger screen is a bit more immersive, I am not sweating into my iPad and I like having fewer things to carry out to the garage and set up before riding. If you have an old TV lying about – or can find one cheap on Gumtree etc – I’d recommend this route.

You don’t need a gaming monitor, you just need any monitor (ideally with speakers) or a TV.

Monitors are stupidly cheap and if you root around on Facebook marketplace you might even find a free one. (GMP pricing is weird, it’s either great value for money or people thinking their 10-year-old TV is still worth what they originally paid for it).

I have one .. as a Zwift virgin, do I actually have to start a Zwift subscription to take part in a group ride? Never used Zwift b4.

(ideally with speakers)

Ok, really stupid question…having never seen Zwift run in action. How much ‘Sonic’ content is there? is it just beeps and bongs and stuff? or is there an inspirational mood music option? some cheap monitors I’ve looked at don’t have speakers….

You get a 25km free trial before signing up. If you go over that 25km in an activity it doesn’t seem to throw you out so you should be able finish the ride that you are on. So you could do one of the TdZ events as an example and you would get to to ride the whole thing. The free 25km renews at the start of each month as well.

I never both with the zwift in game sounds. There is some noise when you get ride ons and such like and some general back ground noise as well as a whirring which I think is supposed to be the bike but I just put music or a podcast on.

I’m a Zwift newbie, but have really enjoyed the last month trying some training programmes and event rides. Today I registered for Zwift Power and linked my Zwift account successfully. The question I have is: do my historic training/events carry over from Zwift, or only from the date I created the ZP account and opted-in via Zwift?

Ok, really stupid question…having never seen Zwift run in action. How much ‘Sonic’ content is there? is it just beeps and bongs and stuff?

Not a huge amount to be honest. I always use headphones but have some volume on because you get chimes at the end of climbs / sprints etc. Useful when doing workouts, but if you use Zwift Companion on your phone the sound comes through there as well.

So does anyone else have the same problem using a laptop where it keeps crashing mid ride. I tried three events/races today and they all crashed very early on. This has been happening for a while and I cannot resolve it. Updated windows 10 and made sure graphics card has the latest driver update. I restart start the laptop before each session so nothing else is running.

Below is my laptop spec , its a 2 months old Dell

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1035G1 CPU @ 1.00GHz 1.19 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.77 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Intel(R) UHD graphics

I have seen you can send windows error log reports but thats way to techy for me.
Any suggestion or fixes

@bakey – ZwiftPower only works for rides you do from the time you register onwards. Annoying as I wasn’t registered on it for a few of my recent races so I’m only now getting filtered results etc.

So after a long time (years) of whinging about Zwift I perserved and seem to have got it mostly working. Does anyone fancy having a go at answering my stupid questions?

1. I did an FTP test today, 211 average then at the end it said my FTP was 206. Why the difference and how to to now view my FTP, I can see it anywhere now the test has closed
2. What should I do now? I fancy a training plan rather than race, 3-4 times per week and no more than 1hr per session. What should I do and how do I sign up?
3. I couldn’t get my Apple watch to link for heart rate even though it found the watch at the device discovery stage, any thoughts?
4. I couldn’t get my MacBook to find my turbo at all. Not a problem as found it on iPad so used that instead. Any thoughts on why Mac couldn’t find it?

I think thats all, for now! Thanks

Was the FTP test a 20 minute one? I think to get the result they subtract 5% to get the result, hence the difference.

To see your FTP you can go into the menu when in zwift (where you access the garage etc) and into your personal details at the top of the page….in there is your FTP.