Zwift Chat

[Del C]

Well that’s a wrap then for Mallorca 2019.

No rain and pleasant sunny weather with temperatures around 22C although up 29C on the last day.

7 rides, 409 miles and 100 Strava PRs, but best of all some great company which is what makes it work!

Picture taken by our selfie-meister at Lluc Monastery before our final descent to Pollenca. I'm 3rd right in the Stelvio kit.

Back to bashing my brains out on Zwift with you guys next week, I guess?

 

[Aleman]

Planning a late getaway for our 31st anniversary ... Pollensa is going to be our base ... Now do I hire a bike for the weekt and hope to do some solo rides ... Got a great one planned 176km nearly 4000m of ascent

 

[mjd1988]

29.01

New max average HR and literally removed the bar tape on the bike. That was intense

Sprinted as hard as I could at the start, briefly latched on the front group which splintered and got swallowed up by a great big peloton. Almost dropped continually but stayed until the last 400m when they started to sprint and I started getting tunnel vision.

Really pleased with the time and clearly can't use the ankle as an excuse anymore although tried clipping in and had to remove shoe to clip out as twisting foot is still an issue. Glad I tried that one indoors first!

 

[Del C]

Planning a late getaway for our 31st anniversary ... Pollensa is going to be our base ... Now do I hire a bike for the weekt and hope to do some solo rides ... Got a great one planned 176km nearly 4000m of ascent

You know the answer!

Hire a car for the wife and she can be your support vehicle!

Problem solved!!

 

[Aleman]

You know the answer!

Hire a car for the wife and she can be your support vehicle!

Problem solved!!

She doesn't drive ... I did suggest an e-bike ... It didn't take long for me to realise that it was not my best idea

 

[JLaw]

A few thoughts after 3 attempts on stage5.

First, there's fewer and fewer riders as the week goes on. Clearly important for a flat course like stage5.

Tried to go harder early on the 2nd attempt. That was largely successful for the first half of the race. I was about 15s up, but lost it all on the return leg back from the little desert town. I felt like I'd ridden harder, but in the end had the same avg watts and was 3 seconds slower. Ugh.

Today's attempt was by far the smallest field and I was working hard to stick with a good moving group. Started to lose them as we approached the little town. Upped the effort and used an aero to try and jump from the group of 4 laggards to the group of 30-ish up the road. I covered about half the gap, but just didn't have enough to catch 'em. Rode in no-mans land for a while, did some estimates of where I was and came to the conclusion I didn't have a chance to best my prior efforts, so I backed way off. Was eventually caught by a reformed chasing group and latched onto them for the last few miles. Clearly the slowest attempt, even though it had the highest average wattage.

 

[IrishAl]

Update league table below with this week's stage 5 results added.

It's looking tight at the top at the moment, but I'd expect that to change once Alan posts his attempt at stage 5. Stage 6 looks like being a TT, so no hiding in the pack next week
View attachment 465857

Great work again Peterob! I'm struggling this week to get a chance to post a time for ToW.5 - Too many IRL rides! I've a race tomorrow so it is looking like Sunday will be my last chance to get a go at it or else I'll be waiting for the final catchup week.

Capture by northwest cyclingclub, on Flickr

 

[Gary E]

Hi guys, long shot I know but hopefully someone out there can help - I've been using an Elgato Stream Deck to control all of the keyboard shortcuts in Zwift. Recently it's stopped working but only in Zwift. It still works in all other apps (and the F keys still work from the keyboard). Any thoughts?

 

[CXRAndy]

Hi guys, long shot I know but hopefully someone out there can help - I've been using an Elgato Stream Deck to control all of the keyboard shortcuts in Zwift. Recently it's stopped working but only in Zwift. It still works in all other apps (and the F keys still work from the keyboard). Any thoughts?

With the updates in Zwift recently maybe its broken the function. Try and redo settinngs

 

[steverob]

Just done the new Bologna ITT Giro course - very interesting. I rode it on a TT bike deliberately, but you're not forced to. However from the sounds of some of the comments I saw, I think drafting has been turned off even if you are on a normal bike (may want to test that yourselves). That hill at the end though - geez that's tough! You've just done almost half a mile at 10% and used up most of your reserves, then have a few seconds of false flat through a chicane to recover, before you hit the 15% section for the next quarter of a mile!

Managed it in 25:20 according to ZwiftPower, but I'm not uploading it to Strava yet - waiting for people to create more segments before I do.

