Viewing 40 posts - 10,321 through 10,360 (of 15,383 total)
  • Zwift, my journey, my weight and my fitness.
  • tomd
    Free Member

    A got a Magnus earlier this year, it’s been good. I would say it’s worth getting a ANT dongle if you don’t have one. I found connecting my HR and trainer to Zwift via bluetooth to be a faff. The ANT connection just works every time I fire up the laptop and spin the bike. They’re pretty cheap. Also, a proper trainer tyre. I used some old road tyres but but there was some slippage at high efforts and wear to the roller.

    mooman
    Free Member

    HR monitor. Some races insist on HR monitor being worn.

    Plus a fan, something to play music, and a large rubber/plastic mat to catch the sweat.

    weeksy
    Full Member

    My boy asked if he could do a zwift event. Closest to compatible was a 2.0 German ride so off he goes


    2019-01-02_04-59-06 by Steve WeeksFlickr2BBcode
    H8216, undefined@4.4 mm, f2.0, 1/100s, ISO640

    Same surname as me, give him a thumb if you see him out there.

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
    Latest Singletrack Videos
    j4mesj4mes
    Free Member

    I’m wanting to start doing regular group rides each week and I’ve never done any before. Is it a case of trying some randomly (at the expected cat level) or are there certain organisers/groups that are better?

    mooman
    Free Member

    Have look on zwiftpower for the scheduled rides. You could always just enter a race as lowest category and just ride around in that.

    scaled
    Free Member

    Weeksy – that garage door is going to give me nightmare – tell me there are deadbolts in the corners.

    tomlevell
    Full Member

    BTW kids under 16 can get a free Zwift account. Have a look on Zwift Insider from a couple of weeks ago. My 7YO is now giving me grief up hills with his tiny weight when I’m on a steady day rather than pushing a full size adult avatar around with a bodge to get the power up on a dumb trainer.

    Weeksy – Overunders seem to be 95% to 105% for varying times. 1minute to 2 minutes and varying the length of the over or the under.

    robbo1234biking
    Full Member

    Saw a few of you on there last night. I have spent the last 3 nights doing 15 mile Z2 gentle rides as I am doing the Jennride on Sunday so don’t want to knacker myself for that so no racing this week. Will prob hop on for another 15 miles tonight.

    Is it just me or is London pretty boring – guess I never noticed as have been doing races previously but it isn’t that interesting to ride around. I much prefer Watopia.

    At least it is Watopia today and I unlocked the Jungle map I think last night as I finally reached Level 10 so might have a play around there.

    weeksy
    Full Member

    BTW kids under 16 can get a free Zwift account

    Yup, that’s what my lad uses. He’s not Zwifted for 6+ months but last night said “I want to be faster for Swinley to make you happy”… Who am i to argue… 50 mins later he’d done 30km at 1.8w/kg… I had to force him to finish early

    thecaptain
    Free Member

    There’s a simple hack to set the world to wherever you want. Of course that’s not much use of you want to do a specific event.

    mooman
    Free Member

    What’s the simple hack?

    (Hopefully it works on an AppleTV)

    weeksy
    Full Member

    Changing the device date to whatever date had the course you want. You’re then placed in that world instead.

    forzafkawi
    Free Member

    Is it just me or is London pretty boring – guess I never noticed as have been doing races previously but it isn’t that interesting to ride around. I much prefer Watopia.

    Have you tried the Surrey Hills circuit? A great training and/or racing route I think. Certainly better than New York or Richmond.

    robbo1234biking
    Full Member

    Surrey Hills isn’t really suitable for me doing Z2 training. I end up going to hard on the ills and upping the HR! Need something pretty flat to keep the HR down.

    nixie
    Full Member

    You can do Z2 on the hills, just takes a bit more self discipline to control your output. I did Box Hill last night in Z2. Also done the Alpe in Z2 though found it really hard to not go harder on that effort!

