Zwift Chat

[ColinJ]

Sounds like it's a bit too hilly for "easy" measured efforts up your way.

The 3 busy valley roads out of town are much flatter but even they have undulations which catch me out. I hadn't realised how much I subconsciously try to ride at a certain cadence rather than a certain effort. If I don't watch my power and/or heart rate all the time, on reviewing my ride later I usually find that I averaged around 175 W rather than my goal of 145-150 W because the effort crept up every time that the gradient increased and the instantaneous power ranged from 0 to 300+W.

I like our hills but I do wish that I also had a few very quiet, flattish routes nearby. I have to travel over an hour by train to get to them (Cheshire, the Vale of York, or the Fylde (out Blackpool way)).

 

[alex_cycles]

The 3 busy valley roads out of town are much flatter but even they have undulations which catch me out. I hadn't realised how much I subconsciously try to ride at a certain cadence rather than a certain effort. If I don't watch my power and/or heart rate all the time, on reviewing my ride later I usually find that I averaged around 175 W rather than my goal of 145-150 W because the effort crept up every time that the gradient increased and the instantaneous power ranged from 0 to 300+W.

I like our hills but I do wish that I also had a few very quiet, flattish routes nearby. I have to travel over an hour by train to get to them (Cheshire, the Vale of York, or the Fylde (out Blackpool way)).

To be honest i never look at the power while riding - just ride easy or hard by feel and let the chips fall where they may.

But it's definitely true that it's almost impossible to go easy up a steep gradient (above a few percent) - even with silly gear ratios. It just takes a certain level of effort to drag your weight up the hill even if you're going slowly.

But what @Legs said - indoor is much easier for controlled workouty stuff - as long as you can make yourself do it. Outdoor is much more pleasant.

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

Here in east Southampton, we have a reasonable mix. We have some short rampy hills and not very hostile flat in the local ~5 miles, but you have to go ~8 miles to climb a single descent hill that doesn't quickly link with others or go ~11 miles to reach a chain of 250+ feet hills. Not a lot 500+ feet, for those it's ~22 miles to get to around Petersfield or South Harting. There's The New Forest on the other side of the city, but that means cycling in and through the other side of the city, which ime isn't terrribly pleasant and so I've only ridden there a handful of times. When I was fitter, I always wished we had a 1000+ feet climb in the county, but I believe our closest one to that is just north of Taunton!

But my main point for posting, rather than a cycling advert for Hampshire, was to say that my gravel ebike has made it possible to do z1/2 in the South Downs hills I love and wish they were a bit closer to home, something that was just about possible when I was 75-80Kg rather than the current 93Kg and when my z3 was ~215W+ (these days I'd do well to do 215W for 20mins).

 

[alex_cycles]

Here in east Southampton, we have a reasonable mix. We have some short rampy hills and not very hostile flat in the local ~5 miles, but you have to go ~8 miles to climb a single descent hill that doesn't quickly link with others or go ~11 miles to reach a chain of 250+ feet hills. Not a lot 500+ feet, for those it's ~22 miles to get to around Petersfield or South Harting. There's The New Forest on the other side of the city, but that means cycling in and through the other side of the city, which ime isn't terrribly pleasant and so I've only ridden there a handful of times. When I was fitter, I always wished we had a 1000+ feet climb in the county, but I believe our closest one to that is just north of Taunton!

But my main point for posting, rather than a cycling advert for Hampshire, was to say that my gravel ebike has made it possible to do z1/2 in the South Downs hills I love and wish they were a bit closer to home, something that was just about possible when I was 75-80Kg rather than the current 93Kg and when my z3 was ~215W+ (these days I'd do well to do 215W for 20mins).

I recently took my bike on the train to Banbury and while I was on the train I was thinking back to "the last time I took a bike on a train".
I worked out it was about 40 years ago Winchester to Southampton to school (King Edwards on Hill Lane/Kellet Road) on a Saturday for a tennis match.

 

[Legs]

Blimey, I think the last time I took a bike on a train was from Cambridge to Shrewsbury in spring of 2006. I rode from there up to near Wrexham to do a recce around the finishing circuit of the Mersey Roads 24 Hour TT race, then rode back to Cambridge. I must have planned the route pretty carefully because I'd have been avoiding Birmingham and the A5 and A14, and it was well pre-Google Maps.

I once rode from Cambridge up to Hull, mostly on Lincolnshire backroads, navigating using a long photocopied, sellotape-laminated strip from my 3mile:inch road atlas. Had a massive tailwind, nearly got blown off on the Humber Bridge (oo-err!). Left at 4am and arrived for a mid-morning breakfast!

 

[Norry1]

I recently took my bike on the train to Banbury and while I was on the train I was thinking back to "the last time I took a bike on a train".
I worked out it was about 40 years ago Winchester to Southampton to school (King Edwards on Hill Lane/Kellet Road) on a Saturday for a tennis match.

I've done that a couple of times this year - only going in the opposite direction.

 

[alex_cycles]

New fan (VacMaster Air mover) and new second camera angle all set up and this is my first race vid with the new setup...

View: https://youtube.com/live/0ZLMFMbanDo


I quite like being able to see the leg action and standing up position properly. Vacmaster seems to work really well too.

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

I recently took my bike on the train to Banbury and while I was on the train I was thinking back to "the last time I took a bike on a train".
I worked out it was about 40 years ago Winchester to Southampton to school (King Edwards on Hill Lane/Kellet Road) on a Saturday for a tennis match.

Nice little ramp warmup at the bottom of Hill Lane before the gradient drops right off to reach King Edwards!

Last time I took a bike on the train was just under three years ago, only a short 50mins one from Southampton Central to Warminster for our regular Longleat Center Parcs holidays. For anyone that loves road cycling and is happy with typical 100 fet per mile average ride (maybe ~75 if you're very selective), the lanes mostly to the west and south west are wonderful and well worth taking your road bike (although you can now take the hire ebikes off campus, which could help stay in z2).

