Zwift Team Time Trial, Thursday

Is 280 watts still the target for MoreSTW?
I’m happy to do 1:30 if it helps give other guys a longer recovery?

I’m happy to do 1:30 if it helps give other guys a longer recovery?

that will be fine with me 🤣

Happy to go with that @w00dster. I will post up order and turn lengths in the morning. I’ll dig out our last time as well.

Right here is the turn order and pull lengths for tonight. We had the exact same team a few weeks ago for this course expect Martin is in instead TRolo. Our time then was 42:20 so we have a good target to aim for. We went for 300w pulls on that instance but burnt out quite few riders in the process so will stick with the 280 and increase to 300w if everyone feels good on the second lap. We had a 21 minute start delay then as well.

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slowpuncheur will monitor for overtakes – I will lead the overtakes through with w00dster covering the rear in case anyone drops off. Northumberland avenue is the only hill of significance. Lets blob up for that one at about 3w/kg. I think that’s about it – see you in the pen later.

Hi – I’ve signed up for this evening’s race. Very promptly as @drew observed.

Some things you should know about @mbs.

I’m using a Wattbike Atom which seem to have a 6-8 second delay to any sort of gross power inputs I make – I don’t know if this is the same for a bike/smart turbo trainer combo. This means I have to try and preempt any surges made by the rest of the team or changes resulting from gradient changes. This makes undulating courses very challenging for me.

Until recently I could hardly hear any instructions – because of the noise the bike and fan make. I’ve now got some earphones which help a lot, but slip out sometimes when I get sweaty.

I really don’t mind which team I’m in, but I know my physiology won’t let me do sustained high power bursts without a suitable rest. These are the type of sessions I struggle with when following a Zwift workout plan. What I don’t want to do is let the team down or take the place of a more able or better suited rider.

Cheers
Martin

Hi @mbs I think the delay on your Wattbike is certainly greater than most of us experience. Certainly my Kickr Core responds in a couple of seconds if that, so I can understand how it’s a difficult task for you. Having to concentrate on that instead of target watts or just pushing on must be a pain. Hopefully, the more structured nature of MoreSTW will make it more predictable and the course tonight looks better suited to address your issue. See (and hopefully hear) you later.

Yeah don’t think it’s usual, my Neo is very responsive (although I have Zwift on 3s average). Is it a known problem or something with your setup? Might be worth asking in a Wattbike forum/FB group. Just had a quick google & apparently the Atom has “Zwift certification” which I can’t imagine it would get if everyone had that problem as it sounds really frustrating?

@mbs I’m on an Atom too…don’t suffer from the lag you describe. Are you sure it’s the Atom and not just the Zwift drag effect? That said, I’ve always found the rollers a nightmare on Zwift-I’m either out the back or put too much power on and shoot out the front! I think as with any game the more you ‘play’ the better you become at adjusting to surges. The TTT should be a great leveller as their shouldn’t be any big surges. My agenda for tonight is to keep a steadier power, was all over the place last week as I struggled to get past second wheel, or go too far out the front but I’m sure that’s a Zwift thing rather than Atom.

Hi @mbs this is a team event so never worry about taking the place of any rider. The way it is run the first 16 take the slots and the team selection is about making it balanced and if any riders have a preference about which team they would like to ride on.

We have had a fairly settled line up on MoreSTW recently which is good.

If you would prefer a different length of pull just let me know and I can adjust accordingly – a few seconds delay here and there wont make a difference – we just want to make sure we aren’t trying to outsprint each other!

Any issues on hearing calls then I can switch to a text based system with:

‘M6’ signifying the start of your pull for sixty seconds and ‘J3’ signifying the end of your pull and the start of Jack’s for 30 seconds. It is easy for me to type out then! Sounds like we don’t need to do that tonight though as you hopefully have comms sorted out. Discord works well for gamers when they don’t have fans and turbos running in the background!

See you all in the pen tonight. I am going to do my warm up in the pen controlling my trainer of something else so will likely not log on to discord until 19:55. I will start a timer though so no need to worry about that. We can go over the pull order then and cover any questions.

Looking forward to it! Hopefully we can improve on the last time!

Really sorry guys but something has come up and I won’t be able to make tonight’s TT. Have a great ride everyone. I should be back to full attendance next week a I also missed Tue night this week.

