Zwift Chat

[JLaw]

If its a scheduled race/ group rides look at Zwiftpower, the results will appear shortly. You can look at the live tab results to see your position you came before everything is confirmed. General rides and races you need to have strava to analyse your effort

The results for the race Whorty and I rode aren't posted, or are horribly incomplete. It doesn't show up in my rides on zwiftpower. I'm sure Whorty took first in the D class but likely DQ'd on w/kg. I think I took 2nd and nailed the 2.5 w/kg ceiling. But it's hard to tell placement because the format drops you out of the race module before the climb -- so you can no longer tell who's in your group.

Whorty, KISS C/D runs tomorrow. If you ride "C" it should have considerably more competition than we had yesterday, it had ~100 racers a couple weeks ago (I rode D, and DQ'd on w/kg, negating my 3rd place finish). I'll be riding c this week.

http://zwiftpower.com/race.php?id=4798

Breaking 34 minutes would be a good race for me (34:17 and 34:34 in prior races). Given both of those efforts resulted in a raised FTP from zwift, I'm probably right at my limits and will have to draft better.

 

[Whorty]

It was kind of nice to work together a bit to get away from the rest of the D riders.

I did make an effort to lead into the manual turn as I was pretty sure of it's location.

I was glad we could work together. On the off you and 3 others got a jump on me and I wasn't sure I would catch up. i put a burst in and thankfully got back to you. I then felt really good so tried to work with you to break free. Just couldn't drop that one guy though. I did pull away a bit then held a 7 or so second lead hoping he would fall back, which he did. I then pulled back so that we could work together (I think you came up to me with a none race guy, which was kind of him) Glad you knew where the turning was as I wasn't sure.

Did you take the left turn after the end of the KoM and keep climbing? I hung out at the turn for a while to see if I could catch you on the way down if you did, but never saw you.

No, i went over the top and free wheeled down the other side. I wasn't sure where the finish was so i cycled for another lap, but as no finish line seemed to be anywhere I gave up.

I think this is a big shortcoming of Zwift - not obvious where the race course is, where it stops, and there is no race leaderboard. Kind of makes the racing futile if they can't be bothered to show how you've got on!

I think I'll use Zwift for spinning sessions, as I would have used BKool Velodrome, but for racing the chaingang and WC races are a league of their own (excuse the pun!)

 

[bobinski]

Whorty, Zwift was set up for training and communal riding rather than racing so all you see racing wise has been set up by the community and not Zwift. The different races and leagues, Zwift power etc exist to make racing available and reasonably reliable too. For now a delay in results while anticipated changes come from Zwift-closed races etc- is unfortunate.

 

[bobinski]

Dean, sorry for bailing but a night of sleeplessness looking after my puking son left me a little wasted. I couldn't get my heart rate above 150 except momentarily and much of the time it was 130 which says it all. Yet I was breathless. Bonkers. It was quite fast, almost chaingang fast, at the beginning until we got told off
Hope you enjoyed it.

 

[Breedon]

Dean, sorry for bailing but a night of sleeplessness looking after my puking son left me a little wasted. I couldn't get my heart rate above 150 except momentarily and much of the time it was 130 which says it all. Yet I was breathless. Bonkers. It was quite fast, almost chaingang fast, at the beginning until we got told off
Hope you enjoyed it.

That was pretty frantic at times, my ant single was lost at the start line so peddling away wondering why im not moving had to re-pair the trainer so at this point i thought do i do a chaingang stlye ride to the pack or do i bail, so i was doing 3-4w/kg eventually caught the group up, got dropped on the decent of Box Hill so again had to put in the effort to get back on.
Overall a good work out and would do it again nice pace and great banter, sorry you had to bail bob lol YOUR FIRED.
Heart rate monitor is knackered so i need a new one and i need to sort out the front derailleur and clean the chain it's making a right racket

 

[bobinski]

That was pretty frantic at times, my ant single was lost at the start line so peddling away wondering why im not moving had to re-pair the trainer so at this point i thought do i do a chaingang stlye ride to the pack or do i bail, so i was doing 3-4w/kg eventually caught the group up, got dropped on the decent of Box Hill so again had to put in the effort to get back on.
Overall a good work out and would do it again nice pace and great banter, sorry you had to bail bob lol YOUR FIRED.
Heart rate monitor is knackered so i need a new one and i need to sort out the front derailleur and clean the chain it's making a right racket

.
You may have been fortunate to catch. The group was unusually slow at first and I was almost 40 secs ahead at one point. Then the pace picked up after the box hill descent when I took it too easy and was overtaken by loads- including you. Although I rejoined I too lost connection, as I did yesterday, for few secs and the group pulled away. You were 1 of 4 in a small group I tried to chase down but I could see you were doing 4w to get back on? And although I tried to catch I didn't have the lungs so pootled to recover.
HRM - new battery?

