Zwift Team Time Trial, Thursday

I am in – that might not be the best course for me though so hope I don’t slow you up!

Treated myself to a new bike for the course as well – the S-Works MTB. Have load of zwift drops with nothing to spend them on and apparently it is like 2 seconds faster on that route!).

MTB or gravel?

MTB is quicker than gravel according to the zwiftinsider link that Savoyad posted

The first few km are on road though. Is it possible to start on road bike and then switch to MTB when we hit the dirt?

You can swap but you have to come to a full stop before you can change bikes and I think that would cause more issues in getting back together in a cohesive team than it would the time saved by changing but open to other opinions?

You can swap but you have to come to a full stop before you can change bikes and I think that would cause more issues

Even if you did it seemlessly I don’t think you’d make up the time lost to stopping.

That said it’s all about grins not wins

It’s Road to Ruins (from downtown on road, up to and round the jungle dirt, back to downtown on mainly road) where seamless bike changes can be a worthwhile strategy. I don’t even think it’s worth it in a race because you just trade the reduced rolling resistance for a lack of draft as you time trial back to the group you were in to start with. Twice. Anyway, it can work because there is a lot of road either side of the dirt on that one.

The Jungle Circuit itself, which we’ll be riding, is different. There is a lead in (5km?) down from the start pens and this might well be normal surface (I haven’t ever paid attention) but it’s not enough to be worth changing bikes for.

The main reason I just made the choice of MTB was to make sure we all do the same thing – otherwise someone will be making life really hard for themselves…I’ll probably still forget (or, worse, start my next road race still on the mtb).

You can change it in the pen before the race starts so we can double check everyone is on the MTB via discord before we start.

I still have images of someone getting of their turbo and then swapping their road bike for their MTB on the turbo itself rather than in-game!

My thinking is that for the 5km of pavement leading into the dirt the road bike crr of 0.004 is going to save about 50Watts compared to the MTB crr of 0.01, with CdA on top surely that’s going to be at least 10s/km quicker which more than offsets 20-30s cost of stopping and switching bikes.
But also just wanna do it because Bike changes are winning and cool

Power ups will be enabled for Thursday’s race. 1 for each lap.

I still have images of someone getting of their turbo and then swapping their road bike for their MTB on the turbo itself rather than in-game!

I’ve got that covered 🙂

Hi Chaps,

Any room for a first timer this week?

PeeSBee STW

Hi PeesBee – are you on Zwiftpower? I saw you had signed up but couldn’t see you on Zwiftpower which you will need to be to count for the results.

I’m entered but currently feeling very heavy legged…

I’m hunting for a quieter start pen (for a shorter start delay, and less traffic on the course)

Well, that didn’t work.
Start delay this evening is 12 minutes. So we have to be in the pen by 18:30 and we’re off at 18:42.

[NB – event start is 18:30 tonight rather than 18:33 as A is three minutes ahead of D. So in the pen by 18:30, stopwatch start at 18:30]

@weeksy – heavy legs are neither unusual nor unwelcome!

@peesbee – definitely room for you, I’ll do a separate post specially, hang on…

This sounds a good crack. I’ll be up for some of this once the weather turns, and I start training indoors again.

@peesbee – yes, there is of course room for you. Presumably that is you I already see on the start list? You do need to add “(STW)” [in brackets, no quote marks!) to your rider name in zwiftpower so that the results system counts you as part of the team (it’s independent of the “team” functionality in zwiftpower, presumably because some zp teams have loads of entries in the TTT).

Logistics as follows:
– join the event by 18:30. When the screens says “GO”, stay absolutely still (in game) for 12 minutes. You probably need to stop spinning the pedals 30 seconds or so before 18:30 to make sure you’re at zero watts when it says go. Don’t pedal at all during the 12 minute delay.
– comms are on discord. join the STW server here: https://discord.gg/MVneMU and you’ll find us shortly before race time in the STW voice channel in there. It’s easier with comms. But it’s possible without – watch for the start at 18:42, and just ride silently with the blob.
– someone (Phil?) will monitor the time, count us down to 18:42:00 and shout go. At that point, go.
– we are not tactically sophisticated. we try to ride as a supportive group and all get to the line together. If gets scrappy, we work to regroup. If you get dropped, you’ll usually get towed or encouraged back on. basically stay in the blob, and it’ll be fun. there’s no pressure – just contribute whatever you can (and even hanging on the back helps the blob draft so speeds up the team).
– finally, and for tonight only – equip yourself with an MTB or Gravel Bike (whatever is already in your garage, it’s not compulsory to splash out like robbo) as it happens to be dirt tonight.

See you in the pen!

Hi – Im on Zwiftpower, but can’t work out how to edit my profile to add STW – any ideas?

I’ll pick up an MTB – i’ve got plenty of drops to spend!

I’ll try and use Discord – but previous attempts have not gone well.

Click on your profile (top right corner), then clock Zwift profile, on the second line down from the top its says settings, go in to that and you can change your name.

