STW Zwift Autumn Series 2

Lol Zilog for the win tonight! I’ve just been looking at handicap

Hey Weeksy, I’ll pace you up the underpass if you pull me around the flat! This isn’t my parcours tonight (not sure what is?). Juts hope it doesn’t turn into an ITT.

Ghost would be pretty cool in meetups as well.

Ghost would be pretty cool in meetups as well.

Letting your laptop battery go flat is apparently a good approximation.

I’ll pace you up the underpass if you pull me around the flat!

I’m hoping my Zwift race skills will help me, the only time I’m hitting the front is when I’ve made a mistake. I’ll be hiding as much as possible

Letting your laptop battery go flat is apparently a good approximation.

Internet dropouts do it as well :D.

Wtrl series is in London tonight – hope the servers are stable! We are in meet-up only view so shouldn’t affect us too much. Will be busy in there though!

the last few days on zwift have been pretty poor actually – I did a solo ride in ‘open world’ and people were dropping in and out like crazy! 2 min on my own for a bit..then busy again.

One dude got understandably angry in the comments and left a group ride!

Hope it holds out.

DrP – getting bloody nervous again!

There’s already 27,000 people on there. I’ll try and get on in good time to save any disaster’s.

Almost 30k now!

Sadly going to have to miss tonight’s event. Moved house over the weekend and still trying to find everything. Also not got any internet yet 😟. Have fun and happy racing.

Well that didnt last long. Drop outs, so dropped out.

Justgot in from work & watching

looks like phil’s had the same – or he’s fallen off

SHame jamesoz, you’ve some power as I remember

Damn you Zwift – how hard is to have a button that says ‘join this ride that I see you are going to, that is starting in 15 mins’.

Riding around hoping its going to appear, then 15 mins of logging in/out, restart, go/don’t go, made to the event with 3 mins to go (all warmup time gone), managed to ride the go wave, yay, but then dumped out after 15 mins.

I hope Veloton eat all their lunch.

nixie 20 sec off the front and going hard. Paino doing a lot of pulling in the chase group of 5 – either feeling very strong or shortly to be mugged

LOL – 1st attempted robbery as I typed that !

now that’s weird, watching a sprint finish without being able to see the line 🙂

Finally started fast enough! I like the flat

That was horrendous. Well done John K and guys in front group. Tried to bridge over to you but just couldn’t make it, got to two seconds but no way could I continue.

Sorry @w00dster I upped the pace at that point and left you in no man’s land as I didn’t want the second group to come back with you.

That was quality tonight. Got a 12 watt increase to my ftp too

Managed to hold on to some Cs all the way round so happy with that.

Also seem to have developed a medium sized lake under the turbo. Ew…

That was guuuud…. in a type 2 fun kinda way! Pretty much dead on ftp for the hour.. looking at the stats my hr was 178 for 80% of the race.. going to 182 for the last portion….

Good strong effort from Nixie and the breakaway gang!

I tried a sprint with 400m to go… I should learn I can only manage about 300m of proper sprint! Doh!

12th overall across line… will see where handicaps put me…

DrP

@scaredypants I was amazed to even be in that group at all given the earlier warm up 🤣. Damage limitation to Nixie if anything!
How did the sprint go? I know I was top after lap 2, but that Lager boy has got legs till the last lap??

Oh, and massive thanks to @yanboss for pulling me back to the lead group on 2 occasions when I missed the split!

Cheers to @slowpuncheur for dragging me around the last 7km, I could have give up at any moment, but kept getting some kind of 2nd wind!

I just about managed to hold on to what I think was the 3rd group on the road. The difference in speed between the group I was clinging on to and those who didn’t quite hold the wheel was huge – there was no way you could pull that back.

I crossed the line at the back of the strung out group but with nothing else left in the legs. No thoughts of tactics or anything tonight, cling on for grim death and cling on tighter on the rises was as much as I could do.