The something that came up has now very thankfully gone away so I will make tonight’s TTT. See you in the pen.

My agenda for tonight is to keep a steadier power, was all over the place last week as I struggled to get past second wheel, or go too far out the front but I’m sure that’s a Zwift thing rather than Atom.

You and me both!

My agenda for tonight is to keep a steadier power, was all over the place last week as I struggled to get past second wheel, or go too far out the front but I’m sure that’s a Zwift thing rather than Atom.

You and me both!

Oh, OK – I was planning to attack repeatedly ’til I break you all and solo to victory but if you insist, I’ll cling on to the back instead

😃

Wonder if Ineos might sign me up. I’m becoming the human embodiment of marginal gains:

“Your estimated FTP has increased by 1w”

Nice job.

Enjoyed tonight’s ride, tried to keep to 280 watts without spiking to much. The 1 min 30 suits me, was a shame I had the pull on the two ramps, was hard to judge my power so ended up with a small split.
Here’s my intervals….

apologies to team STW tonight, lost internet connection and all other riders on the screen, kept riding hard but by the time everyone reappeard i’d lost about 5 seconds and was tangled in the group behind, pushed hard for a bit but wasn’t gaining ground quickly enough, lost connection with phone as well, so was trying to inform you on discord to just push on. As penance i rode the rest around a lonely London as tempo, apart from easing off to let teams past and get away, then saw the next team catching was MORESTW about 35 seconds back so picked up the effort to avoid being caught!!!

@karnali – Sorry we lost you. Presumably that was worse than last week, when you could at least see us ?
Anyway, you’re doing it wrong. When riding on your own you draft overtaking teams and then call them weaklings when they can’t drop you 😃

That guy was a dick. I think he thought he was on a TT bike so wasn’t drafting. Glad he appeared to be on lap 2 so went as we crossed the line.

Just a point from the start last night as we had an issue. With such a long delay the trainer going to sleep is a risk if your not pedaling. To avoid that after the event starts you can open the pairing screen and keep warming up. As long as your in the pairing screen your avatar well not move and you can pedal away.

You lot were really unlucky to attract a clingon with such a long start delay. I’m prone to telling myself that the benefit of long waits is that they get those people well clear. Obviously not (although multi lap doesn’t help either).

I am a bit torn about last night. Comms were good – mbs seemed to be able to hear no problems and hopefully it made your contribution easier, you certainly didn’t fly of the front or drop of the back.

We seemed to be in sync as well, the right people were on the front at the right time and people seemed to position them selves well as they knew when there turn was coming up.

But…we were 36 seconds slower than when we last did and most of our average powers were down for the same course. I think perhaps we got a bit too comfortable and need to push on a bit if we can. I could certainly do a 90 second pull to help. The 36 seconds could have been lost when the group split slightly on that last little hill and then we had to regroup.

Next week is out and back again – going to be a very tough TTT course. Might be a case of doing pulls until the Volcano then blobbing up and surviving! Hopefully we have a better start time!

https://zwiftinsider.com/route/out-and-back-again/

Robbo, did we not do 300watt pulls previously?
As a top of my head guess 36 seconds overall is about 1.5 seconds per KM, not much in it, but the 300 watts might have helped.
Appreciate that is harder for the other guys though and the ride needs to be enjoyable, not sure fighting for 200 or 250 place is worth burning the team out for.

Just a point from the start last night as we had an issue. With such a long delay the trainer going to sleep is a risk if your not pedaling. To avoid that after the event starts you can open the pairing screen and keep warming up. As long as your in the pairing screen your avatar well not move and you can pedal away.

Yes, that was me. Huge apologies to the team.

I don’t have much luck. I was in the pairing screen, and my devices did go to sleep after 10min. However, I succesfully woke them back up and zwift said they were all paired and connected ok. When I went to come out of the pairing screen with about 20 seconds to go Zwift decided that it needed to do some “Searching” despite everything being connected. Nothing I tried could get Zwift to do anything other than endlessly search. So frustrating.

The reason I didn’t keep spinning whilst in the pairing screen is I understand the theory that you don’t move forwards whilst in the pairing screen, but in the past…. I have. Other than avoiding TTT with huge delays (wouldn’t we all like to do that!), I’m not sure what more I could do.

