Zwift, my journey, my weight and my fitness.

In the bottom left of the screen you should get a button to the join the event. Usually appears up to 30mins before the event starts.

Zwift was really glitchy for me this morning, the companion app kept freezing and at the end it took an age to save my session, even then it didn;t record it. I had to log back on and start everything again to get it to do so, on the companion app it said I was still zwifting 10 minutes after I stopped.
Looks like the amount of users currently is causing issues.

I also tried the roubaix workout this morning, hated it and binned it, fast 30 seconds, faster 17 secs, really slow 1 minute…it wasn’t for me, the segments were too short and I couldn’t find a rhythm and was all over the place trying to keep to the suggested watts. I much prefer racing or general riding.

at the end it took an age to save my session,

Not just me then.

In the bottom left of the screen you should get a button to the join the event.

Hmm as I expected. Could be the above mentioned companion app issue possibly, that or my cutting it fine was less fine than I thought.

I assume that gets bumped in practice as the upper cap is 3.1?

well yes , but not before others have killed them selves trying to hold with them.
Unless you have ZP open on another screen and view it real time you have no way to tell if they are genuine C or just entered C …..

be good if zwift showed your tracked FTP in the same way ZP does – OR only let you enter races that your Tracked FTP(over your events) meant you were elligable for .

It can still be fudged , but it stops people doing 6watt/kg ave in the race and ripping it apart/towing the break away apart from the main field when without the tow they may not have etc.

but at the same time….**** will be **** i just ride my own ride knowing my weight and FTP are accurate and my power meter dont lie.

In the bottom left of the screen you should get a button to the join the event.

Hmm as I expected. Could be the above mentioned companion app issue possibly, that or my cutting it fine was less fine than I thought.

ive found the joining of events to be really glitchy of late, i try to give my self 10 minutes now after missing a number last week.

Seems that zwift has got really fussy about connection speed of late.

well yes , but not before others have killed them selves trying to hold with them.

That Alex dowset video above was quite “amusing” on that front.

Opened up my broken Direto the other night, the flywheel belt had sheared, need to contact Elite for a replacemnt. For all the use it had this past month, I should have cancelled Zwift at the start of March, rather than a few days before the April renewal!

check its not just a fan belt as in off a car. i believe the kickrs are – if so there will be markings on it , phone your car parts store you might be able to get an off the shelf today to get you going asap.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=454651

Hilly one round Yorkshire, why i enter a hilly event is anyones guess

You still did it 3 minutes faster than me Weeksy and got a cup! Well done!

Turns out lock down saves a bit of money so I bought this for for the turbo set up. From Sigma, about £36 I think.

The Elite Sterzo.

I’m not doing the MTB section on Zwift yet but like the idea of this letting the bars move a little bit in the hope it helps my torn rotator cuff… From a crash almost exactly a year ago.

Not tried in anger yet really but the auto centering effect feels pretty “real”

I’ve not tried the mountain bike course, but I can turn the front wheel that gets supported by a “sandwich” of two bits of cardboard between a slippy hardback ~2cm thick book. 😉

* Still to contact Elite for a new belt. 😳

check its not just a fan belt as in off a car. i believe the kickrs are – if so there will be markings on it ,

Yep, the Wahoo ones are a standard automotive belt size. I’ve worn out two of them now. The genuine Wahoo item is 60 quid or something, they are a fiver each online. I’d be doing some googling as someone will have been through the same process already.

On the Sterzo front, I’ve been using the Kurt Kinetic turntable riser along with my rocker plate, but found that for actual steering, the lack of a self-centring mechanism meant it was quite tricky to use, so I bought a Sterzo as a lockdown present. Haven’t used it yet as I’m still recovering from death lurgee, but first impressions are that it’s quite noisy, which surprised me, the KK one is silent.

General principle though: bar movement is nice. It just feels more natural.

Edit: looking at the video on elite’s web-site, it does look like a standard Gates-type drive belt. I used these guys for a Kicker replacement one, though to be fair, the genuine Elite belt doesn’t seem to be as much of a rip-off as the Wahoo one.

https://www.bearing-king.co.uk

Went racing, died. Performance way down. Someone may be trying to tell me something

That elite thing looks good. Just ordered me one since I’m following my own open window passing car solution and riding on zwift.

