Zwift Chat

[ColinJ]

I think these days they say that you can damage your heart if you race with a virus, so it's really best not to. Obvs - it all "depends"

I recommend not even trying to - see below!!

I had a similar problem on a local hill once. I'd had a very heavy cold for about a week and got back on my bike too soon after 'recovering'. In fact I was still very weak. I went into severe distress when trying to ride up the hill and realised that I was about to collapse so I dismounted, put my bike over a dry stone wall and then fell over the wall and collapsed unconscious into a pile of leaves on the other side! I woke up some time later drenched in sweat and shivering violently. I went home and back to bed. I left it a couple of weeks before trying again ...

 

[alex_cycles]

I recommend not even trying to - see below!!

Agreed. Extertion when ill is a bad idea. The hard part is correctly knowing where to draw the line.

 

[mjd1988]

Re ZRL , I stand by everything I said over a year ago when they implimented it, and I stand by my assertion that I can't see it ever working in it's curent format. The seeding is way off and flawed, and as noted not many people are racing ZRS points races and so if/when they do they are almost certainly in the wrong category. I was shot down in flames 12 months ago and told I was wrong and the system would 'fix itself' - I'm an ex-Statistician and mathematician, I understand (well, understood!!) mathematical modelling, so I could see what they were trying but I could see the obvious flaws. Such a shame Zwift are too stuborn to admit they haven't got it right and don't try to fix it properly.

Re viruses, I had an emergency appointment Friday with the respiritory specialist at the health centre and she was not happy with my health. I'd been having this asthma flaor up for over a week, raced on the Tuesday, and put myself in a bad situation, so bad I couldn't get enough air in my lungs to even talk. She's put me on a course of steroid tabs until Tuesday and changed my asthma meds to something much stringer as the current ones were clearly not working (I'm off ventolin, it's not a recomended drug anymore as is not as effective as others apparently).

I can do light cycling now so long as I don't push but I'll not be racing until my peak flow is back towards 800 (it was below 500 most of the week (up to 575 today) and my asthma cough has gone. Not all bad, I can focus on doing Z1/Z2 to build up the easy miles for the bike upgrades


All I'll add is, anyone with a cold type virus at the moment, don't do waht I did and try to race it off, it can get so much worse so quickly. Stick to lighter or not riding until you feel better. I was a silly boy and nearly ended up in hospital

Completely agree re not riding when under the weather, even though I bailed on Friday I've had a crap weekend ever since and pretty sure it would have been a lot better if I'd just rested. Thankfully I don't have asthma or anything hopefully the new meds help Carl!

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

My better half has had a chest infection for ~3 weeks now, half way through antibiotic course, I was baffled how I was seemingly immune from it... But I started to feel like my lungs were closing up on Friday.

Was fairly sensible yesterday, did the Tiny Races but didn't compete properly, despite my lungs feeling not so tight.

Just done a two hour banded ride on Fire And Ice course, knees weren't happy at times so had to keep power very low and saddle discomfort was getting horrendous towards end, but that's a nasty TDZ long route out of the way.
Think I've got ~5 routes left, not convinced I'll be racing the short route tomorrow at 1710, will be playing this coming week day by day and seeing if it feels like the lurgy is getting worse or better.

 

[Legs]

I don’t mean to be dismissive of your effort, NOTG, but a banded ride should not count for any sort of achievement in ‘ticking off’ a route or accomplishing a mission. 2 hours at 50-100W wouldn’t get me halfway up the Alpe…

 

[alex_cycles]

I don’t mean to be dismissive of your effort, NOTG, but a banded ride should not count for any sort of achievement in ‘ticking off’ a route or accomplishing a mission. 2 hours at 50-100W wouldn’t get me halfway up the Alpe…

You’d love the “late join and ride the last 4km” tactic for box ticking then. That was working on one of the missions in 2025. I don’t think it got route badges, but it did get kit unlocks.

 

[Whorty]

You’d love the “late join and ride the last 4km” tactic for box ticking then. That was working on one of the missions in 2025. I don’t think it got route badges, but it did get kit unlocks.

