The road bike may be 130mm rear. The turbo is more likely made for 135mm.

It’s still a step too far. I’d feel dirty just looking at it.

You can get reasonable sized old monitors for cheap as well that’ll take VGA. If your near Southampton I’ve a 19″ one in my garage ready to freecycle. Yeah not much different to the laptop but gives better choice of position and makes it easier to move the laptop away/back for other usages.

my TT bike is going on my kickr core soon.

only way to get used to position again is to train in position.

looking at a rocker plate though …. got numb nuts for the first time the other day.

Yeah I get that as well. Have to remember to have short out of the saddle periods to avoid it.

I stuck. 2 Lengths of backer rod front to back on the left and right side of my trainer (kickr core) and it’s just isolated me from the solid concrete floor and significantly reduced the vibrations.

No numb bits 🙂

Today is the kiss 2km sprint pursuit series.

4*2km starting at 10:05

Did one last week. Good fun

They’ll be killers!

I did a race the other day and it’s not helped my leg issues at all. So for a while now I’ll be out of the racing scene I think.
I’ve got a deep tissue massage this week to see if it helps, along with getting some ideas as to whether it’s needing weeks off completely. I’m not 100% against taking a month off if it will fix things.
Stretching the calves seem to make it more delicate than not stretching so not sure about plan.

You were right.

Singularly. Easy.

First one was 400w+ ….second was 399ish…..3rd was 389.

Can’t do 4th as a mate is on his way round with his kids to see the little one so I have to be presentable apparently.

Did you ever lower your saddle ? I had issues with tight calves and Achilles in my youth….mostly stemming from a fashionably high saddle and an equally stupid *slammed * stem. -as I grew up I realised it was both detrimental to my performance and looked utterly rediculous.

Sorry to here your injured weeksy. A few years ago I had a calve strain from running that would not go away. The normal calve stretch did nothing for it. Wasn’t until I found a different stretch that targeted a different bit of the muscle that it improved.

looking at a rocker plate though …. got numb nuts for the first time the other day.

Good call. I built one up from a Coplate kit and it makes a big difference. The other thing I added was the swivelling, turntable-type Kurt Kinetic front wheel block. It just feels more natural that the front wheel can turn. Hard to explain but it does seem to work.

The new Saris rocker plate looks the biz – has fore and aft movement as well as sideways, but insanely expensive with it.

Also, if you’ve ever looked at the Wahoo Kickr Desk and thought it looked great apart from the ridiculous £200 price-tag, check out the Lifeline Trainer Table at Wiggle, which is 75 quid, super solid and basically does exactly the same as the Wahoo one at less than half the price.

Nixie? Elaborate?

I did 55km MTB ride today and that’s fine. But on Zwift I’m a lemon it seems.

Did you ever lower your saddle ? I had issues with tight calves and Achilles in my youth….mostly stemming from a fashionably high saddle and an equally stupid *slammed * stem. -as I grew up I realised it was both detrimental to my performance and looked utterly rediculous

Yes, but I’m not sure if I’ve allowed enough recovery yet to judge effectively if things are working or not.

Essentially, I’m going to MTB and Zwift in a non racing context until winter, see where I am. If it’s rubbish I’ll take November off to fix it.

Ended up doing the 3r tick tock race tonight.

Let the wife out on bike this morning…..baby’s first bottle and daddies first feed haha.

Tick tock was tough. Another pb in power. FTP seems to still be climbing.

Came 3/18 in B group

Need to drop some kgs in the kitchen and my w/kg would actually be respectable.

Need to stop just racing and do some actual training on it……I’ll still be saying that in march.

Weeksy, I’ll try and find a link to the stretch online and post it up.

What trainer difficulty setting do you all use when training and racing? I know the theory behind the slider should mean that it will take the same amount of accumulated watts to get up a gradient and you in essence will be just changing gear more often but it still makes a big difference.

