@mogrim – much the same way it works on pancake flat cycling courses – more bulk = more power = more speed. Guess there has to be a limit somewhere that cardio struggles to supply blood/oxygen to the increased muscle mass – i’d suggest somewhere around the weight of olympic rowers.

Don’t know about Zee, but most shimano mechs have a different upper wheel with a little bit of play in it to help shifting.
Can’t see why it wouldn’t work though.

Not sure of exact time – 7mins+/- few secs either way.
At 60kg with stick man arms its fair to say rowing is never going to be my forte

Argh, trying to give tradesmen money has been a total nightmare for me this year.
Called plasterer about a small job, they say they’ll come round and take a look. Smart looking chap turns up, measures, says he’ll send me a written quote, but probably looking at £x ballpark. Great. Except quote never gets sent out.
Called gardeners cos things getting well and truly out of hand, and wanted a new shed and patio. Say they’ll come out for quote, but not when exactly. 10 days or so later guys come round, i take them round front/back garden with a list that needs doing. Ok they say, we’ll prepare a quote and send it out. Except you guessed it – no quote.

WTF – i’m trying to give you money, why don’t you want it?! :?

Higher than most people, but definitely within the realms of ‘normal’.

Try changing the battery in the HRM strap. Mine goes a bit bonkers and over-reads when it’s on it’s last legs.

+1 to that.

Zwift certainly gives you great motivation to train.

Something has gone badly wrong when zwift is your motivation to train.

Motivation to train could be any number of goals:
Sub 1hr up Alpe d’huez
8 Laps at Glentress 7
WHW in a day
Podium at local enduro
Lose a few lbs to fit back into those jeans.

Zwift is a tool to help you achieve those goals, but surely no-one has an actual zwift based goal……..

Anything cheap that you don’t mind destroying in the mud.
Currently for me that’s a Charge Cooker SS.
Didn’t bother with mudguards last year, but have a set lying around that i’ll fit when I get around to it this year.

4/6 for sure.
5th has a flat rear but a splash of sealant and a blast of airshot should fix.
6th has rubbing brakes but is actually ridable at a push

Full bonk on 42km race – signed up for 120km race.

You need to set up on Twitch and stream so we can all watch as your glycogen starved muscles give up one by one and you slide sideways off bike still clipped in.

Find whatever the mtb equivalent in the Gore range of the ‘Power’ Windstopper glove is and get that. So good i got another pair in a different colour after a few weeks.
Add the gore universal liner glove for sub zero rides

New thread for zwift price hike!

GTF :wink:

You’ll struggle to get much in there and keep it under the 23kg mark.
Mine comes to 18kg with my road bike in, so guess you’ll have around 1-2kg to play with.

Aye, the actual NE, not the bit in the middle :D

lol Weeksy, sorry to disappoint but no seizure.
Blatant money grab to cash in on growing popularity.
Lets hope no more server explosions like last years GCN ride as it becomes increasingly harder to tolerate things like that at what is now quite a premium price.

Believe the research shows that training at or just under threshold with adequate recovery has a beneficial effect on your FTP.

You’ll find that the research shows that most training methods with adequate recovery have a beneficial effect on FTP

Most of the recent research i’ve looked at has shown polarised training to be the most beneficial (short hard efforts above FTP and longer sessions a long way below FTP)

Whether or not its the best way to train may be up for debate, but I think most riders (doing 4-8hrs/wk) will find typical FTP builder (sweetspot/ftp) based plans a pretty efficient way to spend the winter months.

Wouldn’t say excited exactly, but good to see more options in the area.
Will almost certainly visit as Durris would only be an hour or so from work for a summers evening ride.

Sportive as a race, you guys are having a laugh.

2 hours 40 mins of racing and I can’t eat carbs or sugar…

Enjoy the bonk when it comes :D

So Weeksy gets the hump at Zwift being called a game and then spends several posts chatting about power ups and virtual points

Nah, grinding 50000m elevation for the ultra realistic Tron bike is not game like at all – pure training aid :lol:

Aye, but your from Fife!

Harsh!

Race will be over before you accelerate the stock wheels on a CX Pro up to speed :lol:

Cold air does it for me for sure, working hard once temps reach single figures inevitably leads to a few hours of post exercise wheezing.

@Tom, trackers don’t always work out (i invested shortly before 9/11 :x ). You need a decent lump sum to invest to begin with to let the growth really get to work in any sort of life changing way.

Much easier to be excited about 8% per year when its working on £100k rather than £1k. Perhaps why your ‘old rich’ get it and others don’t.

