STW Zwift Autumn Series 2

Wow, that was tough! Personally I preferred the start – having a clear countdown gave me something to ‘aim’ for and at least I knew it was coming. Its just the luck of the draw where you spawn. I’d be happy to carry on with it this way.

Now, please take this next bit in the way its intended * – but how the hell do the rest of you do it? According to the numbers, I’m told I’m a ‘B’, and subsequently get a big time penalty. And this kind of matches what I find in real life out on my MTB – I.E. I’m not a pro racer, but I’m a pretty good amateur, and can hang with most riders I come across in the wild.

Yet, despite me going absolutely ballistic, every week I just go completely backwards, cant hold onto any groups and do 50 minutes of riding on my own? And then what seems to be a large penalty at the end? I am definitely pushing myself, I bought my turbo and got zwift after quitting a weekly spinning class where I would regularly push myself to absolute exhaustion and put in miles more effort than everyone else there, so I know what it feels like. Am I doing something wrong?

I know the ultimate answer is ‘just get fitter’ but it would be lovely to actually have people to race against!

(* Honestly, not throwing the toys out – I enjoy the riding and challenge, you guys are keeping me motivated and I love the format, so please keep it up Robbo!)

Now…. whats next!? 😀

Sort of enjoyed that, and I was in the group with Zilog, Gary Lager and co. The hill at the start certainly strung things out a bit, and having to save a bit to do it all over again meant being in a group was really important. The start sort of worked for me, but happy with both ways of doing it until Zwift gives us a proper starting option.

I saw you there with my mate Figg, I even had a little watch at times clicking on the rider list to see him trying to hide. Did he manage any turns on the front?

I liked the start I was at the back with Robbo and either we started really well or it pulled us all together at the start as we seemed to fly through the pack?

I think I blew it going really hard on the first sprint and then throwing an attack in between the sprints. The 2nd sprint killed my legs enough I couldn’t recover properly before the climb. Noticed Phil sneaking off the front but at that point catching was not on. Tried again later in the climb, closed the gap but not enough. The end came too soon for me tonight. Nearly got away on the first climb but the large chase group reeled me back in by the bottom.

Hope all went well guys, apologies as I wasn’t able to make it.😕

Tough one.

The pack disapeared at the beginning, hung onto Skywalker and Jim W up the hill, lost them near the top but a combination of being a porker and burying myself got back to them on the downhill then hung on as best I could dreading the climb.
Sure enough as soon as it went uphill I died on my arse and the other two cleared off.

One day there’ll be a flat course with a downhill finish 🙂

I’m not sure where you were in the field Snotrag as I don’t know your zwift name but I think a few of us know each other and how to pitch against each other from doing the other STW events like the Sunday Hills and TTT. When you know that you find that you go all balls blazing to catch those that you know you should be able to keep with.
A little background helps and the other events riding often with these guys has really brought on my fitness…although it’s still way behind a lot of them 🤣🤣

and do 50 minutes of riding on my own

well that’s your problem right there… ride smarter not harder 😉 digging extra deep for the first few mins to catch someone’s wheel can also reap massive rewards

That start was odd. There was guys flying past me with 3 seconds to go! Felt like I was right at the back-but from the static screen I was only half way down. Very strange. Had to give it the beans to catch up. Happy to give it a go, but I think reverting to the old system works better for me.
Just thankful I got in the lead group on the descent. No idea what happened to tlr?? One minute in front the next 30 seconds behind??
I’m finding this sprint format difficult to judge speed wise. I need a big overall gap to bridge the handicap but the sprints make the lead group slower-assuming to conserve energy for the sprint. Bit of a Catch 22. So it forces me to sprint-and make a right back to front of the Marina one. Love the extra dimension though.

Anyway, great climb at the end there Phil. Well deserved win.

I know the ultimate answer is ‘just get fitter’ but it would be lovely to actually have people to race against!