Now Tacx have replaced my trainer I have decided to leave it on the maximum setting for a while but did wonder if people dropped it for races or if it is dropped automatically to circumvent any advantage gained by setting it to the minimum for a race.

Mines on 50%. I know some use closer to 0% for racing so the effort is flattened out. I think having it on 100% can produce undesirable effects going down hill causing you to loose contac with packs more easily.

50-55% for me roughly.

I think mine is set to around 50% as well.

Got a new turbo bike this weekend. A Cheap £70 ebay job but not bad and the drivetrain is fine which is all that matters for the turbo anyway!

All set up now in its permanent home so makes it easier to Zwift and keep up the commute. 42% of the way through the Zwift Academy so will finish that off now that my weeks holiday has finished!

Mines at stock setting.

Must say I don’t change gear much save climbing epic Kom or to the radio mast.

It is strange, previously I had used the default setting but today’s ride around InnsbrookRing felt tougher, produced a lower average watts summary for the hour however the distance completed for the hour was roughly comparative to previous runs around the same course.

This was the first ride back so a while, first go at maximum difficulty and on a new trainer so this one result needs to be taken with a pinch of salt but I shall carry on with the trainer difficulty setting to see how I progress (or regress).

See below for info on trainer difficulty

https://zwiftinsider.com/using-the-trainer-difficulty-setting-in-zwift/

I’ve just spent an hour in a torture chamber…. Well i think that’s what it was…. She called it a massage table.

Apparently it’s as you’d expect, a shortening of the muscles which work between/joining the achilles to the calf muscle, it’s massively common on cyclists due to the exercise and repetition we do in our form of exercise.

She says there’s nothing major in an injury context and the massage along with some dedicated stretching should be getting me back to form fairly easily. I wouldn’t say it was a pleasant experience, but if it works and means i can cycle without pain again in the coming weeks/months, then i’m more than happy to throw a few quid her way and see how it gets on.

@weeksy. Think the stretch that worked for me was #4 (Standing Soleus Stretch) on this page; https://www.foot-pain-explored.com/calf-stretches.html

She wasn’t keen on static stretches for me at the moment, closer to 1 on the link above with a couple of variations. But thanks for the info 🙂 I need to get a stretchy band thing, unless the wife has one

Decathlon is cheap for those I think.

Apparently it’s as you’d expect, a shortening of the muscles which work between/joining the achilles to the calf muscle, it’s massively common on cyclists due to the exercise and repetition we do in our form of exercise.

How apt. After a 12 year gap I started riding properly again and guess what – intense pain in my heel where the Achilles joins. Physio gave me some exercises (eccentric calf lowers on one leg) and it seems to have cleared up. Never had it before when I used to ride 250 miles every week…

NB On the Zwift front I now have a Blue Tooth 4 USB dongle for my aging MBP, so hopefully it will talk to my turbo now….

She was saying that the ******** muscle just felt rock hard… this is a little one sort of at the bottom of the bulge in the calf, it’s just been over-worked, under stretched and was basically a bit stuck. She doesn’t think it’s a major issue and doesn’t need physio or doctors, just the correct massage, movement etc and i should be able to get back to some sort of proper riding. A bit of ice after longish rides, along with RICE and the stretching.

im sure i mentioned it before but do not underestimate the fact that your back is probably knotted tight.

the weak point for when this pulls tight is your achillies IME.

I suffered for near a year with this.

Some squatting / dead lifts strength work and other assorted stretching on my lower back worked wonders where targeted physio on my lower legs failed.

Ive been pain free for 10+ years now EXCEPT when i slip into bad habits of not doing strength work and stretches on my lower back.

Thank you. I’ll listen to all advice.

She did 15 mins on back and neck too, she commented instantly how tight that was and I do suffer from stiff neck etc at times.

