KISS seem to be 8pm tues/thurs

EVR are 8pm mon/wed/fri

Cheers, that makes sense. Tues / Thurs are my Zwift days because they work well with a Sunday ride. With a young child in the house I’m lucky to get that, I don’t have the flexibility to ride when I want any more (which is why Zwift is so good as I don’t miss out on a ride if the weather is pants on my allocated day).

Fred is still here

How are you liking your Neo now? I know I ask you that every few weeks.

I’m liking it. Works well having a spins around Zwift. Having a virtual environment with gradient changes to tackle, other riders to pass, etc. makes for more dynamic riding than usual turbo work. Hoping this helps avoid turbo legs having put in almost no time riding outdoors in Jan 😕

For more traditional interval work I put it in TT/Tri mode. The lower simulated CdA makes a big difference to the feel, probably better than the LeMond. Works well for intervals in TT position.

In Zwift it can feel a bit lumpy simulating steep slopes but that’s not really a problem. And accelerating maybe doesn’t feel quite as natural as the LeMond either (I think if you were to work out the effective CdA it uses in road mode it’d be a bit higher than the LeMond or my road bike CdA.)

The lack of noise is great. I have my headphones at about half volume now instead of full volume!

I did have some problems running over bluetooth with a huge control lag so I switched over to ANT+ and all is fine.

Power measurement is good too. Tracks my C1 PM very closely, consistently 10 watts lower, which you’d expect as one is at the spider and the other at the rear hub.

Still find Erg mode rough?

I’ve only tried it once and it was horrid for harder efforts. Like riding through thick mud. Reading the Tacx forum, it seems they did tweak it a while back to make it more natural but people complained that it reacted too slowly to power changes so they put it back. Might be better for stuff like capping easy Z1 efforts.

Bored at work and just thinking about the KISS sandbagging discussion and wondering if more categories would help?

I reckon say 6 categories instead of 4 would be good. I’d hope it would mean you could find a closer group and make the races more competitive?

I accept that when you move up you’re not going to be near the front groups but when the gap (literally/virtually!) is massive it’s not great. Even thinking about this as purely a fitness tool and forgetting about coming high in the placings, I’m sure you push harder when you’re in a competitive group/race then just going through the motions at the back.

Or just MTFU and get quicker?

I decided to do a test ride tonight with Zwift using power readings from my turbo (one of the cheapo T2240’s Tacx Flows from Halfords) and with my Garmin recording the ride using power readings from my power meter (4iiii Precision). While during the ride there were differences between the power displayed on my Garmin and the power showing on Zwift from the turbo (generally it looks like the Garmin/4iiii combination reacts to changes in power much quicker, both up and down, than the turbo does – and I don’t think that’s just averaging due to display settings) overall they were very close:

Garmin/4iiii: 217W average, 493W maximum, 219W weighted average
Zwift/T2240: 219W average, 451W maximum, 222W weighted average

Quite impressive from the T2240 really.

I don’t think it would make any difference. if you look at the numbers at the front of the KISS C/D race before the category limits are applied on thursday, they would have been competitive in the A/B race. I don’t think its people inadvertantly having a good race or not knowing where to place themselves.

ultimately, it is just a game and another way to ease the pain of the turbo…

Of course. I really couldn’t care less where I finished in the race. It’s just the ones I’ve enjoyed most, and pushed hardest in (the main goal as you say) are where I’ve been in a competitive group and had mini battles with those around me. I was musing over the idea that having more cats would increase the chances of getting this. You’ll always get people sandbagging and blasting away, but I guess I’m wondering if those left would have a better race?

Blitz- my own personal preference is for the no cat races. Then you can just race whoever is there on any given day. After all, the only prize you usually get for winning a race is a DQ 😉

Seriously though- I have never, in 55 or so races been affected by a sandbagger? Either follow the wheel or don’t but if you blow up, it’s not their fault!
If you watch the race streams, you’ll see that even the A race takes it easy after a while. Yes the starts are mental but that’s a good reason to work on your 1 or 2 min power.

Besides, the Cats are based on FTP which is quite useless at predicting race success. The 2nd place B on Tuesday was 3.3w/kg!!!
My 10th/76 in B was with 3.2w/kg! And I would have finished 21/40 in A assuming I could have found the same amount of draft.

Learn the craft- there is an art to it 🙂

How are you liking your Neo now? I know I ask you that every few weeks.

I’m liking it… <snip>[/quote]

Interesting, thanks. Could you get a Kickr too please, and try that for a while then compare and contrast? Cheers. Oh and a Flux as well for good measure. Ta.

