Zwift meetups and social rides ?

I figured I wouldn’t be able to hang with the Sunday Hills group, so did my own ride today. Ended up doing the bigger loop.
It’s not a bad loop and there’s a decent warm up before the Epic KOM.

I did feel a bit guilty about not getting out on an actual ride though, as the weather wasn’t too bad.

It was good to see a familiar face (and cap!) on the Fondo ride at 9 this morning @oopnorth. They are getting daft though. Nearly 4000 on the start line and no doubt more like @robbo1234biking who couldn’t get on.. was very glitchy at start. Everyone disappeared a couple of times and I lost quite a few places. ON found me on the run up to the jungle and it was pretty cool hammering past the road bikes in there. I had several ANT dropouts again today and each time on a bloody hill. Last one about 0.5km from top of Volcano climb. Still did PB up it so happy. Can I face a ramp test before Tuesday though….

Yeah the start was glitchy…I was riding with ghost bikes for the first 30 seconds until it calmed down…strange seeing a load of bikes just riding along on their own with no riders 🤣🤣

There was late join available on the meetup?

That would have made more sense than me hurriedly joining and then watching everyone ride off while I looked for my shoes… didn’t matter because I only lasted 10 minutes of half-hearted chase before family duties kicked in.

@savoyad I think unless you put results on or use the rubber band all meetups allow you to join up to 30 mins late. I could be wrong though!

I wasn’t too bothered about the fondo as have done the course before (they need some new fondo routes).

I did a ramp test instead and got a good boost from 280w to 287w so happy with that over xmas. Hoping to hit 300w in 2021 so might need to revise that as I am not that far of now! If I can get to 320w and down to 80 kg (could be dreaming there) that would have me pushing the bottom of A cat.

Open invite for the morning if anyone wants to join @oopnorth @stumpy01 and me in a Sweetspot Workout. it is a quite easy one tomorrow to get back into the New Year a bit easier. Kicks of at 6.45am for about 50mins to an hour.

Hi R obbo I guessed you had issues has you was there one minute then disappeared, I’m didn’t know Craig and Paul where doing the ride till I check the app as they where 400 places in front of me. It was a bit glitchy loads of people had issues.

Thanks all who joined this am… Nice group pace, with some good chat..

I quite liked that route.. felt good 👍

DrP

@neilarn2 I couldn’t see you in the app (how did you do it?) But I did do a message to you both on the screen but you may not have seen it.

Good ride!

@oopnorth, I went thru the activity’s on the companion app as your down as following etc, you was most probably to far in front for your message to show, I didn’t even see your red blob at the start.

So I have upped the Zwift geek level this afternoon. Saw this article on Zwift Insider and decided to give it a go. Ordered a bluetooth media controller from Amazon which arrived today. Downloaded autohotkey and the script from the page and it all works well (including PTT in Discord).

I have mounted it on my stem for the moment as I tend to put my hands together and rest my thumbs on the the garmin mount if I am doing an effort.

I have it set up as per the script at the moment so the following keys:

Volume Up: Power Up
Previous Track: Switch between 1st and 3rd person
Next Track: Switch between Forward view and rear view
Play/Pause: Elbow Flick
Voume down: PTT (2.5 seconds)

When I have used it a few times I may try and change some of the codes but my level of coding ability is zero so not sure how complicated it is. Would probably change the elbow flick and the 1st person/3rd person view.

Thanks for the invite @DrP and apologies for missing it, went to bed late and didn’t have enough time to get everything set up when I woke up later than planned.

Well, this morning’s workout was fun (ahem) and puts me in a prime position for dead legs for tomorrow’s race – getting my meagre excuses in early!

Cheers Rob for organising.

In 2020 I did 163km in January.
We are only 4 days into this Jan & I’m up to 99km. All virtual so far. I need to get out in the real world at some point soon!

I meant to ask, Rob – how are you finding your new controller widget? I would have to add labels I think to remind me what the different buttons do!

So, imagine I have a ‘friend’ who got a smart trainer for Christmas, and has started using Zwift, can ‘he’ join in these here meetups and social rides? And assuming, er, ‘he’ doesn’t really want to read all 102 pages of this thread, could someone give me, er, him, a quick rundown of what I need to do? Sorry, he needs to do?

*edit* oh, and ‘he’ is currently pumping out a mighty FTP of 200, so is not uber-quick.

@IHN – the best thing to do is keep an eye on this thread, most people organising meet-ups will post them here. I think people need to be following you, to allow them to add you to a meet-up invite – so it’s probably worth posting up your Zwift name so those people can find you.

I keep meaning to start a regular group ride at a slower pace – I frequently get dropped on a lot of the group rides, but to be honest it doesn’t really matter. To me, accepting an invite is a commitment to ride & drags me onto the turbo when perhaps I would stay in bed.