    For me London is way better than NY. Richmond is so bad its hardly worth bothering.

    robbo1234biking
    Full Member

    Oh yeh I realise I can do Z2 on the hills – it is the self discipline that is lacking! At the end of the day you are just spinning – its what is entertaining your brain or eyes that makes the difference.

    I really enjoy Watopia but I only started Zwifting in September – since then it hardly ever seems to get selected (or at least not when I happen to be Zwifting) so I end up on one of the other tours.

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    If you use a PC/Mac you can probably still use https://zwifthacks.com/zwift-preferences/
    it loads a bit of software that sets your preferences for a ride, including venue

    (don’t forget to “cancel” it afterwards as it remembers the choice or you’ll be riding round empty roads next time out, too)

    n0b0dy0ftheg0at
    Free Member

    https://zwiftinsider.com/world-tag/
    World hack for pc, site has solution for at least some other platforms like iOS.

    https://zwiftinsider.com/using-the-trainer-difficulty-setting-in-zwift/
    Reduce the setting to reduce the feel of the gradient, it’s 50% by default IIRC. If for instance you don’t want to have to put out ~250W to get up the final hill to the radio mast in your lowest gear, lower it to ~25% and you will now have a virtual dinner plate sprocket to use… You will be putting out far less power, almost certainly reducing your heart rate and your speed will drop. But you will get to the top.

    Edit: Forgot about that tool that scaredypants has linked to, makes things very simple. Just be aware that if you have overridden the world setting from default and an event you have entered is on the default world, it will completely screw up your race!

    weeksy
    Full Member

    It’s the start of the new Zwift tour today then. Not sure i have the legs for the long one today, but i may jump on the shorter one at 2 laps of the jungle layout at a nice easy 200w.

    forzafkawi
    Free Member

    I’ve signed up for the long route at 17:00 and there are over 2700 entrants so far!

    nixie
    Full Member

    I’m in a bit of a loop of getting blown out the back of races and feeling knackered. Not been posting write ups as they would be very samey and demoralising. Going to cut races down to one a week and try some proper training for a bit. A bit of digging shows my 1 minute power sucks so will be trying to get that on par with my 5 minute and FTP efforts.

    Flaperon
    Full Member

    Another STW rider sent me a message last night when I was doing a Watopia Mountain 8 race but I didn’t reply as struggling with last hill. Apologies.

    weeksy
    Full Member

    Forza, my 10 year old is in the shorter one 🙂 There’s another couple of STWers in it with you in A as well.

    I only did the short one today due to time constraints and dentist appointments lol.

    MrPottatoHead
    Full Member

    Did the B at 5. 2000 riders in the category and still managed to spot Weeksy’s lad requesting rideons at the start! Planned to take it steady but ended up with a good group working hard. I forgot how addictive it can be.

    blader1611
    Free Member

    I actually bothered to look at my power curve for my race today and it seems i managed to hold over 8.5w/kg for 30s with a peak of 9.6. I also had 1min power of 6.2, i felt tired in the race and very tired afterwards,never again….well till next time.
    I also put a fresh battery in my tickr hr and destroyed my msx hr (it went from 183 to 190). What i cant workout is if my hr is now reading correctly or is now inaccurate. My avg hr was very high too so not sure which it is.

    mooman
    Free Member

    Yesterday I barely had energy and motivation to get onto the trainer. So just did a very gentle 40 minutes at HR under 120bpm.