 

[bridgy]

Anyone else got an older Wahoo Elemnt Bolt (or Roam V1 or Elemnt V1) and suffered this software bug making the computer think it's January 2006! Not only has it gone back 20 years in time but the clock error leads to massive GPS glitches making it almost unusable.

I realised mine wasn't working properly on a ride on Sunday and as nothing appeared in my Strava feed after the ride I assumed it hadn't uploaded at all - until I found out about the issue via DC Rainmaker and lo and behold it HAD uploaded but it was quite hard to find as it was dated January 1st 2006! The route and elevation were very glitchy too as expected but I eventually managed to clean it up and sort out the route, elevation and date etc. using https://gpx.studio/ which is a great tool.

Pretty annoying! I've had my Bolt since 2018 so I guess it is getting on a bit now, but up until now it worked perfectly fine so I had no reason to think about changing it (and as we know they're not exactly cheap!)

Hopefully they will fix with a software update soon but just wondered if anyone else was affected?

 

[bridgy]

@mjd1988 I know we discussed the possibility of riding in a team for the upcoming ZRL season (I'm waiting to hear from the Electric Spirit team we did the DIRT series with on that), but I don't know if you saw that WTRL are basically splitting the categories into upper and lower tiers (they're calling them "standard" and "development"), so if you're at the lower end of a category it should mean better, closer racing. Sounds good to me anyway as I'm a low B at the moment!

 

[ColinJ]

But my main point for posting, rather than a cycling advert for Hampshire, was to say that my gravel ebike has made it possible to do z1/2 in the South Downs hills I love and wish they were a bit closer to home, something that was just about possible when I was 75-80Kg rather than the current 93Kg and when my z3 was ~215W+ (these days I'd do well to do 215W for 20mins).

I had never thought of using ebikes for that reason; that makes sense! I know what I am like though - once I had tried an ebike I would find it hard to motivate myself to ever again just use 'senior' power on a 10-25% hill! Pity though - those really hilly routes are my favourites, but I avoid them unless I am feeling really energetic and want a hard ride.

I hope that I live long enough to one day need an ebike and when that day comes I will buy one.

I recently took my bike on the train to Banbury and while I was on the train I was thinking back to "the last time I took a bike on a train".

I don't drive so I use trains a lot. The local ones are fine for bikes. No reservations needed and only once in 40 years have I been unable to get on one, but that was my fault for timing my return from Leeds to coincide with the start of the evening return commute.

I don't like taking bikes on mainline trains though so when my sister bought a cottage in Devon, I bought a spare bike to leave down there.

Blimey, I think the last time I took a bike on a train was from Cambridge to Shrewsbury in spring of 2006. I rode from there up to near Wrexham to do a recce around the finishing circuit of the Mersey Roads 24 Hour TT race, then rode back to Cambridge. I must have planned the route pretty carefully because I'd have been avoiding Birmingham and the A5 and A14, and it was well pre-Google Maps.

That reminds me of this...

There used to be 3 hillclimb events here in the same weekend. A mate of mine spoke to a lad who rode down here from Newcastle (or was it Durham?) on the Friday evening after work. He competed in the 3 hillclimbs and then rode home on the Sunday evening so he could be back at work on the Monday morning ... Cycle to your TTs!

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

I had never thought of using ebikes for that reason; that makes sense! I know what I am like though - once I had tried an ebike I would find it hard to motivate myself to ever again just use 'senior' power on a 10-25% hill! Pity though - those really hilly routes are my favourites, but I avoid them unless I am feeling really energetic and want a hard ride.

I hope that I live long enough to one day need an ebike and when that day comes I will buy one.

If you have the motivation, it's also possible to do workouts on an ebike.

I was using max turbo 250W during those 3.5 hill efforts (where because it's road legal the assistance stops at 15.5mph), but I was also going well into threshold and beyond heartrate, with my estimated Lactate Threshold Heart Rate being ~155bpm these days rather than ~175bpm three years ago.

I'd much rather be doing such efforts on my road bike, doing rides like the above were commonplace on it from summer '17 to '22, but I'd really struggle to do four VO2 max hill efforts on a 3 hour ride these days.

 

[N0bodyOfTheGoat]

Just done a short Zwift session, pacer group "surfing" while pedalling for 10 miles, haven't updated to 1.95 version.

Strava is auto-flagging it if viewable by "everyone" or "followers," but ok if "only me."

That's new!🤷😱🤣

 

[mjd1988]

@mjd1988 I know we discussed the possibility of riding in a team for the upcoming ZRL season (I'm waiting to hear from the Electric Spirit team we did the DIRT series with on that), but I don't know if you saw that WTRL are basically splitting the categories into upper and lower tiers (they're calling them "standard" and "development"), so if you're at the lower end of a category it should mean better, closer racing. Sounds good to me anyway as I'm a low B at the moment!

Oh interesting! Good to see them shake it up a bit. At the minute my power is very much high C but still b on zwiftpower - hopefully I'll get enough fitness by the middle of September to be low b again though. Either way I'll be up for joining a team

 

[Legs]

I’ve bought some new shoes as dedicated hill-climb racing footwear. They’re Carnac Baroudeurs - perhaps foolishly, I bought them without trying-on from Planet X, but at £69.99 I’d have happily gone through the rigmarole of returning them if they hadn’t fitted. First impressions are that (a) they fit (phew!), (b) they’re much much lighter than the two pairs of 15-year-old Sidi Geniuses that I use for the turbo and for general riding, and (c) however impractical it might be, white is the best colour for cycling shoes!

I’ll plonk them on the scales later if I can find some cleats.