The last few months and indeed few days has highlighted a few areas to me that I need to focus on linger term. Core strength, back and even overall strength are on that list too. For example I reckon at a push I could do 5 press ups. Yes really

to be fair …. i cant do more than 5 at a time either…..

can how ever incline plank until i get fed up.

my TT bike is going on my kickr core soon.

only way to get used to position again is to train in position.

looking at a rocker plate though …. got numb nuts for the first time the other day.

I asked about training in position on a timetrialling forum recently (because I really struggle to hold position inside, but am OK outside) and got told by several experienced testers that it was a waste of time for the vast majority of turbos, too different a pedalling action to be any use.

Surprising if true – I had assumed training power delivery in position would be hugely beneficial to testing.

Tell that to Jason MacIntyre. Most of them couldn’t hold a candle to him.

The kickr is as per riding my regular bike. Plus as it measures power I can play with the position and measure the power

Tonight was the first 60k of vegan cyclists 100+1 ride. Some pace those boys go at. Stuck with the front group knowing I was only doing 60 of the 100 and we averaged 42.7kph for 1.5hrs. on the same course (tick tock) in a 19k 1 lap race on Sunday I only managed 43.2kph with the main pack.

Well I’m 1/3 happy, 1/3 angry and 1/3 hopeful.

Earlier this week I had a deep tissue massage and she told me the reason, the cause and the fix for my calf issues that have basically wiped me out from a decent performance level for 2+ months.

Wednesday and Thursday I was in bits, my legs were sore, but Thurs evening I noticed a drop in pain and on to feeling ok actually. By this morning they were feeling better than they have in months. So I did a 10km outdoor trail ride to test the legs and the Shockwiz, felt good.
This afternoon I did 20 mins on Zwift and now they still feel good!

I’m angry because I should have got this sorted ages ago, the muscles have not been torn, strained etc, just needing a bit of fixing.
Tomorrow will be more telling as it’s a longer one planned. I’m not expecting the fix to work 100% just yet, but the signs are positive at least.

The new Yorkshire area is live, some nasty climbs, especially on the reverse route! Slight downer is how boringly straight the roads are away from Harrogate centre.

GPlama reckons it has replaced Wattopia for the day by default, but you can always use a hack to select it whenever.

Slight thread hijack and apologies if this has been covered earlier I really don’t have time to go through a 287 page thread but I do have a couple of questions

What smart trainer are folks using ?
And
How much noise do they make ?

A few years ago I tried an old school wheel on turbo but it was just far too noisy, I live in a ground floor flat with carpets over wooden floorboards and thought it would be fine ,… how wrong was I
Partly I suspect due to the cellar below acting like a drum 😏

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated

Sure it’s not just the guest world of the day. Watopia has always been available since they added the guest world feature about 6 months ago. Tends to default to the guest world iirc.

fatoldgit – I’m not an expert but I think generally the wheel-off trainers are quieter, and of those the Neo (old one, thnk there’s a new one out now) was supposedly the quietest. Was also pretty much the most costly.

can cinfirm that the kickr core and kickr are both as close to silent as your going to get .

the drive train on my bike and the fans makes more noise than the kickr

Im stuck using a wattbike pro here offshore – really missing the erg mode for workouts.

I’m trying the 11:10 am race. Bit too hilly for me so just a decent effort would be nice

Im offshore. Have a wattbike but not got the bandwidth to zwift.

nor does it have the cooling. i did 40 minutes of over unders last night via the WATTbike app and nearly dissolved onto the floor.

its also a hellish racket compared to the wahoo.

Well the race went, errrm ok I guess

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=218144

5th in C isn’t where I wanna be, but it’s where my power and fitness puts me on a course with a hill in it, even if not steep. I spent plenty of time in the lead group, then more with lead C group, but once we hit that hill, it was all over, even at my peak I’m not up to beating the lightweight boys.

It was though my 3rd day off consecutive riding, which I’ve not managed for many many moons, with both yesterday and today being hard efforts. Legs are tired, but calf feels ok.