Zwift Team Time Trial, Thursday

No worries @w00dster. We were on a roll at the time and had 2 clean passes previous to that. Thanks for driving it on. I certainly felt like I emptied the tank. Shame @haloric and Jack had IT issues. We did really well with 6.

That was quite the shitstorm for Jack and I.

After the event had started and 3 mins to go Jack tried to leave the pairing screen on Apple TV to be ready to launch, might have fumbled it, because the app minimised, and then the ATV was not having it. Normally ATV rock solid honest Robbo !.

I was trying to provide fatherly inspirational words of encouragement as you can imagine, to no avail, whilst as our launch time approached I gave the countdown, not convinced anyone heard it anyway and I launched – but was all alone – no other riders, not even a rider list.

Comms over discord was similarly poor, gave it up as a bad job after a lonely first 1k.

Rode the 4th tour de zwift stage to a similar level of pain.

Another update from Zwift coming down the sewer tonight, be ready.

Another great outing for both teams. Tried to stay second wheel for as much as possible tonight, although had to hide in the pack now and again to recharge my batteries. That double pass was quality, think you’re right Robbo, they didn’t know we were coming at all! I think the first team on the road thought we were cheating by riding together, just a well timed double pass!

@karnali I find the best method with discord is to change the voice setting to push to talk. That way you should be muted until you press the on screen button.

It was another great performance from Team STW – again we pretty much stayed locked together from start to finish. I think we passed four teams, and did really well when we caught two of them together. Great effort guys, and well done Martin on your first TTT

@haloric – I was really happy with ATV last night and on this mornings rides. Once you get used to the remote is seems to have the stability and graphics of the iPad but on a big screen and without the issues with a laptop. Frees up the household laptop as well at weekends and using a phone for typing input is easy as is the companion app. Will see how it goes over the weekend doing the TdZ rides.

I think my fan was too noisy for the microphone on my headset though as once I turned it down people could hear me. Not an issue when riding with STW as I don’t need to talk to much but might need to use the other headset if I am riding with MoreSTW.

Team STW came 343 in GC out of out of 933 teams (211 in Frappe)
Team MoreSTW came in 451 in GC out of 933 teams (275 in Frappe)

How come both teams were in Frappe? I thought one should be in Latte

Oh and when does the flat white category come in?

Enjoyed the TTT last night. Thanks all particularly Phil for pulling us around. I should probably have done a bit more on the front. I still have some issues with discord on phone. Chews through the battery and drops out. Will try through ipad next time.

@robbo. I use ATV. Generally very stable. I do however hate the remote, particularly when sweaty. Only issue I have is I need to use companion app to link my 3 BT connections (trainer, cadence and HRM). If the iPad (companion) app drops connection for even a microsecond zwift is still running but your power etc goes to zero. Often very difficult to reconnect particularly using the bl88dy ATV remote. If only ATV could take 3 BT connections would be near perfect. Or I need to update my kicr to a new one with built in cadence sensor.

How come both teams were in Frappe? I thought one should be in Latte

We have lots of B(+) now. It’ll usually mean one frappe and one latte, but two frappe is always a possibility with our breakdown. So there was a frappe+latte selection available yesterday, but I paid a little more attention to pure watts than to w/kg (or coffee class) than normal because of the nature of the course (amongst other things), and that meant we ended up with two frappes. Conversely there will be weeks where (e.g.) I sense a chance to smash it in latte and coffee class dominates, or w/kg is all that matter.

There will usually be one team obviously faster on paper than the other. But the intention behind my selection approach is that the Bs in the slower team, particularly those that move often between the teams, shouldn’t see themselves as being demoted / riding down / having aspersions cast on their form. They just need to do a different job there… Basically I’m trying to keep it a worthwhile enterprise for everyone involved, make sure everyone’s preferences are satisfied at least a lot of the time, and select lineups which all being well are capable of riding to the end together.

