Zwift Team Time Trial, Thursday

👍 thank you. Tag is set and I’ve signed up. Will check when it shows up.

@slowpuncheur – would you like to be overtaking monitor?

Yeah. No problem. Happy to keep an eye out and call it.

Hi all.
It’s going to be busy, there are a lot of teams on the start sheet for tonight and that’s not ideal on a 2-lap course. So watch the overtakes. My team were torn apart this morning by the mess of a double overtake, and there was a lot of traffic at times (and that was in a quieter race).
So @robbo1234biking / @slowpuncheur you might yet get overtaken even though you are off last – if teams who start ahead of you come back through you on their second lap.
And @phil56 and STW – although you’re less likely to be overtaken, you might be forced into making an unusual number of passes.
Good luck, it’s an excellent fast TTT course when the road is clear.

Thanks @savoyad. I think we have to assume there’ll be traffic front and back from the gate.

That’s a bugger forgot it was a circuit race – shouldn’t be much traffic on our second lap though – every other bugger will have finished by then with our start delay.

In one of the time zones there was a 38 min delay!!

Got to wonder how the delays have ended up so bad all of a sudden.

I’m sorry, I need to bail tonight I have to work late.

That means there’s a space in Team STW if any B’s or A’s are lurking / would like to ride.
Post here so we know you’re grabbing it.
Sign up to cat A here: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/1695225

Thanks for letting us know @benman, see you again soon!

Just been into the garage to put the sledges/snowboards away. It’s absolutely Baltic in there. Need to get a good dose of Manup before TTT’ing.

I Zwift in the house – was going to turn the heating down 🤣

Signed up, only just realised I wasn’t entered

Great, @yanboss.
Ride with STW.

With a 20 minute wait its: to the icebox shed for login, into the pen, then back into the house for a cuppa, then 15 minute walm up in the pairing screen, then throw a six to see if you can exit that back into the pen with a mins to go.

Good luck all, see you on the other side.

Thanks STW that was a great ride. So many overtakes! I did not feel awake or strong before the event. Was really nice to come away with a strong team effort.

You buggers. Bloody ftp increase off that!

Was a great ride thank you but that was really not particularly enjoyable!

Sorry boys, not quite sure what happened there – something wasn’t right, either me or the setup and obvz I’m claiming the latter 🙄

While I was with you, strava says I was averaging 275 and that’s OK for me usually. I couldn’t pair my HR strap to zwift but my watch says I was at 160, which is 5 or so over what I can sustain – and my strap usually shows another 5-10 on top of the watch. That’s near to my 2-year max of 172, even briefly.

I was drenched in sweat and getting that tunnel vision we all enjoy, and all that on lap 1. Had to bail before I fell off. Had a bit of the same on Sunday with DrP

Either I’m poorly (T2 diabetic and some of that sounds like low sugar) or my setup needs looking over

Great ride by you lot though; I doubt I’d have made it even at full performance

Scardey that doesn’t sound great, maybe need a rest? Does chocolate and a cup of tea help type 2 diabetes?
Looking at the average power in STW I’m not surprised it was hard to hang on in there. Ouch!!
Well done to Robbo for leading MoreSTW, really enjoyed that. Pace line does seem to work, last 6kms I think was hard for some of the guys as we started to get some gaps. Maybe we need to make a call to ease back on the front with the rest of the group easing back as well? I was still hitting 300 watts but conscious I could be putting people into the Red.

Thanks W00dster, Just checked my sugar and it’s not low – so beer rather than sugar will be tonight’s cure ! 😎

I couldn’t get paired properly on the last couple of rides I’ve done and tonight was the flakiest yet I wonder if I’m losing some power data; tonight felt like a 10km sprint and I was still dropping off the back repeatedly. Garage is freezing cold and a bit damp too so maybe the electrics are grumbling

While I was with you, strava says I was averaging 275 and that’s OK for me usually.

