Zwift Team Time Trial, Thursday

I’m very much a maybe for this evening so if there are more potential riders for Team MoreSTW then I’m happy to step aside rather than sit on a slot.

Don’t worry @ivandobski, there’s no slot blocking going on. In fact there’s still room for more. If/when your maybe becomes a definite (either way!) tell me though?

Will do!

Anyone live-streaming it?! 😃

@zilog6128 I think you can just enter, join the event and fan view sitting in the start pen – which (if it works) would also allow you to move between the two teams. No turbo required. But if you have to sit on one in front of whatever screen you run zwift on…don’t pedal!

Right, I’m a no for this evening I’m afraid – good luck all.

@savoyad cool might give that a go – so if you see me in the pen I’m just lurking 😃

It’s ok zilog we aren’t used to you starting the same time as everyone else anyway 😉

Haha pretty sure I’ve only done that once 😀

Oh dear, a beasting ahead I fear.

I shall endeavour to be a useful engine, but more likely an old Mark 2 passenger coach, towed to its final resting place.

Sorry everyone, I’m going to have to duck out as I’ll miss the start time, even for the morestw slot.

Will try to get my avatar into the pen and join zilog watching you towards the end

Hope this gets to someone in time for any team switching that might be needed

☹️

WiFi cut out at the bottom of the hill 1st time just as we made the pass. Hooded it up and rebooted the connection got everything back only 12s down but everytime I got within 4s someone would Welly it and pull the gap out again. After 15 minutes of solo TTing at 300W I decided to call it a day.

Looks like a good ride from STW, loads of overtakes though so no doubt hard work!!

Cheers guys. Not sure what was going on with comms but I could only hear savoyad and no one else. We got a bit split on one of the overtakes but I felt pretty strong tonight so happy with the progress. Enjoyed it – hope you all did as well! Lots of dropouts from paino and woodster but you always seemed to drop back into the group!

My passenger coach is fully parked up, in a siding.

Kept getting dropped just over the brow of the big hill as the lead takes off, even a slight gap is too much to make up – several hard minutes of playing catch !.

Lost comms on the third lap, think that was my own fault as it looks like my headphones were on discord mute until i noticed. Apologies if my name was being used in vain. Was calling a bit to slow down but not sure i was getting heard :^(

People were teleporting around quite a lot, I was dropped on my own ready to die, and then suddenly Phil was there from nowhere. We passed at least 6 teams I think.

Thanks for the ride, enjoyed it.

We were seeing avatar dropouts as well. Didn’t seem to loose draft though.

WiFi cut out at the bottom of the hill 1st time just as we made the pass. Hooded it up and rebooted the connection got everything back only 12s down but everytime I got within 4s someone would Welly it and pull the gap out again. After 15 minutes of solo TTing at 300W I decided to call it a day

If you were More STW, I heard you say your WiFi dropped and that’s the last I heard or saw you.
Mind you my TV decided to go into setup mode so I was squinting at the laptop on the floor trying to hang on.

I don’t know about anybody else but I’m cream crackered. Sorry we left you behind Chris, I’m not sure if anybody else could hear you. Once we we were down to four I focused on just trying to finish so apologise for not being able to do any of the work on the front.

Can confirm I was there all the time! Woodster had an invisibility cloak on for a while, lost Phil for a while too. Was thinking, does the draft effect still work even if we are ghosts?

Sorry for the drop @mrhoppy. Saw you drop back so I dropped of the back to offer a tow back on, then you disappeared again. Don’t think I saw you again in the ride list after that.

Thought we settled into quite good group after we finally separated from that passing team. My coms are useless for road captaining after the start. Don’t know how Phil does it all so effortlessly!

I figured my discord was playing up if I didn’t have a connection.

At the top of the hill I was 12s down, by the bottom I was back to 4s back by the bridge at the bottom. By the Italian Villas you were back up to 10s, had you down to 4s by the end of the sprint bridge then it went back up on the climb as I was breathing out of my arse by that point. At the end of the esses I decided to sack it off as I just didn’t have the legs to close up having averaged 110% FTP for 15 minutes.

40s PB on up and down the hill including stopping to reset my WiFi connection.

At the top of the hill I was 12s down, by the bottom I was back to 4s back by the bridge at the bottom. By the Italian Villas you were back up to 10s, had you down to 4s by the end of the sprint bridge then it went back up on the climb as I was breathing out of my arse by that point. At the end of the esses I decided to sack it off as I just didn’t have the legs to close up having averaged 110% FTP for 15 minutes.

40s PB on up and down the hill including stopping to reset my WiFi connection

Ouch! Nice work. I think I was a bit of a lead weight.
Struggled with breathing/coughing, Hr didn’t get above 154. If the team didn’t need 4 I’d prob have quit out

Paino, I think the draft was still ok. Where I went invisible to you guys I was sat on the front with you behind me. We were both taking it relatively easy, 3.1w/kg for me and 2.7 for you.
I was always in my list of riders and visible on screen, very strange.

So could anyone on the STW team actually hear me/each other apart from Savoyad? That is my highest average Watts for a TTT I think so don’t think it was a bad ride but without the comms couldn’t really tell!

Looks like the World Championships may go ahead @savoyad – it is marked on their website as so. The banner shows height and weight verification as well. Worried I might have over egged my height by 1 or 2cm lol and my avatar should in fact be a dwarf!

I couldn’t hear you Robbo, I could before the race, but not during it.
What was your power for the TT? Mine was fairly low, 242 watts. Does it take the average power from when we push off or from the event start?

Think I will go back to using my phone and a standard set of Apple Headphones in that case.

