Zwift Team Time Trial – Thursday evenings

Signed up successfully: @dangeourbrain, @slowpuncheur, @robbo1234biking, @scaredypantsm, @wozza1

Also expected (maybe?) @sturdylad – click here https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/?id=RUwwbGZWZnQwRkt2VEYxYldwUk9mdz09

Two places still available if anyone wants them.

It’s an excellent TTT course. (and weirdly, powerups seem to be switched on?)

(and weirdly, powerups seem to be switched on?)

Excellent, burritos all round then!

OK so I clicked the link and signed in to WTRL.
Is there anything else I need to do? I did the copy race pass thing but not sure what to do with it!
At work now so doing it on my phone, not the laptop I will use tonight…

I will be online in plenty of time tonight to allow time to sort stuff like this!

That should be all you need to do I think (it’s all I do).

If you’re running companion on the same phone just check your showing as attending in “your events”

Yes it’s there!
Yikes, is that me commited then……

😁

Yep @sturdylad you are in succesfully. Just make sure you are clear (ish) on how the event works. It is odd. I’ll paste my blurb here…

– ride a road bike in-game (NOT a TT bike. You need the draft!). dress up as a bumblebee (again, in-game).
– comms will be via discord. The STW server is here: https://discord.gg/B8aAkFtj and the TTT voice channel is over on the left. If you can’t make yourself heard, just listen. It can work without, but it’s complicated…
– this is the MOST IMPORTANT BIT! The start is basically a workaround. You must be in the pen for the event start time (19:43). But each team has its own team start time. Once the countdown hits zero you MUST NOT GO! Instead, sit tight for the team’s start delay, which tonight is 12.5 minutes. Don’t move. Don’t pedal. Don’t start. Don’t leave the pen until 12.5 minutes have passed. THEN you can start. There will be timekeeping and a countdown over discord.
– there’s no pressure to ride on the front (“pull”), or win the event etc. Sit in, learn the ropes, see how the team works together.
– @robbo1234biking will run things on the road. so if in doubt, follow him or whatever he says!

If there are more questions, just ask and they’ll be answered quickly.

Good luck tonight!

All, in only my second week I’m pulling out, apologies. Work has taken over today, and I won’t be near my bike in time.

Best of luck, smash it!

A bit late to the party, but I’ve just signed up, on the assumption I’m back and ready. Don’t wait for me if I’m not in the pen though!

Is the bumble Bee costume in the kit section of your garage once you’re in the pen or something?

Also can you resend the invite for discord, it seems to have expired

@sturdylad discord invite in your messages

bee shirt is in garage, yes – any time, not just in pen

Bloody ‘ell – I spent the last 25 miutes of that above my threshold HR 🤢

Great ride.  Thanks @dangeourbrain for DSing

I’ll take credit @scardeypants but it was robbo sounding like he was out for a stroll

I was breathing out my bum.

Ah, sorry to robbo then !

was quite a step up from the last couple I’ve done – I’d not have bet on me finishing if I’d know what the average would be

Ha, me either scardey, coming up the last little climb near killed me.

I couldn’t get my head around why I had to match whoever was on the front just to hold onto the back. That was rather hard work tonight!

Good effort everyone. That was a pretty quick time. Was a good course but the hill was longer than I thought it was going to be’

What was up with connection sturdylad?

Ooh nice ride. Great DSing I hear @dangeourbrain (you won’t stay C for long, whatever orifice you are breathing from). I think that course is just right for a short-ish TTT. Teamwork matters, and then the hill is long enough to surprise robbo, but not long enough to really make a mess of things.

What did you do to @sturdylad?

It wasn’t the connection (I don’t think)
I have an intermittent issue where Zwift just stops responding and locks up, the only fix is to crash out and restart Zwift.
There doesn’t appear to any rhyme or reason to it.
It has only done it once in the past few months and on that occasion I at least managed to recover the data to add to Strava, not so lucky this time.

I was in contact with Zwift but they were pretty hopeless.

When I first started it was a regular thing, so I upgraded the laptop and it made very little difference.

I then replaced the trainer (for a different issue) and everything seemed OK for a while.

I’m at a loss

I did have to upgrade Zwift before the ride today and didn’t restart the laptop, I’m sure that’s unconnected but something to add to the list!

Next step is another install of Zwift on this laptop and also to try the old laptop again with a fresh install.

I need to try and delete anything that may be cached I guess.

Anyway, fingers crossed for next week!

I really enjoyed it tonight and we were flying 22mins for 10 miles is pretty respectable

Thanks for all the help getting set up tonight.

JB

That must have been a pain @sturdylad. I thought you slotted in really well and it was a well balanced team. Some monster pulls from @paino and @robbo1234biking kept the tempo up and the availability of power-ups was a novelty – just glad Robbo knew where the hell we were in Neokyo so we could use them properly! First TTT for me in about 6 weeks so pleased with how it went. Nice course.

@sturdylad what spec is your laptop? There was an issue with 10th and 11th gen intel CPU’s randomly crashing.