If I had to guess scardey I’d say you will have been surging a lot higher than that. It seemed I was falling out of the group at much below about 330w when you pulled up. It settled a bit into lap 2 but even then it seemed I needed to sit at near 300 just to hold a wheel and that still saw me dropping off and having to kick back on a few times.

That last pass broke me, it didn’t help they sped up as we started to pass, the lead rider was at 5 and some w/kg when I passed him, took most of everything I had to get clear of them. How the hell you lot were at 6+ into the final 400m or so I don’t know, I think I managed to hold 4.5-5 I was broken!

Yeah, one group took the piss a bit as you passed them

Did you see another rider (with “u14” in their name) tag on to the back of you and get a cheeky tow back to their team a hundred yards further up – magic !

Had to laugh after I asked nixie if he was OK (he’d dropped right out of the aerial view, quite quickly) and then he reappears doing about 7w/kg, like he’d just seen a ghost 😂

That was a superb team effort. What a difference a day makes. Felt terrible on tuesday, zero power, no ability to surge then tonight I’m happy holding 400W for minute stints. Averaged 327W. Odd.
Also, first time tonight using the tron in anger. One thing I noticed that my avatar seemed to take a racing line for the first time ever…went round the corner and came out at or near the front of the group. Don’t know if that’s the Tron effect or has Zwift updated something?
Got a couple of screenshots of us in a great line. Thought all the overtakes were spot on. Cheers @phil56, good captaining as ever. And loved the comment “you ok Nixie?” Shortly followed by him pulling away at 6w/kg 😂

^Them’s big numbers up there. I’m very happy in MoreSTW thanks 😊. I think that was another improvement from last week. Some proper ‘through and off’ and nice clean overtakes. Really enjoyed it.

Cheers MoreSTW. I think that generally went ok. The overtakes were fine – we could have reformed between the two of them I think in hindsight but we got past them. As a couple of people had to skip pulls it got harder but up until the overtake we were flying I think. Took a minute of the last time we did it so that was a good improvement.

Screenshot below shows two of my pulls and then the rest in between so it definitely works when all goes to plan.

As w00dster says I think towards the end we were getting a bit tired. Also on the little 1-2% gradients I was doing 300-320w on the front and you lightweights would fly past at lower wattages because of your lack of mass slowing you down!

@zilog6128 you ok? Was surprised to see you fall of the back so suddenly.

Ugh! Just didn’t have the legs tonight! Been doing a lot more zwifting than usual and still tired from tues I think. That said, we seemed a lot faster than normal (probably the short & flat course) & I was having to do around FTP just to keep up, otherwise I’d drift to the back and have to do 300-400W to get back to the front, THEN do my turn 😂
Was enjoying it though, turns worked smoothly & Comms were good. Probably have an easy week now & hopefully do better next Thursday!

Thanks MoreSTW for another entertaining ride. I was sorry I couldn’t do my last turn but I was at the back with 1 minute to go until I was on and the front looked an awful long way away at that point. Other than that I was really pleased how it went and looking at my power numbers all this suffering does seem to be gradually moving them in the right direction.

Another technology test! This time I could see you all (and hopefully you could see me) all the way round, but I lost audio after about the tenth time @phil56 reminded me that we were supposed to be riding as a group and could I please stop letting gaps open up… This was entirely reasonable (and excellent) DS work though, and really appreciated.

Really enjoyed it once things settled down after the lead-in, I even took my jumper off. There were points however, that I doubted whether the concept of drafting actually exists in Zwift, either that or the people taking long pulls on the front where absolutely creaming it at 380+ watts. I set several all-time PBs tonight, including one for 30min power (298W) -so thanks for that!

Was very motivating continually catching teams, even if a couple of them were a bit cheeky. Although as scaredy pointed out, the person using us as a way of catching back up to their team must have been chuckling to themselves as we gave him a free ride.

Nice strong finish (and a negative split) too, would hope that would be a top-100 this week. Thanks everyone.

Had to laugh after I asked nixie if he was OK (he’d dropped right out of the aerial view, quite quickly)

To be fair I had been hanging around a few meters behind for a little while. Was just having a breather before pulling again.