A hard race for me. Glad I managed to stay in the group near the back. Thanks to the rest of the group for helping out 👍👍

You won the sprint @paino (unless someone at the back threw down a huge dig in the last lap), well done.
If Id got a powerup I would have tried again last lap, but didn’t fancy it bare – first two laps took their toll.

ITT for me after a couple of drop outs in the first km think it was my end though. I couldn’t find the usb extension cable so the dongle was at the laptop. It seemed to drop on the big efforts throughout the ride.

But TBH I’m pretty stoked I wasn’t lapped, every cloud an all that.

I’ll be better prepared next week, with a whole 7 days to think up a different excuse 🙂

I was waiting for someone in our group to go so was trying to conserve energy on the last lap. Think we were all doing the same.
I had more to give but didn’t fancy a solo TT to real in Paul and Giggsy, plus I knew they both had time on me in the handicap so a few seconds wouldn’t make a difference. I was keeping an eye on Ivan and Robbo as I knew they were near rivals.
We pulled a fair gap to the next one behind…around 4 minutes so we must have been motoring but it didn’t feel like it.
That first lap was tasty and I was a bit worried it would continue at that speed but once the ultras left it settled down 🤣🤣

Great race all and well done to our group

Ouch, only a few watts below FTP with an IF of 1.05

Was expecting big attacks in the underpass but no. Well done @nixie how many times did you have to attack before it stuck? Long old TT for you at the end.

Just about hung onto lead group, spent last half of race getting a tow from @paino , cheers for that.

Race started ok, first lap I was in the big group until bang bang bang, the splits appeared and I was on the wrong side of one.

Waited for Figg who was flying! But when he bailed I cruised for 3km and jumped on a great group, it was fun.
Ogg is great at hiding, narnold was great talking turns.

I went 559m out with an aero but died before the line.

Results showed me at from of our group but on my screen I was last out of the group Robbo.

Urgh, flats.

Clung on the the front group until the 2nd time up the “climb” and just couldn’t be arsed to keep up. Max HR and nowt in the legs. Ended up in a nice pair with T.Ward, taking turns doing pulls to the finish. Objective was to not get caught, and not lose too much time to those ahead, seemed to about manage it. Good work dude!

That was great!
In a group with (excuse the terrible recollection) neilarnold, jimdoubleyou, OGG, RM, yandurra and some others – mind gone blank….we caught Weeksy who then joined in.

It would have been horrible riding that solo…!

It was horrible riding that solo!

It would have been game over at the pointy end if anyone lost a group, for sure!

DrP

It would have been horrible riding that solo

I had that dilemma for a while and decided against it.

The underpass is too obvious. Need to have people hurting before you get there.

I’ve no idea how many times I went, 7, 8, 9. Most of the early ones were lower impact where I pulled through at just over FTP from the back. These give quite a jump off the front as you pick up speed drafting the pack. The pack speed was low enough in the draft that recovery was quite quick.

Annoyingly I had a aero on lap 2 but didn’t use it for the sprint. Was saving it for lap 3 but was solo by that point as there was no way I was sprinting.

The break after the lap 2 sprint worked really nicely. Think it cut the group in half. Felt good pulling on the front this week.

A 10k TT was not the plan but the gap opened so it seemed a good time to go. Was convinced the group would get me in the underpass however I guess they had had enough of the repeated pushes. It seemed a very long way to the end!

Really enjoyed this week. It’s nice to be able to practice and play with attacks. I so rarely get to do that. Well done to those who were and the pointy end of the sprint times.

That was not very enjoyable, really struggled to get up to pace. Nearly got caught by A.Barry so fair play to him, he was only about 100m short of catching me before he finished.
Tablet lost WiFi when saving the ride so can’t check how poor my stats are and it hasn’t loaded to Strava.

Really enjoyed that. Decided to set my sights a bit higher and stay with one group ahead of my usual. Was praying that things would settle down and fortunately they did. Only received 2 power ups but actually managed to deploy them at the right time for a change. Big thanks to all those who pulled me along.