Cheers robbo – sorted.

I’m debating playing with the reality slider, but not sure which way to go, more realism or less… I’m at 50% which is where i always have it… but wondering if i could stick to one end and just TT it…or whether to go the complete opposite and have full reality and see if can power the hills.

https://zwiftinsider.com/wtrl-ttt-71/

Hadn’t seen this before. Quite a handy guide.

Weeksy – I tried playing around with the slider but found 50% to be the sweetspot. Really didn’t like the way it felt on 0% and prefer to keep it on the big ring on the front so wouldn’t change to 100%

I’m just going to try and make it to the bridge for 1 lap, anything else is a bonus 🙂

Turn left at the t junction after the lead in – will get to the bridge quicker! I’ll be right with you!

no words for just how crap that was from me.

Jesus my climbing speed is HORRID !!!!

I’m throwing the turbo out in the stream and taking up walking.

Sorry I had a few issues this week.

Thanks all – that was hard work!

That was a tough one this week. Sorry I dropped off on the descent on the 2nd lap.

3 times up that climb was tough but pretty happy with the 3 attempts.

1. 7.21 at 258w average
2. 6.42 at 296w average
3. 6.58 at 282W average

So fairly consistent. Our three lap times were all within 23 seconds of each other. We overtook quite a few teams as well so think we should be pretty happy!

Couple of teams got in the way right at the end though again!

Cheers guys really enjoyed it again.

Haha, at times our most cohesive ride I think (the first few km, lots of the last lap). But at other times we were, um, shambolic. We were scattered 400m apart at one point. Noone’s fault, the course and circumstance opened gaps and sometimes they refuse to be closed. I enjoyed most of it though. My comms broke (again; I know why now! my headset goes to sleep and I can’t wake it up without getting off the bike) so I don’t know how much I missed in terms of trying to get us back together.

I don’t like change, so I think we’ll be better back on a normal road surface without double draft next week. The entry is in: 1 lap of Greatest London Flat, so 31k which we’ve ridden together before.

@peesbee, it’s normally hard work but slicker overall than last night.

@weeksy your first walk can be out into the stream to get the turbo back.

I think i need to work on both my TTT and Discord skills. It’s difficult to stick as a team, especially when overtaking/being overtaken and that route does seem to pull people apart.

As for Discord, I mainly heard random sounds and the occasional ‘can anyone hear me’ – was it me or is that how it works?

No. Comms are usually better. We are usually pretty good at coordinating overtakes (either way) and regrouping when necessary.
Overtaking and being overtaken is hard but we’re getting better at it. Yesterday was unusual though. There was a lot of traffic, not just teams but dropped riders (I saw some grumpy outbursts from other teams in the chat…) because of the multi lap format. That makes it harder, as does being spread out when a pass starts. Which happened to us yesterday.
Next week should be more representative.

Also apologies to Tom – it took me a lap and a half to realise you were part of the team!

I think at least 4 of us were having issues with Discord yesterday. Tom had no comms at all don’t think and other had varying degrees of issues.

Greatest London flat sounds like a better fit to me.

When I said this the other day, I thought I was joking:

I’ll probably still … start my next road race still on the mtb

But it’s exactly what I just did. I don’t really know if it would have mattered, but I sat up. I’ll try again later (bike is now changed again). Don’t be like me.

Oh don’t apologise, I was all over the place yesterday.
Overall impression I got is that TTTing offroad is challenging because of the extra rolling resistance/lower speed.

Stuck in an over-running teleconference, set up in a hurry indoors for the first time because it was raining, couldn’t connect to discord in the panic, zero warmup and straight into a sprint because I was slow to react to start, I could see the Zwift messages but no access to keyboard to respond.

On the first lap I seemed to be going off the front on the climbs, I did see the time gaps forming and tried to slow down but setup made me akin to stall and fall off the rollers at lower power, which happened a few times.

Then going into the 2nd lap I found I was overheating, fan not actually circulating air as it was next to the wall, I stopped to try and move it but it was still crap and then it took me ages to get back to the group – the pace seemed to pick up. I was running pretty hot and struggling – the last 5km seemed to take forever, I produced an impressive sweat puddle which did not impress wife.

Sounds like you had a nightmare there!

I am pretty lucky I think that my zwift set up doesn’t cause me any issues like this and I am able to leave it set up in the lounge!

LOL funny stuff… I was sitting there on the climb thinking “Come on fellas i don’t have 3.5w/kg” and even though my HR wasn’t peaking it was still pretty high and i struggled as you guys guessed. Then my recovery on the down was fine, but as soon as we hit the climb again, you were up around 3.7w/kg and i just can’t do that. I then told you to go, which was lucky as about 30s later my turbo/power started playing up.

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This is my setup. Can reach the fan, keyboard and phone from seating in the bike. Couldn’t imagine doing it on rollers and trying not to fall off!

@savoyad what pen are we entering this week?