Zwift, my journey, my weight and my fitness.

The results for TTT show on the WTRL website rather than Zwift power as there are several races over different time Zones.

couldnt reply Savo, course is rolling, small 7% hills, rolling terrain. Nothing major

toughest is the 7-8% you get to the finish line on a couple of the NY courses, about 30s in time.

Going to do the TTT with some guys in my IRL club – we’re all quite new to zwift so could be chaos. Good luck, it’s a fun format.

Having done a couple I thought voice comms were v useful for the start, and for saying if someone was really struggling with the pace. But beyond that no one really said much and just got their heads down. I think the experienced teams will call turns and be quite structured in their formation but you don’t have to worry about that for a first hit out. Just take a turn when it feels right and it’ll be fine.

Eeeks hope my A-Cat status isn’t going to pull us up a category! I’m not that strong a rider especially on a fairly flat watt-fest

We could just use the STW discord that was set-up for the group rides?

We have a start time: +8 minutes (i.e 8 minutes waiting in the pen from the 7.40 event start).

Our STW tags are all correct on the start sheet. Well done us.

There’s still one place in the team. I think trail_rat is eyeing it up.

Yes, kelvinshuffle, your ftp builder success will push us up a category. It doesn’t really matter though.

I didn’t know there was a stw discord. DO you have a link to share IvanDobski (so I can avoid hunting through that thread)?

Ok matey, look forward to it.

Will be interesting anyway.

We having a thought on our starting tactic? I can average 275w for the distance give or take. But clearly with my profile I’m stronger in the diwn and flat for drafting than I am on the way up.

If someone else wants the place crack on
Tonight’s effort has killed me. Did 50k – 25K at 120% then I ran 5k because someone publicly sent me that 5k NHS thing.

Is this place to ask questions about turbo trainers given the thread title? Looking to dip my toe in the water due to restrictions etc. and completely clueless…been offered a Tacx Blue Matic basic model for €159. I would see about adding the tacx speed and cadence sensor to try and get it to work with apps etc in the future but right now it would be for HIIT and training in the garage. There isnt much stock of anything else to be honest. Any help much appreciated!

Replacement Direto belt has arrived from https://www.bearingsrus.co.uk/ , so I should hopefully have it installed and ready to turbo again by November… 2021. 😉

^^^ I’d be looking at the Tacx Flow 2240 if you can find stock for that sort of price.

Looking through the classifieds, there was someone selling one a while ago. It’ll be several pages in, but perhaps worth a look…it’s still for sale on page 2, but collection only from Calderdale.

thanks stumpy01 – I’m in Ireland so that limits things further…

Re:TTT tonight a couple of questions from me…

No TT bikes but going for an Aero Road Bike and Deep Rims is wise right?

Also pacing wise (and probably showing my lack of understanding of how the draft actually works)

I’ve got an FTP of 277 at 4.2, If I was riding solo I’d be wanting to hide in the pack and put the watts out on the two climbs towards the tail end of the course, where the power to weight has the biggest impact.

Assuming we’re hanging together nicely in a group, I’d want to do similar right? I.e. am I going to be more useful towards the front on the small climbs more than the flat drags?

Of course this suggests a level of tactical awareness higher than “ride as near my FTP as a can for the duration” which is my usual approach.

I’ve got a Tacx Flow, def a good “My First Smart Trainer”

Re:TTT tonight a couple of questions from me…

No TT bikes but going for an Aero Road Bike and Deep Rims is wise right?

Also pacing wise (and probably showing my lack of understanding of how the draft actually works)

I’ve got an FTP of 277 at 4.2, If I was riding solo I’d be wanting to hide in the pack and put the watts out on the two climbs towards the tail end of the course, where the power to weight has the biggest impact.

Assuming we’re hanging together nicely in a group, I’d want to do similar right? I.e. am I going to be more useful towards the front on the small climbs more than the flat drags

I’m going with the Cervlo S5 and Zipp 404s. These are about the fastest combo out there i think for this sort of course (and most others)

TBH mate with your power i’ll be thinking you’ll be near the front for most of it hahahaha. But yes arguably towing us slightly on the uppy bits is likely to help most… but with 277 you’ll be plenty of help on the rest too.
It all depends on how long riders can maintain a pace from their position in the group really.

