Zwift meetups and social rides ?

Oof… overslept (which was much needed.!) So cancelled the 8 am start… sorry!

DrP

@stumpy01 and @oopnorth I have sent you an invite for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning workouts. I can’t select the new routes yet for meet-ups but if that changes I will update the invite to tick some of them off!

I will email you the workouts later.

If anyone else wants an invite let me know. Start at 6.45am for about 50-60 mins.

Monday – SS workout – 4 x 8min at 92-85%
Tuesday – VO2 Max – 3 sets of 1 min at 115% and 1 min recovery – 6 intervals per set
Wednesday – Recovery

Just woke myself so no worries DrP

Just getting a caffeine fix and then I’m off to try a new route or two.

Robbo, I’ll see you tomorrow for early pain.

Great Robbo, thanks!

How are the legs today?! Great effort from everyone yesterday! I didn’t see the point of stopping at the top of the volcano as I was planning on stopping not long after.

As it was, I got to two hrs and wasn’t far off 60km, so thought I might as well do that.
Then at 60km I was on 999m, so had to get over 1000m so ride a little further.

I fancied going a bit further but there were jobs around the house to be getting on with and I was aware that I’d probably end up in the dog house!

Need an early night tonight to make sure I’m up for the morning workouts!

Omg… the proper lutscher loop begins AT THE TOP!
So I’ve gotta ride the KOM twice…
Arg!

DrP

Think there’s a way of sidestepping the chunky lead-in by using a meetup? For future reference 😀

Well done everyone who rode the uber yesterday, sounded like you all gave it a walloping.

Ticked off all 4 new link up routes this morning. The one at the bottom of the Epic is pretty flat and good for a bail if you don’t fancy a hill 🤣🤣

The serpentine 8 in the jungle is a good route and will be good for our Tuesday races…but be wary of the 7km lead in! The bridge link section has some lovely visuals…a nice addition but use the MTB!

Others are nothing much to talk about.

Altogether about 65km this morning…good to get back on again after a few days off.

I did the two boring routes for my recovery ride this morning. The road links are useful but don’t add a huge amount – not really worth slipping the bits that they skip! Hopefully the other two are better.

Legs felt good though – no aches and pains and spun up easy enough!

@oopnorth did you ride the full routes or navigate yourself to each of the new roads? That sounds like a great ride either way.

They’ve missed the chance to make a brilliant very short punchy loop here by using both the new KOM shortcut and the new bridges shortcut – would include just the first (steeper) ramp of the forward KOM, the descent from the statues and then into esses. I guess the motivation for going round is to include the sprint segment. But I wonder if we might see that in future.

We should all tell @drp about the meetup workaround now it’s too late. That is surely the weirdest “lead-in” in the game.

@savoyad I did them all as separate full routes, had to keep restarting Zwift after every one…its annoying but the only way to get the badges.

Yeah I forgot to warn DrP about that one but let’s be honest we all learnt the hard way ourselves 🤣🤣🤣

Meh… it’s all good getting the miles in… plus it’s a bit of a cheat warming up on a steep descent!
I was pleased I was a few min faster up the hill the second time around, once warmed up!

DrP

😂 @DrP

I saw that early this morning and wondered whether I should tell you or just let you find out the same way I did.

Cheers oopnorth and stumpy01 – good to still get some workouts in this close to Xmas! See you bright and early in the morning again!

Well, I’m not sure “thanks” is the correct word, Robbo after this morning’s horror session 🙂

But thanks for organising! I could really feel that today – wasn’t sure I could maintain the effort through all of the reps, but just about managed it!
When I got back in the house, my Wife said she’d come out of the house to check on me as at one point I may have let out a grunt or two 🙂

Not sure how it’s going to go tomorrow!

You will be fine! Just remember it is good to suffer as a group.

That was tougher than I remember this morning but on the right side of manageable.

1 minute vo2 intervals aren’t too bad either. You get 1 minute rest on each so by the time you are getting going it is time for a rest.

Yes certainly tough…I soon regretted my pre workout comment of “it doesn’t look too bad!” hahaha! I really couldn’t get a fast cadence today, was mostly around 80, not sure if it was the ERG resistance or yesterday’s effort.
Got that buzzing tired feeling in the legs right now.

Ready for more tomorrow! Cheers both of you.

Anyone going to attempt the Festive 500 then? I have got a plan to complete it. Not sure if I have the fitness to make it but will give it a go. It will all be done on the turbo/zwift to minimise disruption to the family/in order to be time efficient.

Rough plan is:

24th Dec – 60km
26th Dec – 30km
27th Dec – 65km
28th Dec – 65km
29th Dec – PRL Full 173km
30th Dec – 65km
32st Dec – 65km

That comes to 523km so gives some float for any changes or to reduce the load the day before the PRL full. I will try and get ahead of the game on Xmas eve and possibly boxing day as well and I have worked on doing 30km per hour which hopefully I can be quicker than depending upon route selection. Most of it will be done between 6am and 8am but will be flexible and see how it goes.

And yes I am stupid!

@robbo1234biking that’s a mad plan you’ve even squeezed the 32st of December in there too, I won’t be attempting that doing a bit less over this period rather than more. Good luck and I see a sneaky Full PRL in there….

Don’t have the time to do the 500 but thinking (God knows why???) of seeing if I can join you for the PRL full. Not sure yet of family plans over xmas but I think it’s more achievable than the uber. I don’t remember the half being too bad…

@forge197 good point – might need the extra day. I doubt I will ever get a Xmas this quiet again (hopefully not anyway) so this is my one chance to do it really.