Didn't it also give the full XP too? haha

 

[Venod]

I have ridden the last 2 rides to complete the TDZ 18 rides total, with a terrible cold, I questioned ,my judgement, but both rides, Tour of Fire and Ice and Gylph Heights resulted in several PBs, I do plan to steady down until I feel a bit better.
The wife had a terrible long lasting cold just after Christmas which I managed to avoid but its caught up with me.

 

[alex_cycles]

Didn't it also give the full XP too? haha

I don't remember. I do also remember joining one ride, not even doing a pedal stroke and STILL getting the kit. I think it was the last ride for the orange Pinarello bike. I wasn't able to do the ride, but someone told me it would work so I tried it. I used it for a while, but now I haven't even touched the Pinarello since the SL8 came out

It's a game.

I also know a guy who got the Everesting badge by going up and down the long escalator in NY hundreds of times in 3 hours.
Zwift took it off him when he went public with it, but it was a fun experiment. I thought he was nuts to even try it. Must have been so boring.

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

Some teams had riders take turns to sit at the top of Zwift mountains, while team members repeatedly teleported to them and descended to get minimal effort stage 5 upgrades for their preferred race/TT frames that use distance.

ZwifthHQ mostly closed the loophole eventually after months, but didn't remove the upgrades from those who abused the system.

 

[alex_cycles]

Some teams had riders take turns to sit at the top of Zwift mountains, while team members repeatedly teleported to them and descended to get minimal effort stage 5 upgrades for their preferred race/TT frames that use distance.

ZwifthHQ mostly closed the loophole eventually after months, but didn't remove the upgrades from those who abused the system.

Yeah i considered myself cheeky if i joined a pace partner at the top of epic bypass on sugar cookie

 

[CXRAndy]

Stage 4 TDZ, wasnt looking forward to the event because of boxhill. Thinking I would be shelled out of the back of whatever pack and then overtaken by many

Despite me suffering day two doms in the legs, could hardly get on the bike. My legs felt strong, my heart rate more under control.

We entered the base of Boxhill, where I slipped to the back, but I didn't fade, held position with a tiny group and we jostled places. I ended up with two lighter riders as we began the descent. I decided I wasnt going to wait for a sprint and laid some power down which gave me a 10 sec lead which I extended to 20 secs on the finish line

Result 20th Zwift 12th ZP. Pleased with how I felt today


View: https://youtu.be/3-7VM9PMhoA?si=zNjuOFcbpZUqB_Hq

 

[JonBuoy]

I did this event an hour later. I had achy legs after Sunday's race and was too disorganised/lazy to warm up properly but the pace to the bottom of the climb seemed fairly steady. A group of six of us got away on the climb but I was dropped towards the top in spite of a season's best 10 minute power output. I was caught and passed by another rider just before the descent but used my 17kg 'advantage' to catch him and we more or less rode to the finish together where, after a bit of playing around, he used his aero boost and beat me in the sprint. Maybe there were things that I could have done differently but overall I was happy with that.

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

Stage 4 TDZ, wasnt looking forward to the event because of boxhill.

Yeah, Box Hill was nasty, I negatively split the climb and was something like 20th at the KOM banner. Short recovery on the bit of flat before max effort up the short ramp preceeding the long descent, which I decided to supertuck mainly because the last few minutes of the KOM plus the ramp had burnt my matches! Passed quite a few thanks to my weight on descent, max effort up the train station ramp and then just held on for 9th.

 

[alex_cycles]

Stage 4 TDZ, wasnt looking forward to the event because of boxhill. Thinking I would be shelled out of the back of whatever pack and then overtaken by many

Despite me suffering day two doms in the legs, could hardly get on the bike. My legs felt strong, my heart rate more under control.

We entered the base of Boxhill, where I slipped to the back, but I didn't fade, held position with a tiny group and we jostled places. I ended up with two lighter riders as we began the descent. I decided I wasnt going to wait for a sprint and laid some power down which gave me a 10 sec lead which I extended to 20 secs on the finish line

Result 20th Zwift 12th ZP. Pleased with how I felt today


View: https://youtu.be/3-7VM9PMhoA?si=zNjuOFcbpZUqB_Hq

I think day 2 DOMS is the worst day IIRC. I always found with cycling though, once you get on and do a few km of gentle warmup you're fine until you stop and get off
Nice result Andy