I can see myself upgrading from my Vortex one day, but not sure what I’d get at the mo.

i think its more that in the KISS C/D races it just seems to get strung out right from the start as opposed to a group forming and then you may as well be doing a time trail, and then you may as well be on a time trial bike, and then you may as well be on trainerroad following a blue line… 😉

Fair points. I’ll definitely try some different races including no cat. I have stuck to the KISS as they fit in at 8pm after the kids are down.

A bit like Weeksy’s initial posts on this thread, I really didn’t think I’d be musing over all of this. Fair play to Zwift. It is great for what it is.

Jam bo- I’ve raced KISS for over a year, right up from D Cat and I’ve never TT’d a race yet. The groups are there- you just need to get fit enough to hang with them until it settles down 😉

If your ftp is within cat boundaries, I struggle to believe you literally can’t find another rider to hang on to?

ODZ do a neutral roll out (so did ZTR before the event module) but they need some serious policing 😀 The ODZ boys film them to work out who’s cheated!!

Interesting, thanks. Could you get a Kickr too please, and try that for a while then compare and contrast? Cheers. Oh and a Flux as well for good measure. Ta.

🙂

In terms of function the Kickr and the Flux are basically the same thing (direct drive, fixed mechanical non-driven flywheel, electronically controlled magnetic brake), i can’t see a reason why you’d pay more for the Kickr.

I can see myself upgrading from my Vortex one day, but not sure what I’d get at the mo.

The Neo really is very good, you can set it up to simulate the energies involved in TT, road and XC riding. Just makes your turbo work that much more specific. It’s really noticeable.

If you don’t care about that and are happy with the feel of a basic turbo and just want some resistance control then I’d get a cheaper direct drive like the Flux.

Interesting interview with the zwift head honcho:

Zwift App review

The concept of pretend bike racing in pretend world perplexed me to such a point that I contacted Eric Min, the CEO of Zwift and emailed him until he regretted emailing back, there is the exchange that followed.

schmalz What’s the course that people recommend you digitize the most?

Min It’s either a course they dream about (the French Alps) or it’s their favorite training loop (Central Park, Gimbel’s ride, etc)!

schmalz Any chance we can get the Central Park night ride as a regular route?

Min We had toyed with the idea of Central Park and we have experimented with Richmond, and we’re doing more real courses like London but Watopia, our fantasy island is by far what users want the most.

schmalz I will admit that I really don’t pay much attention to the courses I ride, I’m pretty sure if you placed me on the course in real life I wouldn’t be able to find my way out. I guess a virtual world satisfies riders criteria for challenging terrain. How much effort does it take to create new courses?

Min Then you are a minority. The community goes nuts over more digital pavement. It takes about 4-6 weeks to build an expansion. We just released the volcano expansion and the London one should be coming out in a couple of weeks. We’ll do another expansion to the volcano soon afterwards. We expect a much bigger expansion in Apr.

schmalz I am very much not a video game person, so the course changes have little or no effect on me. I do like the races, but dear Lord, they can be confusing. I have no idea where I am during races. Are there any changes planed for the race format?

Min Pretty soon we’ll introduce a concept of private or closed events and if you’re in those events, you won’t see others in the world but those outside of the events will see you.

schmalz That will really help, I guess having a “closed course” is not an option?

Min We could also do that but I think most people will agree that it’s pretty exciting to see a pack of riders whiz by.

schmalz Getting passed by a pack of racers is a bummer, what’s wrong with these people? I would suggest each racer have a huge orange flag on their bike so we can identify each other. Or maybe racers could glow. These are all such awesome ideas, it feels so good to be redesigning the app.

Min We’ve talked about drones (we don’t like cars) leading the pointy end of a race. We can really have some fun with that one.

schmalz How about a unicorn hologram running in front of the race? (You think I’m kidding about this, but I’m not.)

Min Hilarious. Let your imagination run wild!

schmalz The companies that make trainers must love you guys, are they planning new features for their trainers to make them more “Zwifty”?

Min It’s no secret that Zwift has helped the trainer market. Our partners have told us. We’re hoping that consumers will see more affordable smart trainers in the market. That is the single biggest friction point for most users.

schmalz Playing hardball, I like it. Have you seen many coaches get involved with Zwift?