Did you see another rider (with “u14” in their name) tag on to the back of you and get a cheeky tow back to their team a hundred yards further up – magic !

I noticed but didn’t think it was worth asking them to stop.

How the hell you lot were at 6+ into the final 400m or so I don’t know, I think I managed to hold 4.5-5 I was broken!

It was a strong finish. Wanted to show the last group how it was done 😋. When there’s a target like the finish line I seem to find a little more for that last push.

I was going to stream tonight but completely forgot to start the broadcast (was leaving it till later so the 19 minutes weren’t streamed.

Just looked in intervals.cc and it’s given me a whole 2w eFtp bump. That race was my highest average power for a long time.

Was nice how tight we stayed most of the time with no big gaps appearing. I do think the second or third wheel could ease off a touch more at some points and still stay in the same position relative to the person pulling. There were some points where it felt a bit like 2 or 3 of us were fighting to be out front (which means some wasted energy).

either that or the people taking long pulls on the front where absolutely creaming it at 380+ watts

A bit of this I think. Intervals.cc again logged;

7x32s @ 389w
11x46s @ 359w
20s @488w
2x62s @375w

For me plus the big efforts from the rest of the team.

MoreSTW 53rd out of 321 in Latte. That’s not bad going.

Nice work MoreSTW.

@nixie what’s this intervals.cc you mention? I did Google it but nowt seemed to turn up (beyond intervals.icu)

STW 70th in frappe.

It’s intervals.icu, my phone has a bad autocorrect entry I keep forgetting about. It’s extra geeking out on Strava data but I find it useful.

+1 for intervals.icu – Great site for analysing rides/training. If you don’t have a Strava premium then it fills a nice analysis gap and actually provides even more given how flexible it is to setup your own charts. I think it can drag data in from Strava or Garmin now. Oh, and it’s free unless you want to give a contribution to the developer.

Free at the moment, I think it may end up needing a subscription soon though.

Ah, yes, I do use it already – just never actually seen some of the data yours seems to offer.

It’s got me down as a single interval all ride yesterday.

Does that just mean you were at a fairly constant effort throughout? I guess there has to to be some threshold difference to identify the intervals. The eFTP increase comes from the purple bolt icons that indicate best or seasons best power over a given time (assuming you have seasons configured).

This is my read out from last night from intervals.icu. You can see the pulls quite clearly (the 2 min ones about 2/3s through were the two overtakes).

Pretty happy with 62/400 on that course. Seeing as it has got a lot more competitive as well. Volcano flat next week so another good opportunity.

40.95 kmh average for us.

Top 10 was 42kmh.

🥺 check out that cadence!

Nice rides, both teams.

I loved this from @rj2dj

I doubted whether the concept of drafting actually exists in Zwift, either that or the people taking long pulls on the front where absolutely creaming it at 380+ watts

(I knew which it was…) especially as it came hot on the heels of this from @paino

tonight I’m happy holding 400W for minute stints.

It’s not often @zilog6128 loses the group in a TTT. Honestly, my vote is with tiredness/fatigue rather than it being too fast. You’ve hung with frappe teams moving a bit faster than that before.

Two teams – a latte and a frappe (which, if some of you accidentally synchronised your visits to A, might well sneak into espresso every now and then) – are coalescing at the moment.

We have a really good core of C’s for latte. @w00dster asked to ride with MoreSTW and he’s becoming their road captain, @slowpuncheur underestimates the job he could do behind the big scary numbers thrown about above but I get the impression he works well with @robbo1234biking. I think our stronger B’s (and As occasional or otherwise) are enjoying riding with a group that can do 400w on the front. And our mid-Bs are genuinely capable of doing a different job well in either category (depending on terrain, form etc). We could mix it up some weeks (depending on sign ups) by splitting the stronger Bs and giving all the Cs a rollercoaster to ride. I’ll do that at some point. But I’ll generally keep selecting in the same vein for now. Just speak up if you feel I’m putting you in the wrong team consistently, or you fancy a change?