Originally Posted by
datlas
While we slept, our lawn guy came and plowed our driveway.
I did a fake group ride on Zwift. It was ok. It was actually a fairly easy pace for me, except for the six times my signal dropped and I had to dial it up to 400w for 10s to get back with the group.
It is interesting to see the power zone colors on the bottom of my screen. Almost always in blue (Z2) but with some occasional greens and yellows, and a UGE red spike when I get dropped and power back.
I consider it a 21st century fartlek ride.
I did Stage 6 of the Tour de Zwift last night. I was going pretty well, in what I think was the 2nd group on the road, keeping up, going at a pace I figured I could sustain for an hour if I was in the draft most of the time. Then I noticed I hadn't turned on the music - I start up iTunes so all I have to do is hit the 'play' key on the laptop. So I did. And the music didn't start. I got distracted for maybe 3 seconds, and they were gone, and I had to chase back to a subgroup of about 3 other riders who I assume also got spit out the back. We spent the rest of the ride with the group waxing and waning. Sometimes riders would come through from the back and one of the group would grab their wheel, and often we'd end up reabsorbing that rider a few minutes later. Got to the end feeling thoroughly gassed, because there was no point at which I could just coast - at 94kg, Zwift REALLY makes me work on any little rises, so I had to power up ever rise and then push hard on the following descent to catch up to the front, just to have to do it again 30 seconds or so later. So, when we got to the last of 3 laps and got closer to the line, and everyone started droping their hamers, I amazed myself by actually still having 20 seconds of a sprint left.
Lesson learned. Make sure the music is set up, or do without. Riding in a group of 20, the draft effect on Zwift seems to work much better than a group of 4-8. I'd had to rush getting set up - HVAC guys here again and I couldn't start getting ready to ride till 20 minutes before the start. I had almost no warmup and had to do my spindown calibration while sitting in the start pen, with 2 minutes to go.