@Bedds.
I got a test ride on 2nd top of the range Scale (previous model). Fabulous bike, incredibly fast, but slightly harsh rear end (should be much improved on newer model as all manufacturers are now putting emphasis here). For XC racing i’d have had one in an instant, but decided against it in the end as i was targetting longer events.

Maybe see if you can get a test on a 2017 BMC Teamelite, mud clearance may not be great, but the softtail is probably ideal for endurance events.

@jonny
Not ridden the very latest Scale, but based on sizing of Scott bikes i own and have test ridden i’d have said L for 5’11 upwards

@weeksy.
I disagree with both points. I see £8/m as terrible value, its a similar cost to an MMO subscription that would give you 20x the content and much better graphics.

And the mountain really isn’t a mountain at all, 500m vertical is 30mins tops for any half decent climber (assuming VAM works in zwift as it does irl)
1000m vertical is a proper mountain. 1500m vertical with alternative ways off every 250m vertical would be ideal.

Like i say, captive audience as cycling is niche compared to the wider gaming audience and we don’t have other cycling based games to choose from.

@crosshair
Some of us do have a sensation of movement when climbing :wink:
And its the only time we get to see anything as the rest of the time the view is blocked by the behemoth in front thats currently acting as a wind break!

Tbh i think most of the latest generation of xc hardtails look great. Not sure you’ll get much in the way of mud clearance though. Maybe more of an adventure style hardtail that’ll take 29×2.4 comfortably and build it with lighter xc components?

@zilog, there simply isn’t a polished product yet. I can see they need a revenue stream to develop further as they would never attract a multi-million $ development budget up front like a big console title would.

But it just seems so far from finished to me. Fair enough the pvp/racing side may not have been the initial focus or idea behind the product, but if not, it has to stand on the strength of its open world, which in my opinion is missing several full size climbs and about 1000km worth of riding environment.

I guess its kinda like the garmin thread. We all give garmin money for mediocre devices with garbage firmware/software because there’s no alternative.

its kind of etiquette to do it so others are aware you are in the race.

Pretty sad that zwift aren’t creating new instances for races anyway. Suggests they’ve gone wrong somewhere with their server architecture/scaling. Still surprises me that people are willing to pay a monthly sub for something that imo is still a long way from a finished product (when compared to other games)

Edit: I should add that i’m also baffled by the growing trend of gamers paying full price to play games that are still basically alpha test candidates with full release dates 12+ months into the future.

you have to do 50,000 to get that

7k per day over xmas/new year holiday then back to work for a rest :)

How long before Zipp start selling £500 carbon disk rotors with humpback whale tech?

Not an expert at all, but from what I could work out when I looked into it, if you’ve only got a modest amount to invest over a shorter term then trading fees are going to eat a massive chunk of any return you may get.
Most advice suggests they make a better long term investment

Sorry Weeksy, that’s filed under monstrosity.

Mum has some metalwork in her ankle, always gives her grief when its cold.

I guess somewhere around £7/day for me.
Breakfast usually effectively free (loaf bought for lunches becomes toast)
Lunch usually around £2
Dinner usually around £3.50
+Snacks and drinks.

My training is pretty time limited and I feel utterly meh about racing atm.

It would be a help to have something to aim for but I’m not keen to be trying to mix it at the sharp end this winter. My only thought reading that would be less about racing the SS, and more about if you are sure you want to race. You need to be sure that racing without fitness for midfield mediocrity is going to sit OK with you.
Assuming the answer is yes, then hell yes race the SS for a bit of fun.

Sometimes the slave labourers making the clothes like to put the wrong labels on to irritate middle aged blokes on bike forums.

Seems it works 8)

Spotted a gritter last night – wasn’t entirely sure fife council still had any as they didn’t seem to use them last year.

Lovely sunny few days here, but northerly wind today was baltic!

Not a popular shout as its probably not the healthiest choice, but good old fashioned bread works pretty well.
£1 loaf gets you a couple of days sandwiches when freshest and a couple of days toast for breakfast.

Day 1/2 porridge, sandwiches, mash/pasta/rice + meat&veg
Day 3/4 toast, tuna+couscous, mash/pasta/rice + meat&veg
repeat mixing up evening meal as you see fit

SS is faster given the right course as theres no losses in the transmission. Iirc rear derailleur costs ~6W.
There’s a strange feeling of efficiency when you first ride a SS, and efficiency is speed.

Doesn’t take much stop/start, steep climbs or pedally descents to swing the balance in favour of gears though.

Nah, not for me this year.
Got the perfect weather in 2015 & 2016. Rather keep the good memories than risk the mental scars trying to ride it in the wet would give :D