It’s probably “just get zwiftier” sitting in a group on Zwift takes a fair bit of practice. Come join the TTT on a Thursday and it should get you used to it a bit more. It’s very easy on Zwift to work your self out of a group if you’re not careful, dropping backwards and catching on isn’t as easy as you’d like it to be so you can find you ease off a little and just fall through the group, in a decent sized group if you don’t find any wheels and drop back a few m you may well need to be putting out 50% more to catch the rear than you were to sit off the front. It’s a bit weird.

The start felt like glue for me despite doing 400+W from the go. Not sure why Zwift lets people at different times, nothing like seeing riders coming past while you stay still.

@snotrag I think some of it is getting better at the Zwift draft. I found the TTT very helpful at learning to keep a constant even power and stay in the draft. If you start to fall back you then have to put lots of power in to catch back up then seem to overshoot, ease off to fall back into the group only to pop out the back again, then repeat until broken.

I was in the group with Zilog cruising along at 200 W for the second part of the flat section.

Not yet managed to hang onto the faster group I want to be with off the start yet so maybe I’m talking nonsense

Enjoyed that race, wasn’t really anywhere to let up or catch you breath. Thought the start was better for me, but still blew straight out the back to my usual place as a the back marker.
Got a 5 min and a 20 min personal best for that ride and today plan has upped my threshold power by 3 watts. So pretty happy with that!

Well, that was fantastically awful!!

Blimey!!

Start worked well for me, but not sure it made much difference to my positioning after a few mins!
I tried to hang onto Simon Holehan, but he used and aero power-up on the descent and that was that.
He slowly pulled away and I was Billie No Mates for virtually the whole ride.

I need to ride more – too unfit!

Thanks all. Summit finish was evil but worked well.

Anyone who is new to series thanks for coming along. There are a few quirks. For the finish keep an eye out for the blue banner or your distance countdown bar under the drops bar as this is correct. It is normally a little past the official start finish lines.

So onto the results:

Cat A:
1. Phil56
2. crazyharry
3. Nixie

Cat B:
1. Paino
2. J-R
3. W00dster

Cat C:
1. Robbo1234biking
2. jamesoz
3. V7mfp

Cat D:
1. Jimdoubleyou
2. Whirld

Pave Sprint Top 5
1. Garry Lager
2. nixie
3. Paino
4. 1timmy1
5. Phil56

Marina Sprint Top 5
1. Phil56
2. nixie
3. Garry Lager
4. Paino
5. Dangeourbrain

And the overall race winner with handicaps applied:
1. W00dster
2. J-R
3. turnaround

With the sprint points added the top 3 for the series is as follows:
1. V7mfp
2. J-R
3. Mahowlett

Green Jersey Race
1. Nixie (22 points)
2. Garry Lager (16 points)
3. Paino (12 points)

Link to the full results: These are provisional in case I cocked anything up. Let me know if I did!

Next week we head to London for something a little longer and a lot flatter!

For those interested there is a TTT on a Thursday evening:

Zwift Team Time Trial, Thursday

Got a 5 min and a 20 min personal best for that ride and today plan has upped my threshold power by 3 watts. So pretty happy with that!

yeah that is a result – means you’re getting fitter 😀 not had a power boost myself for ages, maybe I’ve peaked 😭

Congrats whirld

Oh, I got a new ftp by the way robbo.
16w increase…

… To 325.😂

@whirld1@hotmail.co.uk that’s mint to hear and pretty inspiring, keep at it and before you know it you won’t be last. Be nice when you can ride with a group, sure makes things a little easier.

Great work whrild

Cheers everyone! I’m definitely getting fitter, this series and the last series have been a massive motivation, so Thanks again Robbo and everyone for making it what it is.

Quick edit, I even got 5 points in this race! First points I’ve got in either series!

@weeksy that section we rode together I average 280w – my FTP is 270w – I was going flat out – I genuinely couldn’t go any faster. It is the reverse of your hills issue. On the hills I averaged 310w both times up them – I can put out power on the hills – on the flat I struggle to consistently get above 270w ish.