Min Many coaches and some of them are very creative. I love what David Lipscomb, a NYC coach has done with his CIS coaching business on Zwift. He’s leveraging Zwift, the platform, to help him enhance his coaching services. I think that’s great!

schmalz On a more serious note, how do you respond to the assertion that simulated indoor cycling might actually be damaging to real world cycling, as people ride indoors for safety, and the actual number of outdoor riders decreases, making outdoor cycling seem even more marginalized?

Min I actually think Zwift will encourage more people to try cycling and help existing cyclists stick with cycling. But there is no doubt in my mind that Zwift has raised the bar for when you actually do go outside. I only go out when the circumstances are ideal.

schmalz It will interesting to see if the mostly indoor riders make it outside. I will say Zwift makes me ride MUCH harder indoors (due to being a dumb, competitive bike racer type). What’s your answer to people who say that Zwift mile and elevation numbers aren’t real?

Min They are real in the sense you are working. In fact, you are working much harder indoors than outdoors. I rode outside the other week and you would be surprised at how many zero watts are in your power file. Indoor training is super efficient. You just work the entire time. We believe a whole new category of cycling called eRacing will surface. In many respects, Zwift already has this “underground” virtual racing. Stay tuned. You’ll hear much more about it at the end of this year.

schmalz Uh oh, eRacing feels like it will bring e-cheating. How will you control that?

Min There is a community site called zwiftpower.com that verifies your performance. There is also Zada. Yep, Zwift anti doping authority! But I think the league will be broken out by equipment especially with the introduction of smart bikes, which will be easier to control virtual doping. There may also be an open league, which is like what we have today with Zwift racing. I think the potential is enormous for eRacing and there is no reason why it can’t extend to professional leagues. There will continue to be road racing, cyclocross, track, etc but I see eRacing as another category, which will be vastly more accessible to the masses.

schmalz Weight doping, weight doping, everybody who gets beat on Zwift talks about it. Will there be video weigh-ins?

Min Zwiftpower.com catches weight dopers! You need an active profile on Strava and the data is cross referenced by this group. I also believe that the second generation smart bikes will have a built-in scale so your weight will be measured every second of your ride. But eventually in any finals, you’ll need to show up in person! It will be obvious if you’ve been playing with your weigh!

schmalz What if I wear Spanx? Will you still believe I weight 98 pounds?

Min I actually had to look up Spanx! Let the community do the policing for now. If you have no social networking profile, you won’t be verified.

schmalz When you get down to it, all racing comes down to a level of mutual trust, just like life I suppose. So I guess eRacing is more real than we thought.

Min eRacing is already happening. What exists today is a bit underground but we made a recent announcement about eRacing and was reported in Velonews.

The Zwift Academy is back for 2017, now with eRacing

schmalz Will there be categories? How about a Iowa natives living in New Jersey over 47 and one half category? That would be nice.

Min Man, that is the beauty with eRacing. It will be so accessible (and affordable) and it’s global from the outset. Maybe we won’t need national federations at all and no affiliation with UCI or the Olympics — just one big international league. There are no borders and we could schedule events every hour.

schmalz I think the last thing we need is an eUCI.

Min You are going to see so many who would never have considered bike racing enter Zwift to race and of course the quickest riders will be experienced bike racers because just like in the real world, there are tactics and team work that can play out even on virtual roads. Two way communication is coming this year which should spice things up (many are already using Skype, FaceTime and other tools). People really geek out on Zwift!

schmalz Yes, yes they do.

Just went all out on Box Hill doing 2 laps of town got up in 7:51 and was beaten..

from that quoteathon:

Min Pretty soon we’ll introduce a concept of private or closed events and if you’re in those events, you won’t see others in the world but those outside of the events will see you.

That’s pretty much key, for me anyway
(… wonder if you could get a tow from an invisible mate who’s not in the race and can still see you ??)

To think Zwift initially said racing wasn’t a focus for them 😉

Here’s my Zwifting set-up:

Couldn’t quite fit the turbo itself into the photo. Not much space in my London flat so have to use the spare bedroom when it’s not in use. Looks like I’ve just sold that flat though and should be getting somewhere bigger that’ll have a better home for the turbo.

Tried the new expansion pack today. They need to turn the wind down a bit and reprogram the ponies to be less suicidal.

There’s an 8.15am open class race tomorrow morning. 9 laps of 2.7 mile volcano route.
That’s a very tempting thing for seeing what’s in the calves real world now.

Also a 6 lapper, usual cats, 7.30pm
That’s looking even better for me.

I’m looking at the 7.30 pm* one too – prob a good choice for a comeback race weeksy, as there’s little in the way of incline to catch you out and make you overdo it

*(08.15 can **** right off !)

