Zwift indoor virtual reality trainer

So I'm right then. That doesn't happen often.

Aren't all new shimano cranks 110bcd?

shimano

have you met @6pt?!

Many years ago at a lfgss track day when he and @dimi3 beat me to the top 2 steps of the podium in every race

Something has gotta be up with either my set-up or Zwift is full of shit. I did a "race" today and it said avg speed was 28mph. My trad / dumb turbo setup is an Elite trainer with cadence and speed (set on 3) on a 48x16 track bike. Even when I was in OK shape attempting C races at herne hill I dont think races ever got that fast, no way I could have done 10 miles at this pace.

So is it known dumb trainers are a great way to sandbag? Or is it that zwift races are so far beyond reality as to be silly? I understand the basic watts calculation on smart trainers appears accurate tho.

Yes @BareNecessities indeed I am going through a strange time, as we all are

I think this was one of the problems with me when I did a zwift.
Have you picked the right "dumb trainer" from the list?
Zwift power calculation is, apparently, notoriously dodgy for those pro racers on there. And they will kick off and moan like fuck.

However, you could say "it is what it is" and ignore it all.
As Ted's mate says here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBeJLSYSxt0

Are you using a power meter or just a speed/cadence sensor and letting zpower work it out? If it's the latter then it can wildly over-estimate how much power you're putting out. Before I got my PM I used zpower to measure my FTP and it came out as 320W or something, my real FTP when I retested with a power meter was ~240W.

Let all those who have put out 800 W using a cadence sensor raise their hands.

You had me at

Zwift is full of shit

Speed/distance bares absolutely no relation to real life, so just ignore it. It simply doesn’t matter.

I often do steady 10ok group z2 rides on zwift at an average of 44kmph. It’s obviously not realistic to think I’ve ridden anything like a real 100k. I just think of it in terms of time in zone.

is it known dumb trainers are a great way to sandbag?

Yeah, that's why many races limit published results to people in ZwiftPower and/or with HRMs to show the data isn't bollocks.

ie. here's a rule snippet from a race tonight:

RULES:

• Heart rate monitors and Cadence compulsory for all categories
  
• Power Meter and/or Smart Trainers needed; using zPower will be DQ
  
• Choosing lower category than ZwiftPower says will cause DQ
  
• Riding outside chosen category (95% of CP20) will cause DQ
  
• Riding very unrealistically or cheating may be DQ as well
  
  

More race details, full rules and final results, based on your category (separated for wo/men), may be found on https://www.zwiftpower.com/league.php?id=211. Remember you need to have a registered account with Zwiftpower.com and accepted their terms and conditions to be in the results of the race. Please also maintain an open Strava profile to facilitate organiser inquiry.

OK phew that makes sense, comforting to know both that some of Zwift's suspect stats are bollocks and also that I am as weak as I suspected.

@hippy That's a lot of rules for a fake digital bike race. If the Call of Duty lads get into zwift during lockdown God help the Cat A pros on there

Yeah, it's total shite. I jump into races and 'pretend' I'm racing but I don't give two shits about being DQd or having my name in the results coz it's all bullshit anyway. It's just a nice change from steady state intervals I'm normally doing. I'll almost certainly delete it post-lockdown.

I've enjoyed zwift racing against friends who i know are on reliable setups.

A couple of us did the three-stage haute route a couple of weekends back and finished, after 4+ hours of riding within 2 minutes of one another. Riding at different times of day. Honestly, that was some of the most fun (and hardest) 'racing' I've done.

But yeah, it's demotivating when you see peeps you would piss all over on the road pulling 5+ w/kg in Zwift.

i don't get involved in zwift racing very often, each time i dip back in it gets more ridiculous, last time was pre lockdown and in a b race and a guy put out a perfect 4w per kg for the whole race, presumably had it set on erg mode but i don't understand the point...? (he didn't win as all you had to do was sit on his wheel all the way round and roll him in the last 100m so that cant have been a strategy designed to win!) but see friends whinging about cheaters all the time...

group rides or rides with mates keep the turbo entertaining, my club have been trying discord and zoom to make it more social during lock down.... i even took a slice of cake and some coffee for half way round last week...

like most of life, its not that fun if you take it too seriously, if you can enjoy it for what it is it can be use useful experience!

I do that. I'll do a TR workout but join an event.

So Alex Dowsett's TT training I wanted to see what it was all about. I'm smashing it when everyone is in rest intervals and then crawling when everyone is doing their efforts. Same as the races - just ride the intervals but watch the chat and if looking at my little rider guy in a bunch make the interval go by a little quicker, so be it. If it annoys people, bonus :)

Alex Dowsett getting more and more annoyed he’s stuck at altitude in Andorra and getting his arse kicked constantly is a joy

He made lots of points about "I'm at altitude" and "I've got no fan" blah blah

If it's a workout you get none of the gradient effect I've been told.

Yeah, because you're trying to hit specific power values not piss about with random gradient changes like in a normal ride/race.

How long a race is that though - is that so unrealistic?

300w is not an out there FTP and for a 70ish kilo rider that just means riding at threshold. Obviously if the race was really long it starts to seem unrealistic but doesn't seem immediately mad to me.

Whether riding at a consistent wattage is a good strategy / playing ball for the race, is another matter

Correct. Your speed is modulated though.

I'm probably comparing rotten apples with putrid oranges (and I don't know my wattage from my frottage) but, FWIW, I've now ridden the 7 day free trial with my Garmin* running too and ended up with..

Garmin 164.1miles @ 20.1mph
Zwift 167.8miles @ 20.5mph

... BUT I think that only happened to be close because I targeted 4 hilly rides as the speeds seemed so crazy on the flat ones - and the extra mileage from those got reclaimed in the hills. Needless to say, I've never ridden the perfect bike, in the perfect position, on perfect roads, in a skinsuit, with a boatload of drafting either (and I guess the algo has to accommodate those guys too) so I don't know what sort of theoretical advantage you'd expect from that, but I suppose this is how they convince people to drop on £1000 proper trainers to find out.. sigh.

*I have no idea if the Garmin x myTurbo is even slightly accurate either but I at least know it makes me want to puke if I go much faster than that ^ (and in that respect it's just like real life.. sob..)

"perfect" implies fixed power. Since there's drafting and gradients this should be near impossible. I see it though when I run TR through Zwift - my power graph in Zwift is a series of straight lines that matches TR intervals. It's totally unrealistic.

Ah it's the perfect bit not the power stat that was unrealistic - I just got the wrong end of that stick.

Yeah doesn't seem possible, even with erg mode a person can't put out exactly even power