I’m pretty reliant on your write ups on here to keep me in touch with the detail now I’m riding elsewhere. (I’m still enjoying it, but to be clear if a feeling develops that it would be better for someone actually riding to handle the admin, selection etc OR if I’m getting stuff wrong through detachment just tell me.)

The move to earlier entries (brace yourself @mbs!) when the new WTRL system kicks in will mean rosters available earlier each week which in turn will create more opportunity (if you want to take it!) for teams to plan tactics, roles, approach in advance each week.

@munkeymadness Guys can you lot stop tagging me in these posts! My user name is robbo but you mean robbo1234biking! Very interesting but… 🙂

Thanks for the explanation @savoyad. It’s an unenviable task. I’m glad you explained as I thought it was my mistake as I forgot to tell you I was bumped to B Cat after Tuesday STW Race. In terms of feedback I feel I am contributing to the team but watching @wOOdster last night at close quarters, I realise that I would be better off taking a turn then resting at the back and coming through again rather than sitting 2/3/4th wheel most of the time and only taking short turns.

Oh and when does the flat white category come in?

?! A flat white is not a coffee any self respecting Italian would let pass his or her lips! That comment is worthy of demotion to the Mellow Birds category @robbo1234biking:)

?! A flat white is not a coffee any self respecting Italian would let pass his or her lips! That comment is worthy of demotion to the Mellow Birds category

True – however a flat white is better than a latte or a frappe. I will never get to espresso class!

Sorry Robbo if people keep tagging you wrong!

You are doing a great job as far as I am concerned Savoyad – I forgot that you are limited to how many of each cat you can have in a class.

I used my Direto with in-built cadence last night but it was all over the place with cadence as high as 170rpm! I used the companion app this morning and didn’t find any issues and I dropped in and out a couple of times but will see how it goes. My wi-fi is pretty stable and I will hard wire in the ATV. There is no perfect solution with Zwift unfortunately but I definitely find the apple ones more stable. The iPad was too small but ATV should bridge that gap and is relatively cheap.

(IME) Direto cadence is basically garbage data. But that’s made me realise I don’t value the cadence data that highly anyway. Which leads me to wonder: @munkeymadness if you bin cadence, even if only for TTT rides, does that leave enough bluetooth connections on your ATV to pair directly and get some extra stability?

Cadence is a bit like HR when you are in a race. It is what it is and if you focus on it too much you likely wont be performing as well as you can. If I ride my MTB (one day I will again!) I don’t use any of that data I just ride what is in front of me. When training it is more useful and with ERG mode a wildly fluctuating cadence will cause the power to respond strangely.

To be honest I think I am starting to focus on power too much as well. If I look at the graph at the bottom I might go easier because I think I have been in the red too much. If I turn it off my body will do what it can without being influenced by my mind!

If you don’t already, I’d get that graph turned off in races if I were you. A lot of pro roadies don’t like seeing their power live. Most just want to know how fast they’re going (because we are big kids) and how long until the end or specific points on the parcours. I think the graph helps you ride to your FTP but that’s not going to help on a 30 min to 1 hour all out effort.

Yeh will do this from now on. I always had it on because I wanted it on for the workouts and would forget to turn it off but turns out it turns on automatically for workouts so you can leave it off the rest of the time.

@munkeymadness

If only ATV could take 3 BT connections would be near perfect.

Have you looked at 4iiii’s Viiiiva ANT+ to Bluetooth Smart Bridge & HRM?

This looks to have good reviews and looks like it would combine well with ATV

That was quite the shitstorm for Jack and I.

guess you had connection issues? I was scrolling back and forth in the list looking, but I couldn’t see you at any point!!

Really enjoyed the ride with MoreSTW… probably the easiest course in terms of sticking together but we did really well! Was dreading the 3rd pass we made as was starting to get fatigued by that point, and sometimes we have a habit of going after the team in front as soon as we can see them – which is way too early as by the time we get to them I’ve often got little left for the necessary extra push! But this time we just crept up gradually until we could see the skidmarks in their bibs, THEN went for it… absolutely perfect and actually felt very little effort!