    Tonight felt a bit more motivated so did the 18.55, 3 lap, Team Italy Gladiators Race. There were only about 15 A cats entered, and probably the same B cats.
    As is usual it started fast to dissuade the hanger ons, and almost straight onto the Zwift Island Climb that made a front group of about 10. On the 2nd lap there were only 4 of us who went over the top together, and at the bottom of the climb I broke away when I noticed some were trying to draft and gaps had formed – it worked and I made a gap whilst others I assume were waiting for someone to try and chase me.
    I guess they were waiting for each other to make the first move, because I gained about 30 seconds on them in no time which I should never have been able to do if they were riding together. The last lap I could see 3 of them were working together and were starting to close the gap – so I put a big effort up last climb, and looked as if one of the other chasing riders did too, cos they were spread out again which enabled me to keep the gap … and grab my first A cat win.

    robbo1234biking
    Full Member

    Good work mooman. I did 30 minutes tonight but it was so laggy I stopped after that. Think it was the number of users on.

    forzafkawi
    Free Member

    Forza, my 10 year old is in the shorter one 🙂 There’s another couple of STWers in it with you in A as well.

    I only did the short one today due to time constraints and dentist appointments lol.

    I had a bit of a nightmare at the start as my inRide power module dropped out about 10 seconds after the start of the race. I couldn’t get it to reconnect so had to switch to virtual power with my speed sensor. By the time I got going I was about 3 minutes back so had to TT for about 15 minutes to get back with a decent group. Good laugh though!

    I hope your kid enjoyed it weeksy.

    weeksy
    Full Member

    Great work Mooman.

    Forza, my lad lacked legs and a minor gear issue, he pulled the plug after 26min. He did 55 mine yesterday on zwift so no shame in being tired of leg tonight.

    Vortexracing
    Full Member

    How do you view past runs in Zwift to view average FTP, HR etc, can you only open them up in Garmin or Strava ?

    I have looked in Zwift under activities and it only lets me edit the title???

    dirtyrider
    Free Member

    time to dip my toes back in after Christmas, last rode 19/12/18, kids seem to have been off school forever and Christmas has been very busy this year, time to get back in the habit,

    scaled
    Free Member

    Luther is really clashing with my ToW plans!

    I’m starting to get some form back after over training before christmas, the odd strava achievement it popping up outside again. keen to not push too hard on Zwift though with Strathpuffer in 2 weeks.

    weeksy
    Full Member

    Ooooh i’ve always fancied that Scaled, but logistics is fairly impossible for me. I’d want multiple helpers, a big warm tent/gazebo etc etc….

    tomd
    Free Member

    How do you view past runs in Zwift to view average FTP, HR etc, can you only open them up in Garmin or Strava ?

    I think you need to to register for Zwiftpower to see that in any useful form.

    nixie
    Full Member

    How do you view past runs in Zwift to view average FTP, HR etc, can you only open them up in Garmin or Strava ?

    You can see it in the companion app now. Go to Activity feed, select just me, select the activity, swipe the map for two pages of graphs.

    Alex
    Full Member

    I’ve been off Zwift since March last year. Combination of ankle healing enough to ride MTB and the weather being a lot nicer to ride MTB 🙂

    Back on it now, bought a direct drive trainer. Big difference. Rather than just riding about with no objective other than to ruin myself, I’ve signed up for one of the 12 week plans. It’s basically a set of 4 workouts per week of between 60 and 90 mins- all a variation on interval training. It’s not much fun but I like the structure.

    Had my first ever (C) group ride today. Not a race. Only even ridden with (D) which was too easy. C was fine but an hour was enough. I can’t imagine what A and B are like !

    AD
    Full Member

    Apologies in advance for the probably stupid question – does Zwift automatically adjust FTP based your TT sessions?

    Or do you have to carry out a specific FTP test?

    PS – I know FTP isn’t necessarily the best way to measure fitness or compare against others – I’m just curious about Zwift works!

    nixie
    Full Member

    Zwift will tell you if it thinks your FTP has gone up at the end of any ride. I don’t think it ever adjusts this down though.

    AD
    Full Member

    Thanks Nixie!

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    Zwift will tell you if it thinks your FTP has gone up at the end of any ride. I don’t think it ever adjusts this down though.

    Yeah, just says things like “tapering for something?” or “shall I call for a priest?”

Viewing 40 posts - 10,321 through 10,360 (of 15,383 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.