Lets just say you’re in 3rd wheel and about to take a turn, the problem can be that it takes 20s to get ahead of the other 2 riders which is putting you in the red quickly so your ‘turn’ doesn’t last. Ideally you want to come through quickly and put in at least a minute on the front at say 325w. But it’s going to depend how the guys behind are all doing.

I think for this race, a lot of it will be guesswork. Staying out of the red-zone for the first 20km and settling into a nice pace.

Staying out of the red-zone for the first 20km and settling into a nice pace.

Is that the right tactic for a team time trial? If we need to get 4 riders over the line as quickly as possible, doesn’t that require others to lead them through the first 20k in the red zone and then drop off?

I’ve never done anything like this before, so no idea!!

You get a bigger draft from a bigger group so want to stay together while you can. Obviously if one is dead and can’t hang on without the pace dropping then would be best to let them drop however if they can draft but not do turns then they should do that. Each rider should be doing above FTP pulls (last week I was doing 5-6 wpkg pulls for around one minute with two/three minute rests) then recovering in the draft. Strong riders should pull more often.

@nixie – thanks for the advice. Anything else us novices need to think about?

Only reiterating the stop pedalling 30s before the event start time. If you do find yourself moving before your supposed to then quickly open the pairing screen as this will stop you dead.

Oh and although we use discord the 1minute/30s 10s go count down is normally done in discord and on screen.

See you all in the pen.

So this should be the link for the discord.

https://discord.gg/UP6kv6

I’m assuming standard issue STW bumblebee jerseys?

Is it worth setting an order to try and stick to – even if you just do 10secs on the front at least that’ll stop everyone racing each other?

Nixie, so that’s at say 7:39 we need to stop pedalling ?

Rather than 30s before our 8 mins time ?

I’m happy running fairly cold anyway so i’ll do my warm up before joining the pen.

@IvanDobski – I’ve joined the discord server – hopefully it’s straight forward to use later!

@weeksy. Yes at 7:39 stop, that gives your turbo plenty of time to spool down. So you’ll be sat not pedalling for 8 minutes (or open the pairing screen and you can pedal while waiting). These events are basically setup as normal races with manually assigned start times after the events real start. If your still pedalling at 7.40 you’ll launch as per normal even though your official start time is 7.48.

If you catch any other teams they are not allowed to stay in your draft and should back off enough to stop that happening. Same if you get caught, let the catching team go. There may well be some solo riders. If they get caught in your draft ask them to drop back. Mostly people are fine doing this when you explain why but occasionally you get an idiot who tags along.

We’ll see you in the results as we are off at 6pm.
Did last week with the Club and have 6 of us tonight.
Latte team and hoping to finish higher up than with 4 last week. We did ok at 54 of 99 teams. Hope to be in top 25% tonight.

OK to confirm
– bumblebee jerseys and road bikes (NO TT bikes, we need to draft!)
– in the pen for the event start at 7.40
– no pedalling from 7.39 until our start time at 7.48
– communicate if we can on the STW discord channel (https://discord.gg/UP6kv6). Let’s use the general channel for text, plus push to talk in the STW voice channel). I can’t type, others might not be able to talk, we’ll just get by between us.
– time is taken 4th finisher – so we need to get at least 4 of us to the end

See you in the pen, or shortly before.

See you there

See you there, quite looking forward to this!

@savoyad sorry – what’s the general channel and what does ‘push to talk’ mean?

hey phil have you followed the discord link?

invite invalidg

yes I have

once your in there’s a few voice channels we’re in the one labeled stw voice

That was tough.
Raggy on the first 2 laps on the 2 main climbs at the top of the map so watch it. Powerful rider to the back to close it up.
About 54:10 to beat.

Push to talk means that the mic is only active when you push the button. This keeps background noise down.

Sorry had to miss this; on duty phone and got call last minute … first time it has rang all week so typical its when I am on it!

hope it went good.

Good effort all, caught loads of groups and not caught by any!

54:47 I think.

That’s not a course for me!!! Brutal at times

That was nails. Got a 10w ftp increase though.

Really I should have dropped as you would have been faster but I was thinking that wouldn’t leave any leeway for a mechanical or Bluetooth dropout.

That was a hard course for a TTT though, can’t wait for a flat one!

I don’t think we’d have gone much faster mate, maybe 10s at the max. If you went I was the next weakest link and I didn’t have that much more in me.