Minuteman Road Club

(branching off from the winter ride lament)

I checked with Zwift.
Zwift Group Workouts are still a beta thing, which means we can't lead them yet.

I think I'm going to try the 7:15 PM workout on Thursday (John's short mix) to check out the group workouts.
Only 1/2 hour and a mix of different efforts to get a sense of things.

If someone wants to join me we can fire up team speak as well.

In, Team Speak? Not Discord??

Yeah, right Discord.

cbusick wrote: ↑Wed Oct 25, 2017 12:35 pm Yeah, right Discord.

Double check your version of Zwift phone app and computer program. They released an update last night. There's a new section on Watopia that you must be at level 10 to ride on....

Yeah I saw it this morning but didn't go that way

[possibly] in

what discord server or ip do you connect to?

That was a surprisingly good turnout, we had me, kevin, alan, jimmy, don and "b.huff". Pare made a guest appearance for the first 10 minutes in jeans and sneakers, although I don't think those are valid avatar options at his level so he just looked like a normal cyclist.

I thought it was cool to be doing a workout with the great Brad Huff, but turned out the 'b' was for Brittany.

We did 'jon's short mix' which was apparently the workout Zwift used when they were developing group mode.
It was two 150% 1 minute intervals with a 30 second rest followed by 3 100% 10 second sprints then a rest
and lastly a 10 minute sweet spot at 88%. Everyone else did the same workout scaled to their FTP.

We started at one of the corals just like a normal zwift event, but the display was like when you are doing a zwift workout with the list of intervals
on the left. If you complete each interval close to the targetted wattage you get a gold star. I don't think I'd ever hit 800w on my rollers before, so I was wondering what would happen when we hit the 955 10 second intervals. Guidance on the screen recommended cranking up the RPMs going into the intervals so I spun up to 150RPM and flailed away. The first 955w interval I only got to around 600w in 10 seconds, no gold star for me. The second interval I got a little higher. I don't think the erg on my rollers is responsive enough to deal with such a jump in 10 seconds. The third interval I shifted up a ton, and cranked up the RPMs and managed to hit 723 which got me 1/2 of a star. I was nailing the rest intervals though.

You weren't locked in place in the group. It seemed like you moved around in the pack with normal zwift dynamics. On the flats, I drifted to and several times off the front getting the normal advantage heavier riders get at the same w/kg on flats in zwift. As soon as it went uphill all the lighter riders swarmed by and around me as I lost the advantage of absolute watts over absolute weight. The only difference was if you fell below the target wattage you drifted to the back, but it was a lot harder to actually get dropped off the back than in a normal event. You had to be significantly below the target wattage before the elastic would snap.

Some quirks people saw. Kevin got the low RPM erg lockdown on the first 480w interval I think
Chris got erg mode to be temporarily disabled by being way off the power goal for long enough for zwift to think he was failing.
Jimmy got off the front for the win by spinning out a high enough gear that the simple rolling resistance of his wahoo snap was higher than the cool down wattage setting.

It was good being on discord so we could all complain about the early anaerobic intervals.
I'd rather do a zwift event like the vFMR, but if you have to do a workout in zwift it is more fun to suffer with friends especially if you have discord to complain over. Visually it is also a little motivating to have a pack of riders flailing away with you as they go through the same intervals.

I think if we were do do our own group workout, the draw would be having specially crafted workouts from our masters of pain, Pare and Cratty. You don't have to have a leader for the workout, but Pare's workouts are a refreshing break from the unimaginative library of workouts in zwift and Cratty's are just plain cruel and a major accomplishment to survive. They could draw a following on zwift and have people all over the world talking about just where in Cratty's choice the wheels fell off.

I did another Zwift group workout this morning to see if I could figure out a better way to set up for it. What I did worked very well for me. I stayed pretty much in the middle third of the peloton the whole hour and didn't have to worry about drifting too far back or going off the front. I set up with my KICKR reporting power to Zwift, but with the Wahoo workout app on my phone controlling the resistance of the KICKR. When the power level changed in the workout, I changed the power target on my phone app. The big advantage is that I controlled the rate of change and knew exactly when to spin faster (if I needed to) so I never had to deal with the low RPM mashing experience Kevin had. When the power level jumped by 60W in the workout I ramped up 10W at a time over a few seconds and stayed perfectly in place in the group.

@busick I’d say ERG mode is a bad choice with max sprints involved. Do you have to do the workouts in ERM mode?

No it’s an option. I agree with you re: erg mode for anything under 15-20 sec. I also think the group workout would be more engaging if you have to force yourself to hit YOUR target for every interval to avoid getting dropped from the group. Adds an element that isn’t there when droning along at 90rpm in erg mode.