Average power was 277w, NP was 285w. It is from when you start pedalling until the end of you are going by zwift power, The wait at the start shouldn’t affect it.

There were quite a lot of technical issues last night. w00dster and @paino were invisible for long periods (sorry I kept checking on you!). I’m sure from your answers, and from the way you kept reappearing in the group, that the draft was working fine from your end. I could hear everyone @robbo1234biking. I have a recording (video + comms audio) if you want to see what you missed.

My highlight was @phil56 “persuading” us to do that mad last pass at 6w/kg into the finish. (“only 800km to go guys!”)

@w00dster (On my data at least…) the ave power is suppressed by minutes 20-25, so lap 2 after the climb when we eased up and took a while to regroup. This happens sometimes.

Our first lap was really amazing. That was a tough course to stay together, and we were really really tight, perfect almost. It was always going to get harder. We improved though: climb 3 (@haloric pacing us up) went better than climb 2 (where I am sure the real issue was the traffic, not the split; once there’s traffic between us at a moment of pressure it always goes wrong).

I’ll sort entries for the worlds…

I have a recording (video + comms audio) if you want to see what you missed.

Might be interesting to see/hear! Hope I was doing what was being shouted at me then as I couldn’t hear a thing! I just tried not to be on the back once the comms had gone. I think I seemed to be in sync most of the time. The difficult bit was when we split after the second climb and got tangled up with the other group.

I think It was Ant who made me laugh out loud at the wrong time, coming to the top of the hill, Phil shouted “Woodster where’ve you been?!!” The reply from Ant “Sir, he’s been hiding in the bushes sir!”
(You had to be there….but it made me chuckle and gag on my drink!)

You had been gone for so long, I think you skipped a lap. !

I was leading up the final climb because I was so petrified of being dropped on the other side like on the 2nd lap, fear adds watts !,

FB is full of stories of riders and even teams disappearing and re-appearing.

Seems like Zwift had a mare, had lots more problems recently since they have ‘upgraded’ their servers.

Looks like STW got the much coveted 214th/256 position in Frappe, and MoreSTW 115th/224 Latte.

The team just 3 secs above us (Herd of Cheetahs) has a team mate from ZRL (Thomas Kroeber) who is streets ahead of me, 8 riders with 6 B’s, so we must have been pushing hard to be that close – thanks Phil.

It’s tough for Zwift, but they should be aware that as the northern hemisphere goes into winter, more people ride… That’s been the case each and every season…. Why are they not learning this lesson. In simple terms “oh we need more hardware”… Yes, well, you’ve had more subscriptions, more people, more money, use that for more/better processing/servers/capacity. It shouldn’t be impossible.

Looks like STW got the much coveted 214th/256 position in Frappe, and MoreSTW 115th/224 Latte.

Don’t think we will be troubling the top step of the podium at the World Champs then! I thought we seemed pretty fast yesterday.

I love the team element of it though – def try harder with that and look forward to working as a team. Cycling can be a bit of an individual sport so that team aspect is good and replaced playing rugby for me.

Looks like it is Magnificent 8 for the World Champs next week. Pretty good route for us I would say.

https://zwiftinsider.com/route/the-magnificent-8/

FB is full of stories of riders and even teams disappearing and re-appearing.

Seems like Zwift had a mare, had lots more problems recently since they have ‘upgraded’ their servers.

really frustrating when this happens! Like weeksy says, surely this was predictable, and solvable simply by chucking money at it (which they must have these days surely?)

Just joined the Facebook group for the WTRL TTT. The requirements are quite in depth for the upper classes – dual power meters required?

Our class needs height and weight videos prepared to send in if you are in the top 3 but no requirement other than that and you only send them in if you come in the top 3. Videos should be done before the race due to weight loss.

Do people put their weight in their kit on? My zwift weight reflects that from my smart(ish) scales but that is me weighing in my pants on a Saturday morning. And I don’t update hardly ever so it would prob fluctuate +/-2kg over the year (well plus 15kg from last summer!) Do other people put weight in bibshorts and shoes? Bib shorts weigh nothing but guessing I should prob add another 1kg to account for shoes and (more) clothes!

A video of me weighing in my cycling shoes would prob be more appropriate for You’ve been framed as I slide of the scales and fall over!

My weight is full nude. I’ll have to wear clean y fronts for the video I suppose!

@savoyad is it worth entering a 3rd team (assuming that the paperwork in minimal) – most weeks we are getting close to two full teams (14ish riders) and with it being a world champs we might drop into 3 teams if everyone who has ridden before wants to ride as it might be popular!

OK here’s the plan.

We will enter the worlds. It’s just the normal event, in the usual format, at our normal time, so nothing unusual in practical terms. We’ll field as many latte teams as we can get riders – so probably two but yes possibly three. For that to work, we need lots and lots of C’s really. If that doesn’t happen, we’ll field a good latte and the rest will end up riding (but slower!) in frappe.

There is a requirement for verification videos, but it’s quite relaxed for latte: only the top 3 and they must simply be prepared to send one in after the event. Fine, if we top three can do that then.

I’ll post properly later.

Fine, if when we top three can do that then.

FTFY 😉

Just looking at the WTRL site and specifically the coffee classes.
As we are A and Latte, does that mean our team has to look like this:-
Zero A riders.
A maximum of 3 Bs.
5 C or D riders.

Yes @w00dster, that’s right for latte. I normally fudge, or don’t care, about the categories (like last night 4xB pushed STW up into frappe, but it doesn’t really matter). I have a soft spot for latte because we are good at it. But it’s better to make it work best for the available riders usually.

But next week I do plan to run our strongest latte team alongside whatever else we have the riders for.