It might be worth having a look at the race series thread too. There is a handicap system, so don’t think that you will be dead last or anything like that – your weight/FTP is taken into account for the results.
You might be too late for the first race, but should be able to jump into the remaining 5.

Robbo is also doing a bit of a workout series to at the moment – currently it seems to be Robbo, OopNorth & myself, but Robbo regularly asks if others are interested.
It’s early doors, but is a great excuse to get out of bed. The meet-up is set as ‘sticky’ so we all stay together, even though we are putting out different power values during the workout. It’s great motivation knowing that you’ve accepted the invite & there is added motivation during the session itself, knowing that you aren’t the only one suffering 🙂

@IHN still time for a late joiner to the race series if you want to join in? PM me your weight and FTP and I can send you over the invites.

@stumpy01 – the button worked well but only used it to change the view a few times and then flicked the elbow a couple of times (don’t know if you noticed). Couldn’t try the power up but made it easy – will be of more use during races as I never look behind me when it can be quite useful!

The workout was harder than expected but I think we all had FTP bumps over xmas so the first few are bound to be hard!

Cheers both. My Zwift name is (now) Simon Massey (IHN), and my avatar is the STW logo, so should be spottable.

When are the races? I’ve started doing the FTP Builder workout program, so I’d like to concentrate on that for now, but if I can work the races/meet-ups around it then that would be great.

I think people need to be following you, to allow them to add you to a meet-up invite – so it’s probably worth posting up your Zwift name so those people can find you.

Sort of the reverse of that. You can only invite people who are following you. My suggestion as such is “search for zwifters” in the companion app and follow everyone who turns up on a search for stw. Most – though not all – the folks organising rides at least will turn up at that.

For properly social rides (eg setting off in daylight) I’ll mention it on here but largely just spam everyone with an invite. It’s been a while since I arranged anything mind.
Commutes tended to be a very short list of volunteers from this thread or regulars for invites as there were only ever a handful of us so easier to keep track.

I have sent you the links for the race series. No pressure so if you want to turn up see what it is about and only stay for 30 mins that is up to you. Races are Tuesday evenings at 7.30pm.

Cheers all. I’ve changed my Zwift name so it now has ‘STW’ in it, I’ll do a trawl for others later.

I’ve accepted the race series too, hopefully I can do tomorrow’s, if not I may start with next week’s.

@IHN I have just sent you a connection request (Craigpin Oop North), so follow me and I will add you to my list when I send out the meetup rides we do on a weekend, usually Sunday or Saturday Hills at around 8am.

Robbo, Dangeourbrain (Brian) and DrP also arrange group rides so best try and follow them too, to get the invites.
Group rides are all abilities, we wait for all and ride to the slowest rider, all good fun and banter, plus it improves us slow lads to ride faster chasing the others down, I’ve seen a vast improvement this year riding with them all. Just get involved.

Cheers oopnorth.

What’s the Discord wotsit, is that another app I need?

Most rides we use messaging through the Zwift companion app, only recently we have used discord when doing the longer rides, so people can join for a couple of hours later on and still communicate, most of the time you won’t need discord…unless you are thinking of joining the Thursday TTT team, where discord is used so you can shout at each other to go faster 🙂

I’ve pinged you a follow… if you follow back tehn I can invite to group rides..

DrP

@IHN the group rides are good for pushing same as IRL always someone quicker on the flat, quicker on the hills but means their always a rider to try and keep up with, as @oopnorth says we do regroup and there is draft assistance on climbs too.

Would I be right in assuming a Ramp Test is horrendous?

Anyone have any useful links to articles talking about training sessions for looooonnnngggggg distance riding, multi day stuff taken at pace? I’m kinda guessing at tempo (speed endurance) based workouts rather than pure top end speed or power. But I’m not guessing from a position of education so….

Anyway, back to browsing for TVs and Apple TV boxes now were back to tighter lockdowns 🤨

@piemonster depends how much time you have available really? Lots of Z2 would be the best way but you might not have time for that so you might need to replace that with intensity. Growing your FTP is only going to help i.e. if your Z2 becomes 200w max instead of 180w max then you have a lot more capacity to recover etc at lower paces.

How long are you talking?

Ramp tests aren’t that bad – they hurt for a few mins max and then either your legs or lungs will fail. Better than a 20 min FTP test.

How long are you talking?

Total riding time for the initial objective is approximately 30hrs, so likely including 4hrs sleep plus feed/repair stops.

Time wise for total volume per month, my current benchmark is December at 48hrs 12min split between running/biking/strength physio work. But logistically I believe I can find 65hrs per month. Depending on the balance of hard sessions to easy sessions I also believe I currently have the fitness to sustain that volume.