Fell apart right at the end… again we crept up on the team for the final pass but no-one actually shouted “GO” which is possibly why Martin got left behind!! I think we probably could have stayed in front of them as we had a 2s gap but we decided to wait for Martin to catch up (which allowed them to catch up as well!) He didn’t get back on in the end, after we noticed his power drop off we went for it although it was too late by then! (not that it really matters anyway!)

Have you looked at 4iiii’s Viiiiva ANT+ to Bluetooth Smart Bridge & HRM?

This looks to have good reviews and looks like it would combine well with ATV

can you not use the companion app on your phone for extra BT connections? Sure I read that somewhere? Or does it not work great? Will be moving to ATV platform soon (when mancave is ready!) Bit worried hearing about all these ATV issues as been using iPad up until now which has been damn near faultless!

Zilog, I did say go on that final overtake, but it might not have been understandable, I may not have unmuted even as I was starting to puff a bit by the time we caught them. We got past them cleanly but because the kicker out of the tunnel came so close to the overtake I think Martin got caught by some of the leaders from their group. His power was about 2.5 to 2.8 W/kg while we did the climb at 5 W/kg down to about 3.5 W/kg. I do think in hindsight it would have been better to get out of the tunnel and do a clean overtake on the flat, live and learn.
Looking at my zwift companion power details we seemed to wait for about 3 minutes humming and harring about what to do. From 46:20 to 49:30 I’m coasting at about 200 watts (approx 70 watts lower than the rest of the ride). Possibly lost about 30 seconds by my incredibly rough estimation.
By the way you put in a huge turn mid way through the ride, sitting at 4.5 W/kg, when I went to relieve you from the front was a real effort to get past you!
I really enjoyed riding with MoreSTW, completely different challenge than with STW. I tried to ride as much as I could on the front, on the flat I was just above my FTP, so approx 275 watts (4.1 W/kg). Seemed to work well with you guys also coming through and keeping the pace up.
Robbo, in case you read this, I have a new FTP of 266.

Cheers w00dster will update it.

Zilog I have found it fine in my limited use so far. I used the companion app this morning but my turbo is about 4m from my router and in the same room so the wireless is pretty good. I think you can have issues if you don’t have a good wifi signal which may be the case if you are out in the garage. I think Zwift is just very sensitive to wifi drop outs.

Apart from that I like it – quick to load and set up ready for a ride. Graphics are far superior to my laptop as well and I guess I would have to spend quite a bit of money to get a similar level of graphics from a laptop.

Unless you have a bottomless pit of money I think any zwift set up is going to have compromises.

Zilog, I did say go on that final overtake, but it might not have been understandable, I may not have unmuted even as I was starting to puff a bit by the time we caught them.

I didn’t hear anything so maybe forgot to unmute like you say. TBH from about halfway into every ride I’m breathing so hard & concentrating trying not to get dropped that comms do become a bit of an issue!!

Also last night only 1 person (not sure who it was!) I could hear reliably, they were clear as a bell, everyone else was really muffled & often I couldn’t hear what was being said. Short of everyone upgrading to Jabra headsets which is a bit much to expect though, I don’t really know what could be done about that.

Looking at my zwift companion power details we seemed to wait for about 3 minutes humming and harring about what to do. From 46:20 to 49:30 I’m coasting at about 200 watts (approx 70 watts lower than the rest of the ride). Possibly lost about 30 seconds by my incredibly rough estimation.

yeah this was a comms issue again… obviously doesn’t really matter as it’s just a bit of fun, but Martin never said (or I didn’t hear!) what he wanted us to do so like you say we wasted loads of time when in hindsight we could have just all gone for it.

