Has anyone noticed that the Tour De Zwift results in the Companion app include all sorts of rubbish (eg people riding completely different routes, or half the route)?
I know it’s not a race…..etc etc 😉

Blader, it certainly felt fast. The whole of A was a blob until the first hill. Then it got smashed to peices. I got 57th but the reality of that was the lead section of the group I was in pulled away towards the line and I hid between hill sets to try and recover. The strange thing is I though I was going really hard, especially up the hills but the numbers on ZP don’t seem to agree. Think this is going to be my weekly race for a bit while I try to work on my lame 1 minute power.

Nixie – there is nothing lame about hanging on to that group, that was a very fast bunch. I have ridden against a few of those names and they can at any point in a race leave me for dead. It seems a few big hitters are on that series so not a bad bunch to try and hang on to.

I did the Tour de Zwift stage 3 this morning and had no dropout problems because probably there were just under 500 riders in the event. I still noticed a couple of riders take the wrong route just after the start though so obviously other people are still having problems even with fewer riders.

It does lead to a different approach for me. I know I’m not going to get close to winning but trying to stay with the lead group for longer than before feels like a win. It’s quite scary though how easily those big names can disappear even on their own!

Quick zwift training question. If you do training programs up the hills does the height gain still count towards challenges (like the Tron bike)?

(like the Tron bike)?

I don’t even know if i’m entered for getting the Tron or how near/far/whatever i am….Was it something you had to click once upon a time ?

According to Google it’s 50,000m climbing, i’m on 81,000m. Wonder why i don’t have it ?

Are you set to the everest challenge? You have to get to the peak then climb and additional 40k meters. If you don’t have it suggests your not on that challenge.

I’m guessing not… but i can’t see me going back and starting again lol.

You could just change it in game and then forget about it. In a year you’ll probably have it. That’s my plan (and using Alp du zwift when doing training.

I’ve never seen where they are, challenges that is…

I sometimes enter one when i get the little thing on main screen… like the 10,000 cals one i entered the other day… but i don’t recall seeing a place to sign up to them,

The challenges are on the main menu ingame where you change settings and kit etc.
Big box on the RHS.

It took me a year to get mine and that involved some dedicated uphill warm ups before races. The challenges havent changed in 2 years which is a shame as i have completed the 3 they have.
I have just taken delivery of a kickr core which hopefully i will set up and use tomorrow so expecting to slide down the B cat now that i have accurate power reading. Did the morning grind race today and that has ruined my legs, 35 miles of lumpy torture around greatest london flat (its not flat). Not sure if i will have any legs for my kickr debut.

Midday TdeZ Stage 3 – never seen so many people cruising about at over 4w/kg, seems their diet has been the opposite of mine over Christmas as everyone is under 70kg (sceptic hat on)

anyway, 900 or so riding, flat 30km or so, got in a decent group of maybe 40 which seemed place between 60 & 100th, stayed in this until about 7km to go when i lost touch, don’t know if the pace got a bit higher, lost the wheel and couldn’t get back on, put a decent effort in up Keith 273w for 14 minutes, which isn’t bad considering i felt a bit cooked from the previous 30km – whole ride just felt like a massive lead-in to the hill, strange stage

57/333 on ZP

Not sure if anyone else has this issue but… my 2018 MacBook Pro runs at 100% CPU (on all cores!) with Zwift on 1080P mode and powering an external monitor. That’s fine other than my 2nd charger is only 30W (not the 60W that it ships with) and basically it’s not butch enough to power the Mac when Zwift is running.

This led to be getting to 1hr30 mins into a 1hr45 workout when the emergency battery message came on. Thankfully I was able to pause and fetch the official one which will charge under that load.

I can only run the 2nd hand Dell I have for 3 mins without the PSU…

Alex, if you are using all the cores at 100% then the computer is working as it should. I would be annoyed if my computer was working at I.e. 60% of it’s potential.

1020 3R Classique Flat 4 Laps, jumped on with 37 seconds on the pen clock, tried to quickly changed to Madone/808s from Emonda/Lightweights missed the initial jump, messed about turning fan on, tried for the first km to get into the front group but couldn’t, settled into the 2nd group, finished 5/11 in the group, 10/12 in B – but way down on power, only 2.9w/kg but HR way up, so struggling at the moment after a slack December

Did my first race in a while last night (damn this mild dry winter, affecting my zwift time).

