You should be a fast C then.

I’ve never been a fast anything, and never raced other than MTB 24 hour stuff. Still it’ll be an interesting experience. And it means I can turn ERG mode off which will make me very happy 😉

same course/race as yesterday, back in B 13/17 3.2w/kg, same deal, front group to the hill, shelled, hang on, get caught, repeat,

4th race of the week, first time for a while, and a day off for work tomorrow 🙂

Sounds like you’ve all been busy. Good racing all.

I’ve had a few days off and today hit the KISS long race (London Pretzel). There were a few complaints about pace being high for a Sunday night. I thought it was staying a little on the low side but hey it was my first ride for a few days. About 25km in I had an aero and fancied a little fun so popped off the front and opened a 10s gap. Two others joined me and we managed to hold out till fox hill. The expected happened then and the climbers disappeared up the mountain. It took me a little time to rebalance after the break and I was stuck in about 15th 1 minute back. Now in a nice group of 6 we managed to reel in the second group about 30s up but the leaders were long gone. Dispite being right near the end I managed a decent PB up box hill and crested with two other riders (inc one stw flagged rider). I tried to break away out of the subway and got up to a 4s gap but my legs were shot and a 1.6k break was asking too much. They came back past with 300m to go and I couldn’t do anything about it. Got 10th just behind David Churchill of this parish.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=164320

Good suffering to hold 4w/kg got 1hr 20😤

I think with timings i’m looking at the 16:10 greatest London flat today. Not my favourite layout by a long stretch, but will give me a decent bit of a ride…

That is, unless i take a little rest day… We’ll see how i feel later.

I have recently been using the Zwift workouts quite a bit with ERG mode, what gear do you all run in ERG mode? I am big ring at the front and 4th down whichever makes the chain appear straight enough at the back, usually around the 4th or 5th biggest cog.

I seem to always favour using the outer chain ring indoors, outdoor and offroad but wondered would running in the small front ring make any difference or have benefits?

One day my schedule will turn around a bit so I can start participating in more races however at 6am in the morning with one coffee on board the best I can manage is get a ride or workout in.

what gear do you all run in ERG mode?

I tend to run mine in the small ring / mid cassette for the straightest chainline.  Not all my workouts use ERG mode so I still get a decent spread of use over the cassette.

That’s the real benefit of Zwift when time is too tight to actually get outside and ride.

With my limited time during week I go for quality rather than quantity. And a 40-60 minute race is ideal.

Same as Kryton on ERG – small ring, mid cassette. Also my outer ring is a bit more worn and I’m too tight to change it!

I seem to always favour using the outer chain ring indoors, outdoor and offroad but wondered would running in the small front ring make any difference or have benefits?

There’s a Shane Miller video somewhere on YoutTube where he tested whether using different gear combos in ERG mode made a difference. Erm…

https://blog.wahoofitness.com/erg-mode-gear-selection-matter/

Edit: suggests running a lower gear helps if you have issues with the Kickr black hole / spiral of death where you drop down in cadence and can’t turn the pedals over. Lower, faster gear should help to spin the flywheel up faster, though obviously depends on how heavy the flywheel is in your particular trainer. The Kickr one is quite weighty, so that makes sense.

There’s a reason I hate greatest London flat, I’m sodding rubbish on it for some reason.

Worst race in years that. Could have bailed about 10 times but stuck it out. A case of bad course and out in the first 7-10km too hard too fast, died many painful deaths.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=164887

wrote some stuff about home/work/demotion to C/FTP reset/some decent days/no racing when i could get on/tried to beat my 30 day PR up Watopia Mountain and it disappeared,

anyway, seemingly smashing through my 2019 PRS all across the board at the moment, no idea how, which is nice

image upload

I’m curbing the racing a little as I’m going too hard, too often and it’s killing me off! So today was longer slower just to keep the km in the legs and burn some calories. I’m going to aim for 2 races a week.

Didn’t get around to a turbo session today before dinner (combination of feeling physically drained and better half not liking me disturb her bath with turbo trainer noise), just looked at my Strava training log and it’s the first day without riding since 12th Feb… Far from all commutes and turbo sessions have been pedal to the metal efforts, but even so, I had no idea I had done 28(?) consecutive days! 😮 😆

10:05 3R Richmond Flat Race – 4 Laps – stayed with the front group the whole way round, until it got too fast at 1.5km to go, from the results, it was all the A’s that sped off, 3rd in B – 2 above me are 4.5w/kg and 4.2w/kg they were less than 0.5s in front of me, so I’m taking that as a win 🙂

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=165959

I was abandoning my idea of a Zwift race for MTB smashing a Swinley.  However, 3 days of rain before Sunday will leave the usual Swinley grinding paste… back to Zwift maybe.

Swinley is going to be a swamp whether it’s dry or not in the next 3 days as it’s rained tonnes lately. I’m certainly not going there this weekend.

Another KISS long one for me last night. 55k, 6 laps of Watopia hilly reverse. What was I thinking. I always get dropped on that route, often as early as just after the sprint. For once this didn’t happen and I hung onto the lead till second time up the KOM. Tired legs from Sunday then decided not to play and dispite staying in touch up the steepest bit I couldn’t hold it for the next roller and dropped back.

I did lap three with one other rider but he didn’t seem to be putting much effort it when pulling. A quick check of the live feed revealed he was a B and was in-fact trying hard. Problem was the gap ahead was opening. When the group ahead went up the climb on lap 3 I saw a couple drop off so opened the taps and dropped the B rider (40s up that climb).