Thought that was a great team performance, some decent pulls at the front from everyone. Pretty much every time I got to the front, Robbo came steaming forward to do some huge turns. The pack dynamics seemed to work well, for me at least. Got the sink and sprint method working for me, and could quite happily hold the draft at 240W then pull through for a turn at 3.5-4w/kg. Kudos to sturdylad for a first attempt, really good effort, shame about the gremlins!

you won’t stay C for long, whatever orifice you are breathing from

Indeed, FTP test at the weekend and (hopefully) much improved weigh in might see that off this week in honesty.

Much as I let work get in the way and was off the bike for way too long last year the FTP is drop is largely a psychological thing I think, a couple of weeks of remembering how to suffer should see it back up to the 280/290 mark. Any improvement from there mind will likely need an improvement in fitness but if I manage to keep to my “only work what they expect of you, not what you expect of you” plan I should find time to improve that too. Hopefully the weight will follow fairly easily at least down to the 83/84kg mark.

Then I can go back to bottom of the Tuesday takes where I belong 😂

and (hopefully) much improved weigh in

No luck there!

@robbo1234biking – do you mean processor spec?
Looks like Intel i5 1035G1 I don’t know what gen that is though, unless the 10 at the beginning is anything to do with it…
Intel UHD Graphics

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1035G1 CPU @ 1.00GHz 1.19 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.69 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Yes that is a 10th gen cpu. There is a thread here on the zwift forums. Looks like some updated drivers might help your issue potentially.

https://forums.zwift.com/t/intel-integrated-graphics-gen-10-and-11/546286/59

Reposted from one of the threads. Hope this works for you.

My previous gaming laptop that I used for Zwift died after I spilled a cup of coffee on it. That one had a separate Nvidia graphics card and did not have any issues freezing during zwift rides. I switched to using my wife’s relatively new laptop that has a 10th generation Intel i5 with UHD integrated graphics. With that laptop I have been constantly plagued with group rides freezing (usually 20-30 minutes into the ride). Even just watching will freeze. After reading through this topic and I saw that Paul_Attard has successfully resolved the freezing/crashing problem by installing an older Intel UHD driver (Mar 2020 – 26.20.100.7985). I decided to try this (or else I was giving up on Zwift). My sample size of a single one-hour ride passed without any freezing after installing that driver. Clearly one ride is not enough, but I thought I’d post if anyone else here is as desperate as I was for a solution to the freezing problem. Here are details of what I did:

Since I cannot post a link for the driver, go to the main Intel site and do a search for 26.20.100.7985. The 3rd link in the search results is the one to click “Intel® Graphics – Windows* DCH Drivers”.
On that page there will be a “Version” pull down. Choose the last entry: 26.20.100.7985
Click on the button that has “Download igfx_win10_100.7985.zip” which will download the driver zip file (presumably to your Downloads directory).
make a directory and extract the zip file there.
shut down all programs you are running.
open an Administrator command prompt and cd to the directory you created that contains the contents of the zip file.
type igxpin in the window and then follow the prompts. It will likely complain that you have a newer driver currently installed but you can ignore that.
Reboot … and pray :=)
Note: the first time I did not use an Admin command window and although it seemed to install the older driver, I found the latest driver was still installed after a reboot. Then I tried an Admin command window and it worked.

Thanks, I will look into it more over the next few days.
One answer I did see on one of the links said it couldn’t be done on Windows 11… Shame I upgraded to that a while ago (after another crash!)
I will give it a go anyway though.

Cheers

Sorry all, been slow this week. Anyway: team entered, spreadsheet cleared.

It’s 1x Watopia’s Waistband, so short and fast.

Click here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E_0I0hulOaE2y34RpjckVCoT2Jks16vypeZ98L_LUw8/edit?usp=sharing

I’m in and looks like Phil is back too which is good news [not for my legs]

I’m IN this week, that way I’ve no excuses which I would if I went maybe :-)

P.

Numbers are ticking over.
IN: @phil56, @robbo1234biking, @paul-s, @dangeourbrain
MAYBE: @slowpuncheur, @benman

Any other takers? @paino, @scaredypants, @munkeymadness, @sturdylad, @wozza1 ?

how much of a pain is the registration process ?

Just checking with the boss but hopefully I’ll be in again this week

It’s basically painless nowadays @weeksy

1. You need an account at WTRL. If you don’t already have one, click here: https://www.wtrl.racing/registration/

2. Once that’s done, TTT entry is now one-click. I post a link here each week, which attaches you to the team (at WTRL) and enters you in the event (at zwift).

I’m working nights. Need to be out the door by 2100 so probably pushing it. If we’re short AND there’s not a huge pen delay then I’m in.

sorry, I’m out this week and next

ive been granted an early finish tomorrow and desperately need the motivation to zwift so count me in.

ill sigm up shortly.

OK I’m in!

Looking good to me.

Definitely in: @phil56 @robbo1234biking @paul-s @dangeourbrain @kirky72 @sturdylad

Plus 4 maybes for 2 remaining places: @slowpuncheur @benman @weeksy and @paino

Start delay is 10.5 minutes, so in the pen by 19:43 and off at 19:53:30. It’s a short one – less than 40 minutes ride time (so you might conclude there’s time for you @paino…)

Entry link: https://www.wtrl.racing/RacePass/?id=ZTh2VjdVNEpGTk5oZS9JdUNVZjFjZz09