I’m not a pensions expert by any means but I reiterate my earlier point about an ISA over a pension. Yes, you get tax relief going in but you will also pay tax on that pension when the time comes to start drawing on it, assuming obviously your income is over the basic tax threshold. What the government gives with one hand it takes away with another. Try cashing in part of that pension pot as well when you want £10K for something important.

With an income producing S&S ISA there is no income tax and no CGT if you want to sell some shares for the Porsche you’ve always promised yourself. There’s also no-one dictating to you that you buy an annuity or some such other bollocks. It’s your money and you are in total control.

Well you can discuss this until the cows come home but there is no “right” answer and never will be. There will always be some disgruntled proportion of any society who will be disenfranchised. Even if the candidate/party you voted for gets into power, there’s no guarantee they’re going to govern wisely and do what you want them to. In fact, more often than not they don’t which is why you then vote the next lot in to make another hash of it. And so it goes on…

I’m retired and have a couple of occupational pensions and a property which we rent out (not BTL). My wife and I also have a share ISA each. If I were to have my time again I wouldn’t bother contributing to a company pension scheme. I would just put the contributions into an ISA and buy a diverse portfolio of high yield shares or investment trusts and live off the income accrued.

Maybe not as high a yield but absolutely no hassle and full access to the capital at any time if your circumstances or choices change. I think our ISAs would easily top £1 million now with re-invested dividends over our working lifetimes when we didn’t need the income.

I think we should start with a well informed electorate first.

Yeah, right, because there are a lot of those around the World aren’t there? You’re talking about people here and for any democracy to work every vote has to count equally whether you agree with them or not. Otherwise you just end up with something like communism, fascism, dictatorships or rotten boroughs for instance.

As hard as it is for some to stomach on here the groundswell for UKIP which prompted the EU referendum was an indication of how things can be changed. No doubt many will respond “for the worse” but that’s just tough shit, that’s the way democracy works. The majority get their way and the minority just moan about it on internet forums.

I’ll give it one more episode. A lot of programs/comedies haven’t been that great in early episodes but turned out well. The whole of series one of Blackadder for instance was so absolutely dire I’m surprised that they got to make the second series at all.

Yes ,it does have a Brexit feel to it 🙂

Oh yeah, I get why they’ve made it so shite now.

#bbcbias

All the characters in Detectorists were sympathetic and interesting. In this they are just pathetic and irritating. I struggled to watch after 10 minutes and it just went downhill from there. Toby Jones is better than this.

That’s a bit spooky. I was out with the wife having a bimble round the local country park yesterday and she wouldn’t change to an easier gear up a steepish hill. I started singing “Make it easy on yourself…”

It’s in the Riders Nearby panel next to the rider’s name on the right of the game screen

What I really wanted to know was what the category criteria were now defined as for each group. In my group C, they seem to be saying now that 3.4 W/kg is OK as long as you haven’t exceeded some 20 minute FTP level. The examples I have seen are confusing now though.

As far as I can see is all that seems to have happened is that they have bumped up the power level (for group C at least) from 3.1 W/kg to 3.4 W/kg. I used to be able to finish top half of group C races and have a decent race but in yesterday’s race I just got obliterated. I don’t even have the option of dropping down to group D now because I am classified as group C in Zwift Power and will just get DQ’d apparently for entering the wrong group race.

I don’t understand what is going on now with Zwift Power.

I did my first race (in group C) for an age today after extensive eye surgery. I’m not as fit as I was but still a decent group C I think. The start was more mental than I even remember and I managed to hold on to the front group for about 5 minutes cranking out 3.5-4.0 W/kg waiting for them to calm down but they never did! My heart rate was going through the roof so I had to ease off and wait for the second group about 15 seconds back. I hadn’t recovered by the time they swept by at about 3.0 W/kg so I just had a lonely ITT to the end and finished 17th out of 20 classified on Zwift Power.

Looking at the Zwift Power result the winner of group C averaged 3.4 W/kg and most of the top 10 were over 3.0 W/kg with 2 other riders at 3.2 W/kg. I thought the group C limit was 3.1 W/kg but then I found the classification system had changed. However, I couldn’t find anywhere on the Zwift Power forum which explains what the new categories were. Can someone possibly post a link to the new categories?

Apologies if this has been covered before but I’ve been on and off the bike for the last 8 months and haven’t really kept in touch with Zwift racing.