I got totally crushed! 4 laps of London and I finished over 10 minutes down on the last placed D cat rider. No matter how hard I pushed I couldn’t get my watts to go over 1.6w/kg on the flat. Looking back at it now I think there must of been an issue with the trainer or the connection or something as I can usually hold much higher than that for a hours climbing.

Felt like a total waste of a session, oh well, might try again tonight.

Meh, 09:20 for 2 laps of Greater London Flat for me. Went off well, was sitting in the lead group for the first section and lead-in, group of 24 of us…. Was riding within myself, but only just. Into lap 1, still going OK…. but lost the wheel about 1/2 way through the lap and couldn’t hold it… 13.5km in…Not bad hanging with the superstars for that long.

Looked behind and tried to sit at 250w, but i’d killed myself a bit so was up and down the power… My turbo had a couple of hissy fits where power went up/down for no logical reason, maybe the cold in the garage. Group behind was closing and caught me about 2km after the line on lap 2 of 2… So i jumped on with them using up a bit of energy as they caught me like rockets… HR was peaking and the wall was coming…. Held with them for a while, but on a little 2% i died and lost them.

Solo’d to the line for a crappy performance, but ended up with a very weak bronze in C lol. very very weak.

@j4mesj4mes I’d disagree, in the CPUs are locked at 100% then the machine is overloaded. That may be that its not up to the job being asked or that there is an issue in the application. IIRC 80-90% is the optimal load.

I did my first structured training session last night (Group event Uphill Battle). Was much harder than I expected. I naively pushed the loading scale to 110% as the power levels asked for in the sets did not look that high. Scaled it straight back to 100% after the first five minute threshold set! Its not quite as much fun as racing though. I’m wondering if I can do intervals in a race scenario. Could be quite disruptive to whatever group I’m in at the time :D.

Ok first ride today on my new kickr core,its so quiet thats its kinda offputting. I tried a 3 lap classique race and i have to say i am a little confused with what i was seeing. The wattage was constantly fluctuating,not extreme values but i would say it was nigh on impossible to keep the wattage roughly constant for more than 3 secs. It obviously senses far quicker than my tacx did but even keeping the same cadence on a flat section the watts were fluctuating by as much as 40w. I tried a sprint at the end but i couldnt spin up my big gear, either too tired or just too difficult now. I think i need to get used to it first but i got dropped pretty quickly and on a flat section which is odd.
On another note i tried a sprint in the warm up and saw 883w and i wasnt anywhere near full gas and had 2 gears left, so may be i will hsve a sprint now for the race.

I did the 4th stage of the TdZ this morning – 3 laps of the volcano flat and then finish up the volcano KOM. I wasn’t at my best and it was pretty uninspiring stuff. The next stage is Richmond which is possibly even worse. I think I’ll use that stage to do some interval training which might make things a bit more interesting and useful.

I did stage 4 today at a gentle cruise. I like volcano flat myself. I was about 1,000,000th

I wanted to try out my kickr again today but it seems i have caught bubonic plague/cat aids which might explain why my ride yesterday felt like i was cycling through concrete. What realism setting do you guys use on the basis that your turbo can replicate an 18% gradient?

I turn my drivo pretty far down for hilly rides because, well, I wouldn’t get up an 18% hill in the real world with the gears I’ve got on it.
I have it at 2/3 or so for flatter rides; have tried 100% but it’s weird for me – because you can’t really “see” the gradient on zwift, and because there’s a bit of lag somewhere in there I get sort of caught out by changes sometimes

I did stage 4 today, not cruising, Strava says I was 4th fastest overall for the whole ride, certainly felt like it, my average speed was over 47kmh.

EVR race tomorrow, and then outdoors on Sunday.

Kickr Snap set to 100%. Used to have it at 50% but didn’t feel realistic big ringing up a mountain. Took a bit of getting used too but prefer it at 100 now.

Did anyone doing Stage 4 see the live positions (i.e. 24/500) at the top of the right hand panel?
I did the first instance of Stage 4 (at 9pm PST last night) and the live positions were missing, meaning it was impossible to judge how well you/your group were doing relative to everyone else (I guess like race radios being banned and no moto guy with a chalk board either).