Time constraints is less of an issue than my innate aversion to a defined structure. I can have broad weekly targets but not daily specifics. So I’d be slotting a structured session into a week but not a specific day. Too defined a structure works against my personality and ultimately is counter productive. In practice I’d look at the weather for the week and do the indoor session on the worst weather day and run the dog on the best weather day.

Do you use intervals.icu to track your training stress? It is worthwhile signing up and pulls data from Strava so will also track your runs etc. 15 hours a week is a decent amount to be able to train but lots of Z2 will be boring. I really would recommend signing up to TR and looking at their tri-plans but disregard the swimming aspect. You should be able to find someone with a free months trial to give it a go (I don’t have any at the moment). TrainerRoad lets you push workouts to Garmin devices for doing them outside as well.

I would also dedicate some time to some core strengthening exercises. When I did the Jennride last year my lack of core strength was more of an issue than fitness as sitting on the bike for that long requires a good level of core strength and mobility especially if it is on MTB/rough terrain.

I’ll take a look at intervals.icu

Also looking at TR but it does appear a little too structured for my mindset. Training Peaks have a few specific and relevant but again a bit too prescriptive.

I’ve been having 1:2:1 instruction from my Physio/Pilates instructor so hopefully that bits taken care of.

In my head I’ve a single indoor internal session, one outdoors either fast or fartlek mixed in with LSR/easy/medium efforts.

No high intensity runs but I will do LSRs

Physio and pilates should help then.

I don’t know enough about running to help you on that bit but I would definitely do a ramp test to set your bike power zones properly.

How long do you want your indoor interval session to be? Doing a SS workout gradually working the length of the intervals up would be beneficial I think.

Is anyone doing an early one tomorrow?

@dangeourbrain yes but not Zwift 🙂. Ipswich to Otley in FulGaz today. I’ll be out the early loop for a couple weeks starting Monday 🙁. Should be up for a Sunday ride this week though.

I don’t know enough about running to help you on that bit but I would definitely do a ramp test to set your bike power zones properly.

Running will have to remain more or less unstructured, this is definitely an activity where a major factor is the utter simplicity of it all, I just like running about and adding anything beyond that is demotivating. I have got very fit in the past with running so still manage to do a decent job somehow. I’ll likely do 3 runs per week, 2 with the dog and although he covers lots of ground he is one of life’s plodders. The 3rd will be an LSR and that pretty much covers it. Although I do think I’ll probably end up doing 30 minutes on Zwift on the dog run days just to keep the legs moving well on the bike.

How long do you want your indoor interval session to be? Doing a SS workout gradually working the length of the intervals up would be beneficial I think.

As a rule, they’ll mostly be 60-90 minutes. I’ve not gone beyond 3hrs this season. But should be able to knock off some of the longer routes as LSRs as well. I should really sort a rocker plate/appe tv/massive tv.

Currently I do appear to be able to go outside for long rides (Scotland, so I’m staying inside the council area, although I do need to double check that in a few days to see how things settle down). Even on a stay within 5 miles basis I have a 35km gravel route with no physical contact points so have that for laps I guess.

I do seem to be quite focused on this particular goal. I think in large part it’s giving me a longer term goal that blocks out the utter **** show everywhere else.

RE upcoming meetups…
I’m doing the “tour de zwift” stage 1 (A group ride..it’s not power based, but length based..ooh er missus..) on Thursday 7th Jan at 1200… Would be good to see some familiar faces there…

Shall I arrange a Sunday Hills for this coming sunday too?

DrP

I should be up for that please

DrP I’m up for a Sunday Hill’s.

Got a tight week to squeeze everything in this week. Tomorrow am I’ll be doing one of Robbo’s workouts to keep up with our weekly schedule.
Friday at 7am I’ll be doing the tour de zwift race 1 A group.. the longer one. If anyone is interested would be good to have a fellow rider.

Saturday I’ll be doing the tour ride 2 at 8am…not sure which yet but maybe Yorkshire as I’ve not ridden it for a while…plus Richmond hurts…

Join if you can

@piemonster https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/sweet-spot-progression/26979/486 this isa good thread with lots of info on sweetspot progression. I would set up some zwift workout to gradually increase the time over the 60 minute session so you increase the length of the SS intervals and then use the other 30 mins for a free ride/less structured.

@DrP I am hoping to ride the 5pm one tonight. I cant ride tomorrow as have the TTT in the evening and cant be knackered trying to chase Phil up the hill in France!

I’m about for a Sunday Hills (or indeed a Saturday one). Jumping on the 5pm TdZ tonight (long one) if anyone else is on that?

Ooooo DrP you are a bad man! I hate that glass hill. But I suppose it’s better to do it in company…

See you all Sunday…enjoy your rides in the meantime.