 

[Breedon]

.
You may have been fortunate to catch. The group was unusually slow at first and I was almost 40 secs ahead at one point. Then the pace picked up after the box hill descent when I took it too easy and was overtaken by loads- including you. Although I rejoined I too lost connection, as I did yesterday, for few secs and the group pulled away. You were 1 of 4 in a small group I tried to chase down but I could see you were doing 4w to get back on? And although I tried to catch I didn't have the lungs so pootled to recover.
HRM - new battery?

Tried new battery doesn't work, signed up for the chaingang on Tuesday thats going to be hard, not sure how long I'll last, need to concentrate a lot and focus on being quite near the front.

 

[JLaw]

Whorty, Zwift was set up for training and communal riding rather than racing so all you see racing wise has been set up by the community and not Zwift. The different races and leagues, Zwift power etc exist to make racing available and reasonably reliable too. For now a delay in results while anticipated changes come from Zwift-closed races etc- is unfortunate.

True, but one of the interesting things is between the published APIs for zwift and Strava 3rd parties can build things like zwiftlink, zwiftgps and others that pull real-time or nearly real-time info and use it to build interesting things on top of the core system.

I've always been a big fan of openness in the tech industry, as it can be a huge enabler. I'm quickly being converted to zwift for everything but recreating real world rides. Bigringvr is something I'm going to seriously look at for that, which may leave me out of the bkool world until/if they make some major improvements.

 

[JLaw]

I just found out yesterday that the one real life race I do has been moved up 3 months to June 24. Arggh. I may have to run through tctp rather than the mix of structured workouts, racing, and benchmarking the course in the sim that I had planned.

 

[bobinski]

True, but one of the interesting things is between the published APIs for zwift and Strava 3rd parties can build things like zwiftlink, zwiftgps and others that pull real-time or nearly real-time info and use it to build interesting things on top of the core system.

I've always been a big fan of openness in the tech industry, as it can be a huge enabler. I'm quickly being converted to zwift for everything but recreating real world rides. Bigringvr is something I'm going to seriously look at for that, which may leave me out of the bkool world until/if they make some major improvements.

I agree entirely. It's why Zwift will grow and why I fear bkool will wither away.

 

[Breedon]

True, but one of the interesting things is between the published APIs for zwift and Strava 3rd parties can build things like zwiftlink, zwiftgps and others that pull real-time or nearly real-time info and use it to build interesting things on top of the core system.

I've always been a big fan of openness in the tech industry, as it can be a huge enabler. I'm quickly being converted to zwift for everything but recreating real world rides. Bigringvr is something I'm going to seriously look at for that, which may leave me out of the bkool world until/if they make some major improvements.

The developers are on cyclechat from time to time responding to questions and they also respond on Strava discussions on big ring vr club page and you can email them/facebook as well so over time they will i think over take bkool as they will have some control over the quality of the videos and not the hundreds of duplicate ones that plague bkool.

 

[GGJ]

BigRingVR have some amazing videos, the quality is second to none and you feel like you are there smack-bang in the middle of it all, the scenery the hills the bends and mountains are so realistic. The climbs are brutal though, I've only managed a couple of full rides, I really need to change my cassette to a granny gear before I get up most of them and I'm usually not too shabby at climbing. The other one I really like is FulGaz, the footage they use is recorded by cyclists riding the routes so you get a good cyclists eye view throughout the ride, the variety of rides is a bit more user friendly that BRVR in the fact that you can choose flat sections, rolling sections, mountainous sections, TDF, TDU the list goes on and on.

 

[bobinski]

Tried new battery doesn't work, signed up for the chaingang on Tuesday thats going to be hard, not sure how long I'll last, need to concentrate a lot and focus on being quite near the front.

I don't always finish with them. It is fairly brutal. The way i feel today i certainly wont last tomorrow.
They were saying yesterday that they think the draft is broken with large groups. It has been reported and Zwift working on it. Suggestion is draft is fine if you are just at front or even mid pack but any further to back of pack and you lose the draft completely hence big watts just to stay in the pack when you should be cruising. I was 55kmh at 140w yesterday along embankment-you too i suspect-and then slipped towards back of pack to send a text and i had to hit 260w to nestle back in the middle of the pack. So, I will try and keep you company near the front for as long as possible.

 

[Breedon]

I don't always finish with them. It is fairly brutal. The way i feel today i certainly wont last tomorrow.
They were saying yesterday that they think the draft is broken with large groups. It has been reported and Zwift working on it. Suggestion is draft is fine if you are just at front or even mid pack but any further to back of pack and you lose the draft completely hence big watts just to stay in the pack when you should be cruising. I was 55kmh at 140w yesterday along embankment-you too i suspect-and then slipped towards back of pack to send a text and i had to hit 260w to nestle back in the middle of the pack. So, I will try and keep you company near the front for as long as possible.

Sounds like a plan see if we can work together, I've got discord on my phone now but just need a mic/earpiece any suggestions?

 

[bobinski]

Sounds like a plan see if we can work together, I've got discord on my phone now but just need a mic/earpiece any suggestions?

I am on an iphone so just use the headphones that came with it. Just the right ear piece so i can hear my tunes from a speaker. Built in mic. Zsun use push to talk so i just tap the push section on the dischord app works fine most of the time.