"Winter" - Cruzbike Virtual Time Trial Challenge

[LarryOz]

Ok Larry I've done my duty you should have the data??????

Way to go Hardy!!! - You need to send me your Strava Link. I can't see to find you in Strava - send it to my email: larryoslund@gmail.com

 

[LarryOz]

Great news! Jason join last week, and Hardy and Barry rode their first TT this week. That means we are up to 12 people in our challenge here in week #6.
So everyone on the list. Don't forget submit your ride to me today 0- or go and ride if you haven't yet.
Everyone else "not on the list" - join up - Figure out how it works and what to do before the "Summer Challenge" starts in early April!
It is fun and hard - and it will make you stronger - and who knows - maybe we can figure a way to get us all riding at the same time on Zwift one day!
Keep up the good work!
Larry

 

[LarryOz]

Here are the results of week #6 of the Winter Cruzbike TT Challenge.
2 new riders: Hardy & Barry - Welcome.
4 new Personal Bests by Larry, Rob, Josh & Jason (Jason by 57 seconds - Hmmm - if he does that next week, someone will have to through a sandbag on him to slow him down! )
Both Jim's were unable to ride due to injury and/or sickness - Take care of yourself and get well soon!
CONGRATS to Jason who took first place this week, and to Rob for remaining in overall first place with 32 points - Way to go.
Also to Cliff who averaged an incredible 180bpm for almost 38 grueling minutes - WOW!
Here are the stats: (Note: new format for "Delta from PB column: negative means you went "under" your PB and is color coded green. positive number mean you were "over" your PB and color coded red)

As always you can see the entire spreadsheet at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kilJTgu9K6IJ1G2txDnmhJi_6-_U2I54vdxf4hinBJU/edit?usp=sharing
.. and please check for any errors - lots of numbers and formulas - something is bound to get messed up, transposed, etc.
Larry

updated per Pollock's find. Yes Jim & Maria's PB's of 2Laps of Watopia are the same. Double checked.

 

[Pollock]

@LarryOz Hardy’s ‘PB through week #5’ is a copy of Jason’s.

 

[RojoRacing]

Ok so I'm working on Hardy's result as well as creating a 6 lap segment for him since last week he couldn't figure out how to count past 5. I should have something resembling a result soon.

 

[Robert Holler]

Ugh. I had such a horrible performance. Screwed up knee makes riding hard hard. Heh.

 

[RojoRacing]

Hey @LarryOz I thought you sent me a screen shot via email yesterday to replace one of the earlier ones I posted for you but I can't find the email now. send it again.

 

[RojoRacing]

So what was my time?

Welllllllll.........if I take your pace you set for the first 5 laps on you first week and assume even though you quit the 6th lap early that it would have been the same pace since the other 5 which were within a few seconds of each other. Thennnnnnn.........I can safely assume had you finished that last 1/2 mile you would have had a time of 43:12 for a full 6 laps. All pending the Boss's approval.

Now this week since you did record in a proper 6 laps and 15 miles I can simply look at your segment time for the "6 laps" segment and see that you did it 10 seconds faster at 43:02 so yes you set a PR. Now get out there next week and set another PR.

 

[LarryOz]

Isn't the 6 laps 15.23 miles? The .23 miles adds a lot of time. Close to a minute, maybe even 8 minutes. The first 5 lapper was exactly (plus or minus 2 seconds) 15 miles on the dot. I didn't actually quit the lap early. I cropped the data at the 15 mile mark.

The goal was not to get to 15 miles exactly. The goal was to find some number of "loops" that comes close to 15 miles. (2 laps of Volcano flat is 15.33) which is what everyone else is doing. 6 laps of the volcano circuit is "about the same. It does not really matter that the distances are exactly the same, but close. The key is to have a repeatable "segment" that you can just go ride each time - and let Strava calculate your time and watts for that segment. You did great - you set a PB - that is the goal each week - to go a little bit harder and faster!

 

[LarryOz]

LOL, I finally got it. But no PB.

Yes - You set a PB by 10 seconds - so far you are in 1st place this week. You will stay there so long as no one else better's there PB by more than 10 secs - which is actually quite hard to do after 6 weeks.
Congrats

 

[Pollock]

Yes - You set a PB by 10 seconds - so far you are in 1st place this week. You will stay there so long as no one else better's there PB by more than 10 secs - which is actually quite hard to do after 6 weeks.
Congrats

Yes, yes it is. It is getting hard to best mine by even a few seconds now! Now I need a good 12 week program to work on power before going back to TTs after this series!

