Minuteman Road Club

http://zwift.com/events/view/4649
https://discord.gg/mjN93h2
Bike and Beer Jersey: Hit 'p' and enter "BIKEANDBEER"

Join the Minuteman Road Club for their Friday morning ride. Should take about 1 hour.
2 Laps of the London Loop (including box hill). That's 9.2 miles/loop.
Steady group pace of 2.5 w/kg on the flats and throat punching on Box hill.

LAP 1:
Steady 2.5 W/kg from the start to the Box Hill KOM
Attack Box Hill. The leader will act as a back marker on Box hill, maintaining a steady 3.5 w/kg up Box hill (around 8:45 for the segment)
After the banner at the top of box hill, if you are ahead of the leader, soft pedal at 1 w/kg until the leaders group catches you.
The leader will go back to 2.5 w/kg at the banner and sweep up those that are soft pedaling.

LAP 2:
Steady 2.5 W/kg until the start of the Box Hill KOM
Everyone should be behind the leader until we cross the line marking the start
of the Box Hill segment.
Then hammer time from the bottom of Box Hill to the finish line (around 5 miles)
Check out "box hill start to the finish line":
https://www.strava.com/activities/80935 ... 9763449452

We use discord for voice. Join us on the "MRC FMR Zwift event" channel: https://discord.gg/mjN93h2
Route: London Loop

Chris, that link to the segment doesn't work.

I invited the other busick also just in case you see another one show up

Sorry Scott copy paste broke the URL
https://www.strava.com/segments/13714876?filter=overall

Apparently the other Busick isn't ready for box hill at our pace yet, but it gave him something to work towards.

OK, guys, need some help here:
My tire is slipping a lot whenever the pitch goes above 5%. I bought a trainer tire recently and it actually made it worse. I have a Cyclops Powerbeam Pro trainer, probably 2-3 years old. It makes it when I am on Zwift that I just can't go up the hill smoothly. I am trying to do 100+ rpms to avoid slippage and it is still slipping.
* Should I have low pressure or high pressure in the tire?
* Any way I can torque down the tire more?
* Any other settings or ideas?

John

Ok, I just:
Lowered the tire pressure to 70 psi
Put a lot of pressure on the tire from the trainer
I will try it over the weekend to see if that is better. Heck, it can't be worse...

On the computrainer I usually see better results with 95-100psi. The calibration is more consistent.

Also you should clean the interface (tire and drum) with isopropyl from time to time. A film of oil/sweat/grime will form over time

John, since Zwift is controlling the resistance I think you have 2 options, one of which I use with my KICKR:

1. Adjust the setting in Zwift that is called "difficulty" (or something similar) and is set at 50% by default. If you lower it, then I thing Zwift will not add as much resistance on uphills. (I have never played with it, but I think that's the reason they have that feature.)

2. Don't let Zwift control the resistance of the trainer. I set up Zwift so that my phone controls the resistance of the trainer. The power output from the trainer is still used as the input to Zwift. The KICKR app I use allows me to set the KICKR for constant power, regardless of cadence/gearing, or to set the resistance to a fixed percentage. I use the fixed percentage and then use my gearing and cadence to adjust my power output to stay with the group. I switched to this mode specifically because I was getting dropped on every downhill when Zwift was controlling the resistance. Now I have no problem on uphills or downhills, although uphills are harder because everyone else's power goes up on uphills! Once in a while I have to change the percentage resistance, but that's pretty rare. If you watch me during a ride you'll see that on many short uphills I stay in the saddle while everyone stands because I keep my cadence at about the same optimum rate regardless of grade.

John I used to have that trainer. 100psi is what you need. But that's not why the tire is slipping. It's all about the connection of trainer to tire. Assuming you have the dial, make sure you have it so its indenting the tire 3-5mm. Then with your hand, pull the tire down fast to see if it slips. If it does, tighten it more. The tighter the connection, the more wear on your tire, but that shouldn't matter now that you have the special tire.

Great advice guys, in particular Jeremy's. The "indenting the tire 3-5 mm" comment was spot on and that seemed to be the biggest issue (I have a trainer tire). I rode this morning with no slippage at all, even going up 7.5% or so.

The final question is on calibration though. I know how to calibrate with TrainerRoad (spindown which I did this mornign) and I spun the pedals backwards to calibrate the cranks. But how do you calibrate with Zwift? It said I did 270 weighted average power this morning. I was going pretty hard but not that hard. I noticed some pretty ridiculous watts for Chris Pare after the ride last Friday too which didn't seem to be right (although maybe Chris has been sandbagging). Thoughts?

Great advice guys, in particular Jeremy's. The "indenting the tire 3-5 mm" comment was spot on and that seemed to be the biggest issue (I have a trainer tire). I rode this morning with no slippage at all, even going up 7.5% or so.

The final question is on calibration though. I know how to calibrate with TrainerRoad (spindown which I did this AM) and I spun the pedals backwards to calibrate the cranks (which I did this AM). But how do you calibrate with Zwift? It said I did 270 weighted average power this morning. I was going pretty hard but not that hard. I noticed some pretty ridiculous watts for Chris Pare after the ride last Friday too which didn't seem to be right (although maybe Chris has been sandbagging). Thoughts?

Them's fightin' words

Zwift uses the power numbers output by your trainer and does not alter them (AFAIK!), so as long as your trainer is calibrated you should be fine. That said, my KICKR has always output higher numbers than my Stages PM, so I had to trick my KICKR during its calibration process to make the numbers match my Stages. How did I do that, you ask? Well, during the spin-down I pedaled every so gently to make the spin-down last a bit longer. Hard to do without getting a "invalid calibration - please try again" message, but it only took a few tries to get past that. The two power outputs now track pretty closely, but I use the KICKR output because it's a lot smoother when pedaling smoothly on an unchanging grade.

You can always ignore the trainer power and connect Swift to your Stages instead.

Fintan wrote:You can always ignore the trainer power and connect Swift to your Stages instead.

I've done that, but I much prefer the KICKR's smoother output - it makes my workout graphs so much more rectilinear!