As soon as you cross the line, it offers you the chance to go back to whatever world you were previously on, but if you click on the Stay Here, there's a little loop about 200 meters after the finish line where it will turn you around and you can do the course downhill (there's also one behind the start pens, so you could just continuously do the course as many times as you like). And using the downhill, I finally cracked the 100km/hr badge, even without any power ups! Although the graphics are a little ridiculous when you try to take that halfway chicane at 62mph!

Couple of hours to recover, then will do ToW Stage 5 later this afternoon.

 

[AAAC 76C]

You know the answer!

Hire a car for the wife and she can be your support vehicle!

Problem solved!!

Yep. She can drive alongside you telling you to speed up for once!

 

[Whorty]

Just done the new Bologna ITT Giro course - very interesting. I rode it on a TT bike deliberately, but you're not forced to. However from the sounds of some of the comments I saw, I think drafting has been turned off even if you are on a normal bike (may want to test that yourselves). That hill at the end though - geez that's tough! You've just done almost half a mile at 10% and used up most of your reserves, then have a few seconds of false flat through a chicane to recover, before you hit the 15% section for the next quarter of a mile!

Managed it in 25:20 according to ZwiftPower, but I'm not uploading it to Strava yet - waiting for people to create more segments before I do.

As soon as you cross the line, it offers you the chance to go back to whatever world you were previously on, but if you click on the Stay Here, there's a little loop about 200 meters after the finish line where it will turn you around and you can do the course downhill (there's also one behind the start pens, so you could just continuously do the course as many times as you like). And using the downhill, I finally cracked the 100km/hr badge, even without any power ups! Although the graphics are a little ridiculous when you try to take that halfway chicane at 62mph!

Couple of hours to recover, then will do ToW Stage 5 later this afternoon.

Planning to have a go later. I was expecting it to take about 23 minutes, so you've set a good target to aim at

HID likes to watch the cycling with me on tv, so we'll watch a couple of the pros go first on Eurosport, then I'll have a go. HID wants to watch me do it on Zwift so there is a very real risk I'll go out too fast and blow up Probably look at riding about 4 o'clock

Edit: gone for a climbing setup with the Tarmac and Lightweight wheels. May forfeit a bit of time on the flats, but hoping this will help more on the climb where time can easily be lost.

 

[steverob]

Edit: gone for a climbing setup with the Tarmac and Lightweight wheels. May forfeit a bit of time on the flats, but hoping this will help more on the climb where time can easily be lost.

Not sure you'll gain or lose very much based on the equipment because the stage has a bit of both. It's 5km of flat/slightly downhill, then after that it's basically the Radio Tower climb, except say starting it from the Epic KOM banner (because it doesn't ramp up the climb immediately into double figure percentages, it takes a little while to get there).

Just got off the bike from Stage 5 - 30 minutes 29 seconds, which I'm fairly happy with. Although for some reason, ZwiftPower is currently putting my time on the CycleChat team Results page down as being for the Giro stage, not ToW (it does appear correctly on my profile page).

 

[Whorty]

Not sure you'll gain or lose very much based on the equipment because the stage has a bit of both. It's 5km of flat/slightly downhill, then after that it's basically the Radio Tower climb, except say starting it from the Epic KOM banner (because it doesn't ramp up the climb immediately into double figure percentages, it takes a little while to get there).

Just got off the bike from Stage 5 - 30 minutes 29 seconds, which I'm fairly happy with. Although for some reason, ZwiftPower is currently putting my time on the CycleChat team Results page down as being for the Giro stage, not ToW (it does appear correctly on my profile page).

I plan to do the TT a few times on different set ups, so will try on the TT bike too and maybe even the TRON to see if there are any benefits. It's a hard one isn't it, as the climbing bike will be slower on the 6km run in, but faster on the climb, but the TT and TRON will be faster on the run in, but (presumably) slower on the climb.

Be interesting to see what the pros select today. I wonder if any of them would have tried Zwift first to see what set up works best for them

 

[LoneRider90]

Love a good equipment chat haha... I was thinking TT bike with some climbing wheels? Would that give you the flat speed but then make the climb easier? Also, need to know if drafting is on because that could be huge if the event is busy? Not really a fair comparison vs the professionals though, which is kind of the point.

Looking to ride it later this evening maybe 7:30 or 8:00 after the real Giro. Give the legs a blast and try to test my 20-minute power (or 35 minutes )