 

[RojoRacing]

Yeah so I give it my all again but suffered from a condition I can only relate to as arm pump of my left quad. Arm pump as a condition where the forearm muscle takes on too much blood and over expands against the muscle sack thus no longer letting the muscle function. This is a very common condition for motorcycle racers where we have so much force going through our forearm grip. It not a cramp or a tight condition, it's more of a weak condition of the muscle, you tell it to do something but it just wont to it. I've had weak legs before and I've had a tight left quad only but today I just couldn't get my left quad to pick up it's share of the load. So after 80% of the first volcano lap I through in the towel and stopped trying to hold that 300+ watts then about a quarter way through the second lap I felt like a had taken on a second wind. I could more comfortably hold 90-92 cadence in my slightly lower gear choice for watts in the high 200's. In the end I came up 8 seconds short of match my PR.

Maybe the last week I'll put the DF bike back on and see how it compares to the V20 over the two laps.

 

[Mixerman]

Late to the party but I threw down my first effort this morning.
Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/9qkSMxveTU
I've got my V20 on a Cycleops Hammer set at 100% intensity and reading power from a Stages power meter. I was happy with my pacing. I tried to stay close to 250w on the flat, trying not to let it fall below 200w on downhills and tried not to exceed 300w on the little hills, maintaining a 90 rpm cadence. I weigh 140 lbs (63.5 kg) for power to weight reference. For my heart rate I was looking for a steady climb to 170 for the first lap, then not let it drop below that while pushing on as hard as I could. Got it up to 182.

I banged a couple u turns in my warm up lap thinking it might reset the segment but then I remembered that only resets it for Zwift not Strava. Next time I'll bang the U at the start before the gate, ride for 5, and U it back to the start so our TT segment registers. I think my PR is from a drafting race a few years ago on a Kickr Snap which read 25w higher than my Stages, but I'm stronger now and super motivated to try to beat it. I've already made big gains this winter so far so its gonna be tough. Glad to join up and help each other get stronger. I ride pretty much every morning at 5am so keep me in the loop for Team Cruzbike races as well.

 

[LarryOz]

Late to the party but I threw down my first effort this morning.
Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/9qkSMxveTU
I've got my V20 on a Cycleops Hammer set at 100% intensity and reading power from a Stages power meter. I was happy with my pacing. I tried to stay close to 250w on the flat, trying not to let it fall below 200w on downhills and tried not to exceed 300w on the little hills, maintaining a 90 rpm cadence. I weigh 140 lbs (63.5 kg) for power to weight reference. For my heart rate I was looking for a steady climb to 170 for the first lap, then not let it drop below that while pushing on as hard as I could. Got it up to 182.

Welcome to the group Alex - From the analysis mode, I was able to zoom into your data and "guess" you time for the 2laps as 36:22 with avg power of 244 and avg HR of 170. If you take your Strava ride and crop the front stuff off and resave it should calculate the Segment the way you want it! I usually do a U-turn right when I start - ride all the way around and U-turn right before the Arch, and start my "TT" when I pass under the Arch on the way back through. That gives me a "good" 40 minute warmup - I usually hit a hard 2-3 min at 120% FTP at around 15 mins to get my blood pumping and then back off to recovery wattage until I head down the hill to the Arch starting point.

 

[LarryOz]

Yeah so I give it my all again but suffered from a condition I can only relate to as arm pump of my left quad. Arm pump as a condition where the forearm muscle takes on too much blood and over expands against the muscle sack thus no longer letting the muscle function. This is a very common condition for motorcycle racers where we have so much force going through our forearm grip. It not a cramp or a tight condition, it's more of a weak condition of the muscle, you tell it to do something but it just wont to it. I've had weak legs before and I've had a tight left quad only but today I just couldn't get my left quad to pick up it's share of the load. So after 80% of the first volcano lap I through in the towel and stopped trying to hold that 300+ watts then about a quarter way through the second lap I felt like a had taken on a second wind. I could more comfortably hold 90-92 cadence in my slightly lower gear choice for watts in the high 200's. In the end I came up 8 seconds short of match my PR.

Looked at your data and wondered what happened - That explains it - but still with only "part" of a "left quad" - you still manage to dwarf the rest of our power making abilities. haha. I see you have take the strategy of really banging the power on the uphills and letting back on the downhills, which I know from experience is what you want to do in real life. If your speed slows down considerably on uphills, you loose tons of time, and then on decents - not much is gained by going much faster than 35mph, as you are fighting the wind then, best to save the watts and recover a little and save it for the next "climb". This strategy let you use 15 avg less watts then last week, and only loose 8 secs. Pretty amazing. Great ride, even on 1 1/2 quads!