@w00dster yep you are right.

I felt that I could contribute more so could perhaps look at 90 second pulls myself rather than burning out other members of the team. Next week I am going to be more of a limiter on the volcano climb in any case. We need to shelter some riders to save themselves for maximum effort on the volcano.

The reason I didn’t keep spinning whilst in the pairing screen is I understand the theory that you don’t move forwards whilst in the pairing screen, but in the past…. I have.

you definitely don’t move in the pairing screen, at least it’s never happened to me & I’ve never seen it verified (it’s a very popular trick for this event!)
Once I went onto the pairing screen WITHOUT my HRM being paired, it auto-paired and then (presumably sensing it’s job was done 😃) the screen timed out automatically without me noticing, I was about 500m up the road before I twigged 🤣

No worries @rj2dj, just one of those things. Very frustrating for you I bet!

You shouldn’t move in pairing, mine never has (but then this is zwift and weird bugs are all over the shot). There is a jerk on screen as the event starts as your rider comes off the virtual turbo and puts its foot down.

I don’t think I could cope with 18 minutes of doing nothing, legs would go to sleep :D.

It was a good ride for me with MoreSTW in the sense that I managed to pace myself better than usual & avoid any mad peaky power dashes to avoid being dropped or to get back to the front of the group for my pull! Although yes average power for me was down & I had enough left at the end for a sprint (which is unusual!) so I could probably have gone a bit harder (although how much without burning out is the question!) Perhaps we should’ve upped the pace slightly for the 2nd lap. Enjoyed it though, was a nice change not to be constantly battling against being spat out the back 🤣
Comms were excellent too which was a big improvement – I could hear clearly everything that was said about 99% of the time!

I did a 20 minute TT warm up in the pen using TrainerRoad to control the trainer. Started it at 19:35 and finished it at 19:55. Did it all in the pairing screen with the controllable trainer disconnected. Then closed TR and reconnected the controllable trainer with no issues.

But sometimes it can cause issues so something to be aware off.

Robbo, maybe you and I aim for 300 watt average for 90 seconds on the flat, the other guys continue with 280. The draft should keep us together and if it doesn’t we can always ease back to 280.
Climbs are the big difference, my 280 watts is about 4.2 W/kg, so if I’m doing that up a climb we will get big gaps. I noticed that last night, then it takes time for us to regroup and we lose the impetuous. Might be worth making the call mid ride for someone else to take up each climb? I’m not normally mentally alert enough, I’m just plodding on with my 280 watts until told otherwise!!

Next week will be harder to manage, that’s for sure. If it’s the same team again, I think @wOOdster, @mbs and I are probably in a stronger position to help on the hills. Maybe two near the front and one sweeping in case people start to drop. However, we still need to go at a sustainable pace to get everyone over the volcano. I think we are starting to better understand each others strengths and weaknesses so I see us getting better/quicker because of this. Agree that comms were good last night.

The pairing screen warm-up thing doesn’t work using an IPad. Unless I’m doing it wrong.

All in, considering we were a 5 man team (for the most part) thought we performed well. Pretty consistent as we finished 199th. Up a place from last week!

The pairing screen warm-up thing doesn’t work using an IPad. Unless I’m doing it wrong.

it does (or at least did, I used to do it before moving over to ATV about a month ago!)

Hmm maybe more practice required. Last time I tried it the avatar started moving. Didn’t do it again..don’t want to incur the wrath of Phil

Yeah pairing with the iPad works, that’s what I use.
But you have to select pair, not sit at the screen before it.

It’s cocked up one me once, when I left the pair mode it took an age for anything to happen and then said Leaving xxxx World and returning to Xxxx and plopped me back in the normal zwift place.

Teams are entered for this week. Thursday, 7.40pm, one lap of Out and Back Again.

All welcome – enter category A here: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/1899809

I’ll aim to post lineups by Wednesday.

bump

I’m in, don’t mind the volcano, it’s not particularly long or steep! Preferable to a totally flat route IMO, at least you get a tiny rest on the down!

I’m in.

I’m back, lets see what 3 weeks of doing nothing has done for my fitness. I imagine nothing but massive gains.