@oopnorth PRL full will be boring but I figure split it up into 2 hour sections and it won’t be too bad. The climb is only 10 mins each time so that is less time than I Spent climbing on the Uber pretzel and the opportunity to recover as well. Pace should be good as well when not on the climb. Only sticking point is 11 times up the escalator!

It is about 17 hours of riding in total I reckon (for the whole festive 500) so allowing virtual miles does make it easier. Assuming I can average 30kph then it will be a lot less hours than doing it on the road. Makes sense as a mini training camp to start of 2021 in a positive mindset.

What sort of time are you looking at for the PRL? 6 hours? More? Less?

Worth giving it ago @robbo1234biking, been a good year for indoor challenges in the end!

It will be 6 hours for PRL full I think.

On Xmas eve it’s the France map, so I might ride Petite Boucle…. a tad over 60km…. interested @robbo123biking ?
Won’t be 6am though… I gotta feed and entertain the kids from about half 6.. so maybe 8 ish?

DrP

@robbo1234biking. That’s an ambitious but doable plan. I’ll join you for a few including full PRL if thats OK. Between 6am and 8am you say;)? I’ve got a fell run planned for Christmas Eve but like most, I won’t be far from home over the festive period.

Thanks for this morning @robbo1234biking and @stumpy01, felt quite good once we got into it, a good start to the day.

Cheers for sorting these Rob. Is it the same active recovery tomorrow as last weeks?

@DrP that is the only day I can’t ride later on (family walk hopefully in the frost with a a hot chocolate!) but is a good route for doing some good km with a bit of variety.

@slowpuncheur I will do a meet up on the 29th for the PRL full – starting at 6.30 again if that’s ok? Feel free to join for any but that is the only one I will do as a formal meet up. Others will be a bit more as hoc depending on when I get out of bed! You can use ride with if I am riding though and if there are a few of us we can switch to discord for chat.

@savoyad when you used ride with on Saturday did you have select the turns or did it choose the turns we were taking?

@oopnorth @stunpy01 yes same recovery workout tomorrow. I won’t be doing workouts next week (due to festive 500) but I can send you the next workouts in the progression if you want to fit then in?

I’m still up for the 500, it also just about gets me over a revised 7000 mile target for the year, I’ll be just about 300 miles away after today and a rest day Wednesday in preparation for the following 8 days.

I’ll probably try to join you for some Robbo, however my own plan is to not ride Xmas day. The kids still get up enthusiastically early to start the big unwrap and I’ll not get away with riding on this day.

So I plan to get a big head start on Xmas eve whilst the wife’s working and the kids are mostly still in bed.

So I might do whatever you invite me to, try and keep the climbing down a bit, and then do a little extra where needed.

Ps 8am is good for most days, maybe earlier for the prl, however I may not do that yet, I’ll decide nearer the time.

If you send me an invite I will see you at some point.

Drp that looks like a decent route from Xmas eve, if you can ping me an invite I will most likely join you. 8am is a good start time for me.

I’ll play Doc.

@robbo1234biking no worries about the workouts, we can pick them up after Christmas, I’m not sure of my riding plans yet over this period and it will be ad hoc. I’ll be joining races and rides as I can, on a day by day basis.

Send me an invite too DrP, just in case I can make it

No worries @robbo1234biking. It’s hard trying to juggle commitments at this time of year.

This may be ambitious but I wondered whether there was any interest in a ‘social’ group ride sometime over Christmas? Couple of hours, easy paced, no stress, burn off a few mince pies and get a few km’s in for those doing the Rapha 500? I’m thinking morning (but not early!) on 30th or 31st?

I’m happy Slow yeah, for me some of this meetup seems to have lost the plot a bit and gone almost as nuts as the TTT stuff. I’m all for some serious Zwift action, but not all day every day, sometimes i just want a bit of a ride, bit of a chat, bit of a laugh.

Sat i did a ride with mates on Zwift, 10am and had beers on the go, was some up, down, up, flat, i was dragging the lads around and playing on the hills, we were chatting on Zoom and the pace wasn’t important.

Invites gone out… @weeksy … I’ll aim to keep the pace rolling but ‘smart casual’ on Xmas eve! No heroics etc etc!
I’ll be in (likely) day 4 of a boozy stupor at this point!

DrP

8am is a bit early for a social drink whilst we ride isn’t it?

We’re supposed to be meeting in laws for a walk at some point. I’m wholly unsure what time, however as there are small children involved there’s every chance they’ll think 10am is a reasonable time to do things on a day off so I may need to bail out early.

@slowpuncheur send out an invite cos I’ll be zwifting during the holidays and will join where I can. I’m definitely up for banter group rides.

In fact, if anyone is thinking of doing some possible meetup rides over the break, send out invites please!

@weeksy that’s the good thing about Zwift can be whatever you want it to be! I just have a target in my head to finish the routes this year. I haven’t achieved many other cycling goals this year so will be nice to finish in one. I normally go down to Stroud for the Jennride first weekend of Jan but that isn’t going to happen this year.

I have accepted DrP – can likely stay for an hour before I have to get showered and ready to go out! Everything I do is going to be at a slow pace.

8am is a bit early for a social drink whilst we ride isn’t it?

MAybe in your world it’s early 🙂 I’ll have my Xmas jumper on for the first 1km too 🙂

oopnorth

Thanks for this morning @robbo1234biking and @stumpy01, felt quite good once we got into it, a good start to the day.

Yeah, I actually enjoyed this morning! It was a ‘nice’ effort level & duration.

@oopnorth @stunpy01 yes same recovery workout tomorrow. I won’t be doing workouts next week (due to festive 500) but I can send you the next workouts in the progression if you want to fit then in?

I could well be up for that Robbo, if you don’t mind mailing them over? I can’t see myself getting up quite so early but will endeavour to do them!