It wasn’t just me affected as there was a bit of chatter during the stage.
Also, at the end of the stage, there was no overall results screen just my time and there are no results in the companion app either…these differ from the previous stages I’ve done so don’t know whether this was just a glitch for that specific instance of the stage or whether a deliberate change cos, you know, it’s not a race.
(Partial results are available on ZwiftPower though but that will only include the sub-set of riders who are registered on ZP)

The live placings have been disabled for the rest of the Zwift tour. Due to the size of the event, users with slower computers were having problems/crashes trying to show race positions. This is also why despite the route being set, some have been sent the wrong way at the first junction of a stage.

Thanks for that b1gf00t…where did you find this info? It would have been nice to have an announcement from Zwift before the start!
My general target is in the top 30% as I know that’s just about achievable on a good day but I blew up badly as I was probably trying to keep up with riders much faster than me…
I guess I’ll have to do a Froomey now and just keep a close eye on power numbers instead…

Decided to have a go at the TFC Autumn Series race at 7pm tonight.

Very strange race; half of the A cats quickly formed a breakaway group which I was lucky to get into .. for awhile.
One the first climb about 6km into the lead-in I realized I wasnt going to stay with the front group for the full 4 laps at the pace they were going at, so decided to sit up and wait for the chasing A cats who were about 50 seconds behind.
Then a group of about 15 riders came past, but there was no sign of them on the leaderboard … it only showed the A cats ahead and the A cats behind.

So I stayed with the group of riders for the full race.

I came last out of the A cats … and got no idea what group I actually rode around with!!

Very bizarre.

There was someone from ZwiftHQ in the 13:00 race today and he put up some messages about what has been the effect of large numbers in the stages so far.

I have found it annoying that when starting in say 400th place, Zwift only draws in something like 100 riders ahead of me. Then as the event starts and I move towards the front Zwift draws more riders in front and the front of the bunch never seems to get any closer.

Today’s was the first of the four where I actually got to the front, only took 5km. Never saw the front in the others despite finishing just outside the top 10.

I have given up doing the tours as they are just too busy,too many issues. What i dont understand is why thousands turn up for them but they dont seem to turn up for normal events.

I’ve never really got the appeal of the tours at all. Seems like dead riding to me.

Finished stage 4 this morning; lessens the experience without the ranking. Not sure if I would have pushed more had I known my place? Legs are feeling the cumulative fatigue. Is there a track to spinning a higher rpm? I feel my 65 rpm probably isn’t ideal for non mtb

You can track your position live on zwift power.

A new A+ category appeared today 4.6+ w/kg. ZP only at the moment. Hope it sticks.

Done a couple of races last couple of days. Happy with how they have gone for me but very light on entries. Think everyone is doing the tour at the moment.

Have started using the iPad with the tacx bracket. Much better than the pc despite the smaller screen as it positioned better and runs so much more smoothly on the iPad. Have also turned trainer difficulty down as well which seems to help with little ramps etc as I am able to keep spinning.

Bluetooth HRM coming tomorrow.

A new A+ category appeared today 4.6+ w/kg. ZP only at the moment. Hope it sticks.

Not currently relevant to my interests but I do think the lower end of A needed something to make life interesting

What i dont understand is why thousands turn up for them but they dont seem to turn up for normal events.

Because they are called ‘tour’ not ‘race’. A bit like the way sportives attract loads of folk who would never think of racing. Maybe. And because Zwift promotes the hell out of them I guess.

Double duty today. Oof.
Cat C win
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=130768
Right on the limit of an upgrade!
I really should add that extra half a kilo to my Zwift porfile from Xmas…
Stuck with the front group first 2 laps round Volcano and got dropped with a small group 3rd time up to the finish. Last C rider hung on in for another lap and had 30 seconds on us when dropped. Caught him on the line for the last lap and had a dig to see if he would let go. Didn’t happen and we eased up and got caught napping by another group with a couple of Cs. Went hard with a feather up to the line but lost the C sprint but he got pinged for no HR and over Cat limits.

Felt “awesome” and with nobody about decided to jump into the Tour 15 minutes later with the climbing bike and loads of draft the idea was to beat my PR up the Volcano. Steady off the start and then as you can imagine it was too tempting to close gaps as they opened in the group. Ended up 40 seconds slower up the Volcano for a LOT less power.
9 minutes down on the first finisher is not too bad and I was done for at the end which was the idea.