Lap four became a ITT as I furiously tried to bridge the 1.30 gap. I had got down to about 20s when a group caught to within 5s at the base of the climb. I extended that back to 10s by the top but they had closed me down by the esses. Just before the sprint we caught the rider I had been chasing. The next rider was 2 minutes up the road, but in a small group I thought we could catch them. Unfortunately the rest of group couldn’t be persuaded to chase. We lost a few up the climb on lap five and started the last lap with 6 together.

During the esses one rider gapped the group. No one seemed bothered so I jumped the gap and we rapidly escaped together. They were strong so I stayed on the wheel as much as I could and did the standard trick of jumping out out their slipstream with 200m to go. After finishing I hung around to top 60km for the ride. Very stiff today!

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=165498

Cracking write up!

no racing today, did 77km/2010m/3h10m of the four horsemen loop, ran out of time before the nursery run to finish it, decent steady ride

40km at tempo today, I hate those rides.

Anyway, w/KG says I’m a B.  Do I enter as B with my limited experience and accept the lower end of B results or do I enter as C?   If I enter as C and overpeform as C, will I get DQ’d?

And, how do I know how long “2 laps” is?

Enter B. Worse case you get a DQ, best is auto upgrade.

For distance look on zwift power. The event list tends to have the race distance.

Thanks Nixie, will do.

B. If it turns out you can’t get over the category limit for B then you can downgrade to C next time. If you’re miles off the back but breaking the Cat C limit still well get better at drafting ;0)
I would think you’ll be fine just remember to go hard off the line and hold on until it calms down a bit.

I would think you’ll be fine just remember to go hard off the line and hold on until it calms down a bit.

I’m used to that real/MTB racing.  I’m not concerned with the result, so lets see how it goes!  This will be a great measure (power/HR) fitness test for me at the start of my season.

You’re no C mate. You’ll be a competitive B at the very least imo.

Ooof this is tricky.  There’s an Ottawa race in the morning with some stiff climbs. I’m not a climber but I’ve been training that over winter. Ends on a big climb

Then again, theres a Dutch Diesel on Volcano flat in the afternoon which better suits me.  Ends in a flat sprint.

Both are close to 90 mins being 52/61 Km’s respectively which is perfect.

For me, pick the one with the most likely entrants. The race is about the battles, holding groups, pushing on, etc

I don’t race often on zwift, and only started a couple of months ago. The last two attempts of entering a race have not worked. Can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong? This has worked in the past so I should have all the right setup.
Fired up zwift and while I was waiting for it to load I opened the companion app and searched for a race. Found one and entered it. Then I started a zwift ride and waited for the join event button to pop up. It never arrived. Also the race had a start time of 6pm, but at 6pm when I checked the companion app it said starting in 11 minutes.

Some races have staggered start times for different categories so it is possible that a 8pm race could start 10 mins later for lower categories. Look inside the event description for more info on category start times

I still haven’t managed to enter an event on the companion app that shows up when I go onto the game. Missed a couple of races before giving up and going back to the old method of entering in-game from the top-right menu before beginning to ride. That usually works OK provided you wait until the orange “going” notification comes up alongside the race you enter.

Entered the 11:20 Ottawa race.  If I’m going to be at race intensity I may as well go the whole hog and hit the hills as this is a training race.  Expect to be well down the leaderboard !   Should be fun in an odd kind of way.

Only downside to that may be number of entrants. Sunday seems often to be a cruise day for people, they do the Dirt, the SZR and DBR rides by the tonne… but the racing can be a little quiet on Sundays. Me, i’d wait until about 9am, see which race looks like it’s likely to have the most people in and then maybe change if needed. It’s all well and good having a course/layout that suits what you’re looking to get from the weekend, but not much point if you’re alone for 99% of the ride.

Ok good advice thanks Weeksy.  I don’t have an option to race Saturday though.

You’ll always get the odd race with decent numbers on a Sunday.

Sadly Zwiftpower doesn’t seem to have an easy way for me to see what’s common and what’s not after last Tues…. So can’t check to see.

I guess it may depend on your goals for the day… if it’s miles, HR and correct zones… then it may not matter

90 mins of race intensity followed by 40 mins of a tempo interval is Sunday’s goal :).  Zones etc only come into the tempo component.

This is ultimately to replace an XC race I can’t be bothered to travel to.

I did a 4 lap race of Innsbruck this morning with Jon Mould. Its probably not difficult to guess where he dropped me, the hideous hill in the middle of town on the first lap! I was 15s down after the first lap which i thought was respectable. Each lap i managed to climb that hill in a minute with an avg of around 430w which put me in the lead group of B’s apart from one rider who clung on to Mould and the A group. Last lap up the hill avgd 440w which put me at the front, so bunch finish of about 10 of us. No recovery from the hill so long sprint from 350m out and i held them all off much to my surprise (silver in B cat). The last 22s i avgd 551w with 15s best of 9.3w/kg which was pure torture due to its proximity to the hill. Mould managed 14.9wkg, that is too much for my brain to imagine.

Cracking stuff! Nice mate

An actual race that set off in categories.
Keith Hill After Party. Sedate (300 watts 1min) start and a comfortable (240 watts) journey around London and apart from one minor panic and big effort after the Classique finish line with the lead group of Bs to Keith Hill. They mostly buggered off at the start of the climb and I ended up with 2 others. Didn’t have the confidence in my ability, especially after really bad legs yesterday, to go with the stronger one, who finished 37 seconds up the road, so stuck with the other and took turns on the front. With 2km to go then dug in and slowly dropped him. Just shy of beating the hour for the route. New PR up Keith and new power PRs for a full hour so happy with that.
https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=167127