By the way you put in a huge turn mid way through the ride, sitting at 4.5 W/kg, when I went to relieve you from the front was a real effort to get past you!

possibly I slightly overcooked it as I only did 2 turns on the front which then ruined me & I was basically hanging on for the rest of the race 🤣 I was keeping an eye on everyones power though, and you & a couple of the others were doing a great job, there was normally someone at the front doing 3.5-4 ish, I only came through to take the lead at a couple of points where I could see the front had dropped off a bit.

Always a good ride & a great workout with the TTT, it definitely motivates me to try harder than any of the individual races including the Tues one! Shame we had Hal & son drop out at the start, I think with 8 strong riders we would have monstered through that last team 😃

I think you can have issues if you don’t have a good wifi signal which may be the case if you are out in the garage. I think Zwift is just very sensitive to wifi drop outs.

@robbo1234biking not going to be a problem I hope, Zwift dropout is my worst nightmare so used that & the fact the Mrs is working from home now as an excuse to seriously upgrade our network, ran fibre to the garage and have an enterprise grade AP in there 😂 Good to hear the ATV is working well for you, am looking forward to 4K graphics on a big screen!!

I don’t *think* any of Jack or my issues were WiFi dropouts – both he and I were streaming music and didn’t get any dropouts, although that can buffer, and our signal is strong, and 100MB download.

His issue was not a bluetooth dropout either, because he was warming up in the pairing screen and could see his numbers changing. His issue was possibly an issue with the godamn stupid remote, as he tried to leave the pairing screen nothing happened – the game froze, and in further attempts to wake it, we made it minimised, but it would still not leave the pairing screen. Zwift was locked up – in a tight loop or broken error handler. We restarted Zwift and ran a normal TDZ event without drama.

I put this down to Zwift’s shitty handling of errors/events – as programmer this it what is says to me. However it is sus that two minutes later I also had an event on my macbook as described – everyone was there in the pen up until the moment of ‘go’ and then I was on my own. The only way to know for sure is to have a monitor running, which I may do as I have some raspberry pi’s doing nothing useful.

It’s the first time I’ve had an issue on the macbook (top of the line pro). The only other issue I’ve ever had with the ATV is not presenting the ‘join’ button to a meeting event that I am entered for, requiring session restarts until it appears, and sometimes getting left on the start line in a meeting and watching everyone else ride off. This is also not ATV specific as far as I have read, or a wifi issue – because my client is getting data about the race, but not letting me start – even though its giving me power numbers so is paired with the trainer.

If you need more BT connections to Zwift then you can do it through the companion – I do this for the sterzo when needed and it works fine. I have a ANT+ dongle, maybe I’ll try it for the Lulz, I’m also going to hard wire the ATV for the lulz.

This week it will be 2 laps of Richmond UCI, 32km in total. So like that Tuesday night race before Christmas but more cooperative. 2 teams are entered.

Enter category A here: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/1596293

Forgot to sign up – thanks for the reminder! Tough course that one. We did it back in November I think.

signed up! This is actually one of my favourite courses; the hill is steep but very short which seems to suit me as you can hit it like a sprint interval!

Hill (singular). Very funny @zilog6128.
It is an excellent course though.

Keen to race again if there is space, signed up

12 entries so far, it’s looking good.

Anyone else for 2 laps of Richmond UCI, Thursday 7.40pm?

Enter category A here: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/1596293

I’ll get teams posted by tomorrow lunchtime. If you all keep entering so promptly I’ll be able to get that done earlier in the week even before the new entry system kicks in.

I’ve entered this evenings race.

I’m taking a few weeks out savoyad – need to get back into the habit of normal riding for a bit.

Should be back in a bit once I’ve remembered how to pedal sensibly.