I’m 3 “Alpes” away from completing the Tron bike challenge. I went into the Drop Shop yesterday and the bike wasn’t in there for purchase so I assume (hope) the challenge is still on. Should get it next week!

I’m using the Trek Emonda at the moment and was lucky enough to get the lightweight Meilenstein wheels a few ascents back so every little helps as they say.

You can read forums without being logged in or even a member. You can’t do that on TwitFace (I assume because I’ve never been a member).

I haven’t raced on Zwift for a few months because I’ve had 4 operations on my eyes. All good now though so should be back to middle C racing at the end of the month. I think I’d almost rather be a lowly B racer than winning group C though if I could make enough power to genuinely be in that category.

Some people need to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Yeah, I did it at 09:00 and there were over 2500 in the event. The funniest thing was the start where loads of avatars were way off the road. I must admit I got pretty bored just grinding up the Alpe and won’t be doing that again any time soon.

The one that gets me is people who use “prolly” instead of probably. Just plain stupid.

I did the 4th stage of the TdZ this morning – 3 laps of the volcano flat and then finish up the volcano KOM. I wasn’t at my best and it was pretty uninspiring stuff. The next stage is Richmond which is possibly even worse. I think I’ll use that stage to do some interval training which might make things a bit more interesting and useful.

I liked him in “Good Morning Vietnam” but he didn’t sing then of course.

I did the Tour de Zwift stage 3 this morning and had no dropout problems because probably there were just under 500 riders in the event. I still noticed a couple of riders take the wrong route just after the start though so obviously other people are still having problems even with fewer riders.

harry too

Member

So Tour de zwift issues…… anyone else having them?

On both stages my Bluetooth connection has dropped out at the start. Today I warmed up for ten minutes in Central Park with no problems and as soon as I joined the event it dropped out and I had to resort to Ant+ virtual power.

I’ve seen a few funny things as well like riders moving but their avatar not pedalling. I’ve also seen several riders with their name banner on the main screen but not appearing in the “Riders Nearby” panel on the right. Zwift are starting to become victims of their own success I think. They need to divert some of the cash they are obviously raking in for more processing power.

I won’t be entering another of these Zwift tours again. Just too many riders attracted to them. It’s not as much fun or fulfilling as racing either.

Forza, my 10 year old is in the shorter one 🙂 There’s another couple of STWers in it with you in A as well.

I only did the short one today due to time constraints and dentist appointments lol.

I had a bit of a nightmare at the start as my inRide power module dropped out about 10 seconds after the start of the race. I couldn’t get it to reconnect so had to switch to virtual power with my speed sensor. By the time I got going I was about 3 minutes back so had to TT for about 15 minutes to get back with a decent group. Good laugh though!

I hope your kid enjoyed it weeksy.

I’ve signed up for the long route at 17:00 and there are over 2700 entrants so far!

Is it just me or is London pretty boring – guess I never noticed as have been doing races previously but it isn’t that interesting to ride around. I much prefer Watopia.

Have you tried the Surrey Hills circuit? A great training and/or racing route I think. Certainly better than New York or Richmond.

If that’s the case then I might as well put all my effort in on the flat to gain some advantage before the climbs. I’ll lose out on the group tow though which is the downside. I usually end up TTing on my own after the last climb anyway!

I’ve just returned to Zwift after a layoff due to recovering from an operation. I’ve done a couple of races recently but I’m not able to go flat out due to still recouperating. One thing I have noticed though and would like some explanation for is the effect of weight and/or W/kg.

I’m 82kg currently so I accept that generally I’m going to struggle more on the hills compared to lighter riders. The effect I have noticed though is when I am in a race group and cruising at around 2.5 W/kg on the flat or downhill, I’m generally at the front of the group or even pulling away at times. Then when we hit a 4%+ climb, most of the other riders in the group start cranking out 3.5W/kg+ and of course I have to go to 4.0W/kg or more just to stay with the group.

What I don’t understand is why they are upping their power output on every climb but seemingly struggling to keep up at a lower power output on the flat? Is this something to do with how smart trainers operate? I have a Kinetic trainer with an inRide power pod so don’t have a smart trainer but the power readings seem reasonably realistic as far as I can tell.

I’ve done the Watopia hilly figure of 8 race twice recently and it seems to happen on every climb at any point in the race.

Detached retina, three ops

HEre’s a question for some then… Regarding hills and Zwifting. Do we think that training on hills in a Zwift context is the same as training for hills outside ?