Just done 3hrs with riding buddies on zwift in a group meet up on mega pretzel

Works well

Anyone use a seperate cadence sensor with their smart trainer? My Tacx Vortex is having real problems coping with some of the low cadence/high power ramp ups on the Dirt Destroyer training programme on Zwift – even though Zwift is controlling the power increase, it seems to throw the cadence calculation into a frenzy and I have to keep switching off ERG and trying to emulate the power increase through the gearing.

I wondered if adding a dedicated cadence sensor would help, but there seems to be mixed feedback on the forums about whether Zwift can cope with the additional bluetooth stream. I’m running Zwift off my IPhone and onto a TV via a cable link, with Companion running on my iPad Pro.

I always use a Garmin cadence monitor as I’ve never found the calculated one to make sense. I sense checked it against a cadence monitor displayed on my watch and yes there are certain conditions where it’s out. Mainly climbing .

I use a separate cadence sensor. It was a cheap one of amazon and works fine. I use it on Bluetooth when I use the iPad and ant+ when I use the PC. I find it works a lot better with a separate sensor especially when using erg mode on workouts. This is with an elite direto by the way.

@n0b0dy0ftheg0at quite a while back someone in my zwift team posted a link to the group chat with a source for the direto belt. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a search on the chart however I’ve asked them to repost it. Will post here if they come back with anything.

@robbo1234biking interesting the a seperate cadence helps with the direto. Do you find it settles to the power level better in erg mode then?

In the elite shop belt page for the direto you can see yellow writing on the belt. https://www.shopelite-it.com/en/spare-parts-hometrainers-and-rollers/interactive-hometrainers-and-rollers/belt-and-black-pulley-direto-hometrainer-1

It says 1136j/447j. This post supports that http://52.212.236.181/viewtopic.php?t=2105 (says “Megadyne PV 1136J / 447J”).

There do seem to be some hits for that code. E.g. the manufacturers page https://megadynegroup.com/en/products/multi-rib-belts/pv-rubber-ribbed

Got a reply, this is the belt for a elite direto.

https://www.bearingsrus.co.uk/review/product/list/id/60401/

Had to resync the wife’s cadence monitor this morning

When I went to search. While pedaling.slowely -as you need the Garmin cadence to be active to be found.

Wahoo FC xxxx 29rpm

Garmin cadence sensor 20rpm

Manual counting 20rpm.

@nixie Thanks for the link, just caught up with thread since my last post, bit of a shock to see the belt costs £18.53 plus postage! 😮

Found this link the other day as regards changing belt and calibrating, one thing I noticed was that it says tighten the tension bolt before each calibration test and loosen before adjusting other bolt. The video I watched, the same as the one mooman linked to, only mentions the tension bolt at the very end and I only re-tightened it after several tweaks of other bolt.

https://elitesrl.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011361719-Change-Belt-and-Black-Pulley

I wondered if adding a dedicated cadence sensor would help, but there seems to be mixed feedback on the forums about whether Zwift can cope with the additional bluetooth stream.

I use a separate one with my iOS setup. Never had a problem.

Anyone use a seperate cadence sensor with their smart trainer?

I used the Wahoo one that came with the Kickr – the more recent Kickr’s will read cadence direct from the trainer, I think – it clips onto your shoe and works fine.

I use it with ANT+ mostly – based on doing cadence builds, there seems to be less lag that way than with Bluetooth on a MacBook, though that may be a reflection on my set-up rather than a general thing.

And ouch, that’s quite spendy for the belt. The Kickr ones are a lot cheaper, which makes a change.

the more recent Kickr’s will read cadence

They don’t read cadence. The software “calculates” it. Often wrongly as demonstrated above.

Another thing I was unaware of -and I’m sure it hasn’t always been the case I’m sure. Your Garmin optical hr watch Can transmit into the zwift architecture via ant+ or blue tooth. You just search for it as you would a regular HRm. That said I’d always go for the chest strap preferentially as the optical HRM is pish at intervals /hard work outs it constantly underreads.

Newbury Velo road race for me, 70k Titans grove, Volcano and back with the Feugo flats to start, finish.  I was fine until the first climb sitting nicely at about 3.6wkg not doing too much work then my lack of experience showed as we hit the first climb.  I was late to change gear and shot out the back.