Teams for later:

Team STW, tag (STW), discord TTT (STW)
Start delay 12.5 minutes, so in the pen by 19:40 and off at 19:52:30

@benman

@phil56

@w00dster – change your tag

@paino

@trolo1234 – change your tag

@yanboss

@munkeymadness

Team MoreSTW, tag (MoreSTW), discord TTT (MoreSTW)
Start delay 9.5 minutes, so in the pen by 19:40 and off at 19:49:30

@karnali – change your tag

@slowpuncheur

@mbs

@robbo1234biking -change your tag

@zilog6128

@haloric

@drew
?Jack (if he’s riding)

Lots of us have TTT’d this course before. Most (if not all?) have raced on it. Once you hit Libby Hill, the whole thing goes into slow motion – and the most slow motion thing of all is *closing gaps* – they widen themselves on the descents and then refuse to close up the climbs, including that never ending finishing straight. So STAY TOGETHER on the hills is the main thing this week I think! And regroup immediately (not “after this next hill”) if you do come apart.

Link to event for tags: https://www.zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=1596293 (settings top right, whole name not just tag in “My Name”)

Good luck.

So STAY TOGETHER on the hills is the main thing this week I think!

agreed, MoreSTW completely fell apart doing Bologna on Xmas eve exactly how you described! It’s going to be absolutely vital to hit the top of the climb together, no gaps, so the lead climbers need to keep a sharp eye out & ease off if required.

Cheers savoyad.

Going to be a tough one. I can do the countdown for MoreSTW but once my fan is going I don’t know how well you will hear me. Having to use a Bluetooth headset with the iPhone tonight as the wife needs the laptop for a zoom call with her friends.

Jack can’t ride tonight – remote cooking with Mrs Jack !.

However, I’m rarely short of another son, and the youngest – Tom – now plans to fill Jacks SPD’s if thats ok. He has done a bit of Zwifting, no TTT but I’ll be coaching him as we go. He has youth on his side, so we can only hope to hang on to his wheel…

If there is a more experienced rider that wants in, he will gladly give up the place, but for now we have berated him into it.

Do you have a whole TTT’s Team worth of sons Haloric?!

He is more than welcome to join us though! Thanks

Excellent. @haloric is a team-time-trialist factory. (You are going to need a name other than “haloric jr” for Jack as well @robbo1234biking).

I’ve got 3 oven ready riders, plus me, so we could do a TTT – its a dream team, if you have a very specialised type of dream – but I’ve only two smart trainers, so we can only be deployed in pairs !

Technically Mrs H has my old Direto on her bike too, but thats off limits to sweaty oiks like us.

Need to get back on with you folks again soon!

Cheers MoreSTW. Think that went pretty well. We didn’t gap too much on the climbs and everyone did a good job of working together. sTW caught as at the wrong point but I don’t think we disturbed each other’s race too much. Defiantly some wierd physics going on as they gapped us by 1 or 2 seconds and we came round the corner for the steep short climb and went straight onto the back of you again. You pulled away though so not a big issue. Lots of other teams seemed in a mess tonight so was good to keep it together.

Pic below of both teams. If you zoom in by the trees on the left you can see stw. You have to zoom in a lot though! You only made up about 10 seconds on 10km of flat but about 50 seconds in 200m of hill!

Tom ‘The Bomb’ is more used to the sparring ring or the rugby pitch, and detonated after 15 mins with cramp – who says I never give him anything.

I’m not sure whether we are putting more effort in on attacking the hills, or its just me, but I go into the red on every hill just trying (and failing) to keep up.

Enjoyed the ride, sorry couldn’t have made that last hill at a much higher pace, glad there was enough to push on home.

Cheers.

Yeah, great ride! Stayed together really well & responded quickly to any small gaps I thought. Was pretty knackered going up the last hill and had very little left to give at the finish. Bit frustrating as I was 10W down on the last time we did that course 😭

Thanks MoreSTW enjoyed that after my bike decided to move off the start line and I recovered from catching up, a good effort, I was surprised how easy it is to get split up over those hills but I thought we did well. Cheers everyone