Next year I’ve got 3 100milers planned, the main one being the SDW, i’d like to focus this years training on them, rather than necessarily directly on racing as i do most years recently.

So should i be climbing the Radio Mast time and time again at a steady pace, or just steady pace riding… Or will the riding i’m doing currnetly still be of use ?

I’ve done lots of hilly sportives over the years and two Marmottes and I would say that Zwift while useful training is not the same as being on an actual hill. Even cranking the resistance right up and doing hill repeats at low cadence, I feel like it’s just not the same. I’m not sure why – I do tend to climb more out of the saddle on actual climbs than on Zwift though. Having said that I’ve never trained extensively on Zwift for a sportive so it’s just a subjective opinion.

Mercedes balls up the strategy again and throw the race win away. Why didn’t they bring Hamilton in at least 10 laps earlier when it was obvious to anyone watching the race that his tyres wouldn’t make it to the end? They just gave away track time and made his job impossible.

Also, it was obvious to me that none of the top cars were going to be able to overtake each other as they couldn’t get close enough coming on to the longest straight due to the hairpin beforehand. That was demonstrated quite ably by Kimi earlier in the race holding Hamilton back even though his tyres were knackered.

Ferrari got it right today and Mercedes gave it away.

BTW … the atomic attacks on Japan were straightforwardly wrong

It was absolutely the right thing to do. The fact that they had to drop two bombs demonstrates the mentality of the Japanese government and how they were prepared to sacrifice their citizens at all costs rather than give up.

I just completed it in 68:02 so I reckon you and I could accompany each other weeksy! I kept my HR at around 150 bpm (170 FTHR) and was mimicking the gradient with a big-ish gear on my Kinetic RnR trainer so my legs got a good workout (I’ve done the real thing 3 times). I thought it was a bit of a boring grind to tell the truth and the samey graphics didn’t help much.

I’ll probably do it now and again but I think the other Watopia climbs are more interesting.

I’m fighting my second cold this year at the moment so haven’t attempted any racing for a while. I’ve just been doing free rides with friends every other day or so and with the cold weather we haven’t been out on the road since 17th Feb.

Doesn’t look like it’s going to warm up any time soon either so thank God for Zwift at the moment. 30% through the Everest challenge for the Tron bike though so keeping things ticking over.

..and one was called ‘Dick Feather’ which made me chuckle….

I bet you’d have to go some er… to beat him!

I thought the BBC coverage was at best annoying. Countless repeats at the expense of (in their eyes obviously) lesser events, switching channels mid-event and waaaay too much effin’ curling. At 2 hours+ for each match and all the round robinning etc. it could have done with its own channel to give sports fans a respite from “bowls on ice”.

I also agree with the comments about the stupid ice dancing costumes (men and women). It’s a sports event not a fashion show FFS! They should have to do it in standardised, approved outfits like all of the other sports.

I thought the snowboard parallel slalom competition was very unfair. The red course was noticeably faster than the blue one and a good 95% of the winners came from that side. The gold medalist, Ester Ledecka raced every time on the red side. I wonder how she would have got if if she had been on the blue track? I’m surprised something wasn’t done about it.

Standout athlete in the games was Marit Bjorgen. Her final performance in the 30km race was breathtaking.

It never occurred to me that I’d ever want to “save and continue”. Now the option to opt out of the annoying “CLOSE THE GAP” message, well..

I consider myself better than people who can’t spell whether…

Elise Christie’s claim that she was taken out in the short track final is dubious.

She was dishing it out prior to falling.

I wish she’d dry her eyes.

1) She would have had a struggle to even get bronze had she not fallen over. She at least wins the sympathy vote (again!) by going down.

2) From one angle of slo-mo I saw she was already going over before the other skater took her hand out

3) I wish the BBC would stop showing the interminable replays. The whole country must have seen it a dozen times already.

Supposing you saw a black child with a golliwog, woud that be considered racist? I’m not all that comfortable with the use of the n word by Richard Prior and Chris Rock either.

It’s used extensively in films as well. Personally, I think if you want something to be truly beyond the pale, it has to be unaccaeptable to all parts of society, like use of the Swastika for instance.

But it wasn’t made as a documentary piece – Nolan said so much himself. It was a film which took a true historical event and created a fictional micro-story based within that day. It’s story telling, that’s all.

Let’s say realism then shall we? I get that it was a series of micro-stories within the context of the whole event but in most cases it was seriously laughable. If you know anything about WWII that is.