 

[LarryOz]

Wow! Alex makes our Winter TT group 13 strong.
For those of you who don't know: Alex is the "other" strong man besides Jason. Only 140 pounds and I have seen him ride close to 4W/Kg for an hour in a Hare & Hounds race. He stayed at the front the whole hour, while I could not stay with the group for even 10 mins. Very strong Alex is! Great to have him.

That is fantastic. And it is good to see people still setting PB's. Means everyone is getting stronger!
I have 5 of us that have ridden already this week, so the rest of you, don't forget to put in your ride. You have today, Sat and Sun! Go for it. Only 3 weeks left after this week.
And remember - this is really the "test challenge" to get all the kinks out of it, so we can start the "Summer TT Challenge" sometime in early April. It will probably last 6 months, so we can continue the fun and hopefully get many more involved and also many more outside routes too. I have my eye on a local TT course that they do about 30 mins from me, so will probably use that.

 

[RojoRacing]

Looked at your data and wondered what happened - That explains it - but still with only "part" of a "left quad" - you still manage to dwarf the rest of our power making abilities. haha. I see you have take the strategy of really banging the power on the uphills and letting back on the downhills, which I know from experience is what you want to do in real life. If your speed slows down considerably on uphills, you loose tons of time, and then on decents - not much is gained by going much faster than 35mph, as you are fighting the wind then, best to save the watts and recover a little and save it for the next "climb". This strategy let you use 15 avg less watts then last week, and only loose 8 secs. Pretty amazing. Great ride, even on 1 1/2 quads!

I make it a point to ride zwift like I would real life so that includes attacking the real world physics in the same manner. That's also why I always ride with the trainer set to 100% because I want my brain to associate what looks like an increased grade to come with an increase in resistance and a few gears changes. I know it sounds superficial but the mind is a fickle thing and you must how to play it's games to become stronger in the field. This is also why I can use zwift to train for 5000' climbs at 7% while so many others struggle to do the same because they're still riding at a lower trainer setting trying to claim it doesn't effect in game speed and watts are watts. I suspect based on some of the data on here that some of you are riding with the setting at 0% because it's a TT against yourself and you don't want to feel the grade changes. It's time break away from that steady state monotone effort and ride the course for what it is, that's where you're going to fine those next 10-20 seconds.

On the flip side I think I'll connect my Neo to the tacx app and ride in slope mode so I can set it to 1 or 2% grade to see if that'll let me align my preferred cadence with my target power because my gearing selection is making this impossible. I'll still attack the climbs and easy off when going DH because if I don't I'll be losing time compared to these past two week for sure.

 

[LarryOz]

I ride pretty much every morning at 5am so keep me in the loop for Team Cruzbike races as well.

Alex, I think I am going to try and do the 5:35am'sh Hare and Hounds race on Zwift each Wed morning. Seems like a good time and don't mind doing a 1 HR TT each week. Good for the heart!
I also did the 160Km "B" event on Zwift last Saturday. But it was really early at 2:45. It was a blast though, and 3.0 is not that horrible to have to hold. We finished the 100 Miles in 3:45, just 3 mins under my real life Century record, so pretty realistic. I was pretty gassed at the end.
Tomorrow at 2:45am (EST) they are doing a 200Km ride, and I will try and do that too. Good training for the 214 mile Texas RAAM race in Castorville in 2 weeks with Jim & Maria. Raining most of the day here again, so I might as well ride inside again. The time is horrible for us in the US, so it is mostly European guys, but still a great ride if you can force yourself to get up. The group accepts "late joining" too, so you can join in whenever you want, and if you fall of or need a toilet break, you can end your session, restart it and join back in again. I image we will probably average well above 25mph again! Hope to you all you early risers there. I think Hardy and Connie are doing a 250Km outside ride in Georgia - I will you good weather for it!

 

[anotherbrian]

I don't know if I'll be able to participate every week, but I thought I'd give it a try after Jason mentioned a "Cruzbike TT" when I saw him on Innsbruck a couple nights ago.

https://www.strava.com/activities/2202635820

I haven't done any TT'ish rides in a long time and it was poorly paced, so that's probably where I'd make the most gains going forward. I'd probably also gain by setting the trainer to a linear resistance and ignore the hills on Zwift.

 

[Pollock]

I'd probably also gain by setting the trainer to a linear resistance and ignore the hills on Zwift.

No need to adjust your trainer resistance. It is a TT against yourself, not against @RojoRacing besides, if you adjust the resistance, that only gives you an improvement for one week. The next week, you are still trying to beat your PR.