Not wanting to panic I sat with three others but by the time we reached the bottom of the descent the original group pulled out 35s on us.  I was stronger on the flats but had to back off from doing all the work so the gap grew.    The Volcano climb was of course tough especially with climbing not my forte.   Titans grove reverse felt hard after 65 k and then I ran out of legs and cruised in for the last 5k to take 4th in C, with my club colleague taking silver both at 3.2wkg average over 1hr 50.  I suspect we will both be bumped as we are over C w/kg.

I sat with another rider with STW in their name – black and yellow stripes – near the end for a little.  I was in the bike and beer jersey – S.Hanks.

https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=506944

Post race analysis shows I’m tired from my current Build intervals, with this weeks no taper efforts leaving me at about -10bpm at watts during the race.

it’s all a learning curve!

Did the 4pm ineos 3.2-3.8 b ride with Rodriguez and moscon

Turned into a 50+ kph smash fest.

Lucky it was only 25 minutes 🙂

Not sure if it has been done before, but if you want some different jerseys:

https://zwiftinsider.com/kits/

New Zwift stuff
new zwift stuff by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

I’m going to try the 4pm with anti-sandbagging enabled… but no idea yet what that entails.

ANyone doing any of the NHS fundraiser rides with G. Donated myself and will be doing the 15.30 one.

I’d have liked to but the timings don’t work out.

Finish work at 4.30. wife’s going out on her bike , I feed and bath the wee one. Wife puts her to bed while I jump out for the 7.30 dtcc Apr crit in the b class. Was tough work last week

weeksy Subscriber
New Zwift stuff

Just checked my zwift power and refreshed, it’s saying Cat D (almost C). So previously for my last race I was bumped up to C, so should I remain in C or now drop down to D? I guess I’m on the cusp so think I might just take the pain of C, opposite of sandbagging!! 🙂

Sorry Nixie a bit late replying.

Yes I found it settled a lot quicker as it seemed to have the cadence quicker and you weren’t fighting against cadence changes with the power output. I get a pretty good correlation on erg mode with the cadence sensor and using the small ring.

Not sure I get this whole Zwift Power change,

So is this saying Zwift’s official cat for me is B, so won’t get the cone of shame but I’ll still get filtered if I enter B on Zwift Power

Given I’m barely in A Cat on twenty minute and no-where near on the others this could be good news for staying in B for any course other than the Alpe where I’ve been racing recently.

weeksy Subscriber
New Zwift stuff

Ohhhhh, I’ll take a squiz at that in a bit.

Not sure I get this whole Zwift Power change,

Are all those bars on zp new or just new to me – having only done one race I’m not sure if I just couldn’t see them before.

[Edit] ah, that screen grab is from ZP. I’m a wally. Alles ist klar. As you were. [/edit]

VERY disappointed with the “cone of shame” graphics. I was expecting an accessory attached to the avatars like a dog would get to stop him scratching 😂

Thanks robbo.

Hmm I’m a ZwiftHQ B apart from FTP which is A.

Well that went wrong, sorta.

jumped on the 15:45 with Slowpuncheur, the gun went and it exploded !!!! 6,7, 7.5w/kg everywhere… So i sort of hung in, grabbed a few wheels and was in lead bunch…. into lap 2, i thought “this is insane, its still 5w/kg off the front, so i looked back and decided to sit up… I did that and 2 guys passed me like i wasn’t moving..

Starting lap 3, the next group came to me and looked more likely, high 3s off the front which is normal for C Crit… So jumped in that one and sat in till the end.
Went early, not too early, kicked OK, gained 3-4 places, lost 2-3 overall, i think i got 12th on the road, which wasn’t bad and 303w average which is decent.
Good race, i think i needed that.

Nice shiny cup Weeksy! That was the first time I’ve done a Crit. That first lap was insanely quick and couldn’t stay with your group. Found a decent group of about 6 in mid 30’s spot. Hung in there and saved a feather til the rollers at the end. Outsprinted all but one of that little group. Finished 37th Overall and 6 in C on ZP. I don’t have the out and out power for this type of racing but it was good intense fun.