Ooof, the Watopia Pretzel…won’t be doing that again anytime soon
One film plus 4 episodes of Family Guy and a very tender ass for 75km of riding 😯

I haven’t riden for over a week now.
Finally got the keys to our house and have been mad busy working on it before we move in.
No zwifting for me atm…

Sod it, I’m up and watching tour of Dubai, so its got me in the mood for a pop at the race. First race in 2 weeks and first race on the kickr snap. It seems to suit hilly courses better from what I’ve noticed, so will be very interesting to see a flat race

Went too hard too early, threw towel in after 20km.

So you lot are all talking about turning up to set time races?

How does that work?

http://www.zwiftpower.com/ to see what’s coming up

Easiest way to enter IME though is via the phone app

Pick a category (A-D) depending on how fast you are (guess, or use FTP if you’ve done one). When you go onto zwift within half an hour or so of a race you’ve entered there’s an extra button on screen to “join” it. That’ll take you to the start line and put you on an imaginary turbo trainer so you can still warm up

Preparation wasn’t great, due to Mrs Weeksy being in bed i only got on with 1min 19 to race start, so warm up was non existent… But i thought i’d give it a whirl anyway. The pace was hot from the off, it was open Cat, so no idea who you’re riding with and what group you’re in… But we were a group of 8-9 or so and flying along at a decent pace, every time i looked, the group leader was hitting 4+ w/kg…. which is obviously way above my pay grade.

It’s quite a long into into the volcano laps, after lap 1 my time came up as 5min 57.3… From something NathB said, that’s a decent pace, we’d dropped one of the lads and the group was holding together nicely…. About 3/4 of the way round the lap, i had a glitch and lost all but 1 of the group, just disappeared…. when they came back, me and him had lost 3s on the others ! WTF happend there there… I threw in some 350w or so for a bit to close the gap, but the leader was still 4+ and it went from 3s to 5s after a minute…. the lap came around again with a 6mins 07 i think it was, but i’d lost the other guy… I looked at the board… I was 7s behind the group of 4 in front but there was a group of 2 about 8s behind me…. “Right, lets ease up a it, wait for them and jump on”… They were putting out 3.7w/kg or so… 30m behind, 20m behind…. oh crap…. next thing, they’d caught me and pulled 3s on me !…. I was coming round the end of the lap, most of which I’d TT’d…. 6 mins 20s…. I looked behind and i’m 42s ahead of the next group behind and the guys in front were too fast for me…..

So i pulled the plug and bailed…. i’d gone a bit too hard and even though my HR was only 165bpm, i was pretty much toast.

It did make me think that all the training you do, nothing can replicate the racing, even the virtual kind, taking 2 weeks of racing, you lose the abilty to just ‘hang in’ in a psychological context.

Zwift put my FTP to 289 after the ride…. I then jumped on an put in a gentle 15 mins to warm down.

You can also install the Zwift App on your android (and i assume iphone) which shows all the upcoming races etc. You can enter them on there too.

Finally got the keys to our house and have been mad busy working on it before we move in.

so the turbo room’s all set up then ? 🙂

You can also install the Zwift App on your android (and i assume iphone) which shows all the upcoming races etc. You can enter them on there too.

It’s the zwift mobile link app, not the full blown zwift app which is also on iOS.

My lad was hassling me after i think he was also disappointed yesterday in his perofrmance, so i fitted some new trigger shifter to his CUBE and he had a crack around the volcano. We adjusted the weight to his and sent him on his way.

He’s got some power in them legs, once hitting 5.1 w/kg !

Decent lap time too considering i have to say

I’m pretty sure you can get a free kids account…..

Sheesh, that seems a bit complex to do it having read it on there…. bit of a faff if you ask me… We’ll see if he shows any interest in it again before bothering…

Just got overtaken by the verified Matt Stephens 🙂

I have a free account for my son. Easy to setup, just create him an account and then send a message to Zwift and they will send you a code to make it free once the trail expires. My lad only goes on if it too wet to ride outside, although occasionally takes part in a slow group ride on a Wednesday evening.

Wow, Matt’s only level 14!!
Amatuer 😆

Pondering speed up climbs today while having a spin around Watopia. Was riding an Allez and speed up the hilly loop KOMs are definitely slower for a given power than on the Zwift TT bike. However, I’m pretty sure that Box Hill is quicker on the road bike. Suspect it’s because Box Hill is just one long line of riders top to bottom most of the time and you’re going from draft to draft most of the way up.

I’m only posting because this is the 3000th post in the thread and I’m claiming the glory!