Note to self (and I bet everyone else too), in the current vogue for 3 word bollocks:

MUST

START

FASTER

Weird all round really. Seemed to be pretty strung out from the off, but then some people were probably mashing out 600W. I bridged a couple of splits & then ended up in a group of 5 (Kirky, Andeh, Savoyad, “F” – is all I saw on my screen) by the top of the hill, with 10-20 sec to the next pair up the road. No way was I going to close that one & we were all quite well matched so we toddled round fairly comfortably together “lewking at each other” as Sean might say.

I had an aero hat so I used it just before what I thought was the start of the hill to buy some yards – ooops, wasn’t – sorry boys, I think they thought I was going for the line

… and then Kirky wandered off to win it by at least 10 seconds.

Good fun. Cheers all.

Weird mate, every time I looked you were on 2w/kg and I was cursing you ha ha.
I was enjoying that section, closing gaps, surging power to make time up. But then boom, I lost the wheel when my HR was peaking and that was it.

I actually got some points…how the hell did that happen??? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Robbo – not sure the results sheet is right at the moment. The handicaps applied are the ones you put up a day or two ago, but they’re not necessarily the same as the ones now showing on the sheet. For example mine showed +13:00 the other day, but my row for the race says +10:00 (but you have added on +13:00 which I think is what you intended)*

* – more than happy for it to be just 10:00 as an allowance for my ample pies needing to be dragged up a hill twice…

Robbo might be my brain lacking in oxygen feed at the moment but the final times don’t seem to add up right for a lot of the results in the higher part of the table. Eg handicap plus race time mostly seem out. There’s a lot of riders above me I noticed where their handicaps are the same or higher and time slower but have a lower total time.

Worth a check I think.

I didn’t get a single point…..how the hell did that happen?!!!!!!

Hold on! Will check!

I got 0 points, no matter how he jiggles the system I still think I’ll get 0 for today.

Neither did Steve Robinson. You’re both too quick to need points! 🙂

Straight line beat me to it whilst i was typing. Maybe the working out is right but showing wrong handicaps. My quick work out from what I thought my band of riders and race finishes still seems wrong though.

Looks like handicaps didn’t get sorted with the rest of the columns

Also, thanks Robbo for organising

Yeah, I apparently got no points but I think it’s pretty clear that my performance today deserved… well, no points, so that bit’s almost certainly correct.

That start was odd. There was guys flying past me with 3 seconds to go!

Yep..loads of folks past me before the counter had even reached zero I think.. certainly before I’d started moving.

As TPBiker is one of the guys I race against (similar results), I could see quite early on he was 8 seconds behind, then really quickly 23 seconds behind.

Yep..and I averaged over 320 watts or not a million miles off 5 watts per kilo for first 5 min according to my garmin and still hemoraged time..just shows the effect on the draft I suppose. As woodster says, pretty much every race up until now we’ve been riding in same group, but my start position just gave me too much work to do.

I know I’ve totally got my own interests at heart here, but I say either go back to the original start format or all gather slightly down the road and all get inline before the go..otherwise pot luck plays a massive part in how the race pans out (for me at least..I appreciate if you have massive ftp you can probably muscle your way into the lead group, but for me, who is meant to be an cat A rider but has low ftp), its just not possible)

Updated now – just the handicaps that were wrong – phew! This spreadsheet is just dumb copied and pasted so no calculations are done on it – luckily!

Phil – you got some sprint points tonight!

Also if you look at overall times or GC you are the Yellow Jersey 6 seconds ahead of Nixie

@phil56 you got sprint points. But yes all that effort and no time points. I think the lead bunch perhaps was a little on the slow side.

Apparently from pens to top of climb I managed 305w average. That’s not bad.

I didn’t go nuts though as I knew I’d pay the price

I agree with @TPbiker. I think we should try the congregate down the road start.

Cheers Robbo  thanks for organising, can you just check mine has I had a drop out and re joined I wouldn’t want to do someone out of any points I know we have handicaps but Weeksy finished in front on me and he got no points,

once again thanks for organising it’s been great and I think the start worked well and we should give it another go next week.

Neil