STW Zwift Autumn Series 2

Just watched last nights YouTube feed from @nixie. Didn’t realise we could watch it after the event. Interesting to replay the group split after the second sprint, some big watts being dished out!

Next week is going to be hard. 2 sprints. Not sure weather to gun it up the climbs in the hope to get a time bonus or to concentrate on the sprints. Probably a bit of both culminating in nil points!

Ogg is great at hiding

Yeah – I was struggling to do anything last night kept thinking “this is too slow” going off the front of the group I was with for a few seconds and then going “nope maybe not”! just getting over a cold so was very much at 75% of my normal power -tried to have a pop at the sprint but missed top 5 by .02 I think, gave up after messing up 3rd sprint and ambled through the last 5km.
Annoying as that course would normally have suited me quite well but just didn’t have enough oomph to keep up.

Next week is going to be hard. 2 sprints. Not sure weather to gun it up the climbs in the hope to get a time bonus or to concentrate on the sprints. Probably a bit of both culminating in nil points!

I’m going for both though maybe more emphasis on the sprints as I already have a nice GC gap and the sprint table to closer.

Incidentally for the post sprint split I’ve been doing some 30/15 over under training recently (3 sets of 13x 120%, 50% iirc). That is very helpful for that type of attack and you get used to the quick recycle time.

I’m finding I can put a good sprint in, like last night’s finish, but am unable to sustain it for more than 20 to 30 seconds, I was dying towards the line. Has anyone got any suggestions of what I should be doing training wise to improve my stamina, workouts or routes etc? I’d like to be able to put in an effort to bridge a gap (which I should have done in the race!) and then be able to keep with the group I join, so I need to improve both sprint and recovery.

Appreciate any help you may have.

@oopnorth. Try something like this workout. Capacity into sweetspot. Will hopefully build some sprint endurance and train better recovery after an effort.

Next week’s going to be the last race I can do so I reckon it’s worth giving the sprints a go rather than chase a position just to see what happens.

Thanks Paul, I’ll try that.

To be honest I have seen an improvement with the Academy workouts I’ve been doing, this morning’s felt not too bad, with some good sprint efforts one after another. I see that this is one of the Academy ones from 2018, maybe I need to go back and visit the previous ZA workout series, which may help.

Second sprint next race is 400m – fair stretch of the legs. Going to take a MvdP-esque effort to bring that one home.

The 3R True Steady rides (8.15pm on Mon and Wed) are hour long laps of London or Richmond normally with a sprint on every lap. 2.0w/kg average so great for recovery but with about 6-7 sprints thrown in. They really help me with sprints over more than 200m.

Can’t do many evenings unfortunately with family commitments so I’ll see if there are any similar events in a morning, riding with the evening crew on the other side of the world.

@nixie When you stream to you tube, do you:
-need Zwift windowed, rather than full screen?
-need a new stream key EACH stream?

Cheers

DrP

Where is the stream and what do I need to search to view it?

@drp yes windowed sadly. Though I’ve put the start menu on auto hide so you only loose the title strip across the top. When zwift is minimised it doesn’t output any image either so bring the streaming software to the foreground rather than minimising zwift. I’ve used the same stream key for every stream so far.

@dandasbike it’s here if you mean mine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzp7uDuMYi8 . It’s a different link for each event, that is last night’s though they should appear on my channel as well.

I run windowed anyway as I have to get a screenshot of the sprint times and then open the image to make sure I got the right info! Almost forgot last night – its hard work trying to do it whilst racing

Thanks @nixie

So ironically on the day after a STW Race Series where no-one actually complained about the start procedure. I have some exciting news. @mark has generated some interest in the STW Race Series from Zwift HQ, who are particularly interested in the fact that a load of MTBers have decided to spend their winter months sitting inside on turbo trainers.

They have kindly offered a properly organised Zwift event to finish of the last 3 races of the series. I will be deleting the meetup that I have put in for next week and you simply sign up via the links here. All 3 races to finish this series are available now so click on the links below and get signed up. Would be great to get the attendance up at similar levels to what we have done for the first races in the Series.
This also means that there are no more shonky starts – we will be starting from the pens like a proper Zwift race and a proper finish line that is in the same place for everyone!

The link for next weeks race is below (I think if you click on these from your mobile it takes you straight to the companion app where you can sign up).

So see you all in the start pen on Tuesday evening!

Race 4 – Watopia Figure of 8

Race 5 – Richmond UCI Worlds

Race 6 – Quatch Quest – DON’T PANIC

Please contact me via PM for links.

Thanks all for your support. Glad you have enjoyed the races to date!

Winner!!

Wowsers, that’s epic.

Awesome 👍

That’s amazing news. Kudos to you Robbo for generating the interest and putting in the hard yards on the old spreadsheet. Hopefully this will allow you to enjoy the racing a bit more. ‘Enjoy’ being a loose term…;)

That is pretty cool, signed up for next Tuesday to bagsy a place on the grid before it explodes over the next week.

Shame I can’t do the two weeks after – I wonder if I can use my powercal hr power meter via my phone and jog on the spot or something just to show willing?

Nice one, great work robbo and mark.

Those are secret links, I.e the events will not appear in event lists so are effectively private. Might be better to PM them to people.

This is amazing!! 😀👍

Whaaaay! Ace news Robbo!

Top work robbo

Out of interest, are the events open to everyone to enter like normal zwift events, or limited to us folks?

I’m probably going to miss the next 2, but Hoping to make a return for the last event of the series.

Awesome news.

Now it’ll be zwiftpower-ed too mind so all those ftp increases are actually going to count too!

Amazing. You totally deserve this @robbo1234biking.
Also what @nixie said about private links…

Edit: I’m disappointed it’s not officially called Quatch Quest (don’t panic). But relieved to see the custom distance…

As nixie says they are secret – I think they are ok on the forum. If people make it here to the links then I they must be interested in taking part properly. They don’t appear on the normal Zwift lists etc. At the end of the day we want to drum up interest in the series.

Did you get to set it as double draft just to really make nixie work for that gc win?

I ####### hope not!

Great job guys! Links worked taking me to the companion app. Signed up for the last 3, looking forward to it.

I ####### hope not

If only you’d not explained the van power up…

Brilliant news well done Robbo and Mark.

blimey – well done Robbo and Mark !

(I can’t see links; did you decide against leaving them here ?)

(I can’t see links; did you decide against leaving them here ?)

Changed to PM for links now…

… there’s going to be a STW jersey, right ?
😉

Had a bad race last night (but still enjoyed it obviously), Lost concentration about 8km in and got dropped out the back of the main group on a climb, couldn’t get back on so ended up doing 32 kms solo, not as motivating or “fun” as being in a group. Realised at 10kms in that I’d forgotten to turn on the tunes so I was cycling with no motivational beats. Schoolboy error 🙂

Yeh links have been removed but I have PM’ed everyone who is registered on the race series the links so you should all have them. Let me know if I missed you or if you want to join the series.

The jersey would have to be designed by committee and end up looking like the the EF pro cycling one from the Giro.

Great stuff with the penned start on the last few races…. Is it best to be sprinting when the timer hits zero 🤔😂