Zwift Team Time Trials 5-14-20 Video

ccooper

ccooper

Active Member
Watching the captain, I see that his pace is pretty binary. Either in the red near 400 watts or in the blue/gray around 200 watts. Is this the way you ride if you want to keep a tight group? I've been doing a steadier pace, excepting of course when I'm pulling.
 
RojoRacing

RojoRacing

Donut Powered Wise-guy
No he and Ken were on our premier team earlier in the day so this is race # 2 for them so their attentiveness to their pace may have been a little loose. I personally am more steady but even still I can’t just sit at 250 watts and recover in the group, if I did I would end up hurting others. When the leader drops back they want to fall to the rear so everyone else needs to surge around them because if some is just holding 250 they’ll get stuck behind him as he falls back. It becomes a game of chicken, ether you surge to go around them or they surge to grab the rider ahead if nether happen you both fall off. So a TTT on Zwift requires reading the group second by second learning your teammates quirks. For example the link rider #2 would not pull around and let me drop to the rear on several occasions after my pull and gaps would open forcing me to surge to close the gap because I was expecting to end up behind him. Mid race when I’d drop back I planned to not drop behind him and it worked better.

anyway the pacing in the group is nothing like a solo TT but when taking your pull you can more closely emulate those smooth solo TT efforts if you can handle it. Nathan our team leader and myself are the lightest riders so 400 watt pulls are close to 100watts over our FTP which is hard when you only get to recover at near you FTP. On the other hand B.K is a heavyweight rider with and FTP of just over 400 watts so at my FTP he’s recovering and just to hold his wheel guys like Nathan and I need to put in an effort similar to a pull.

So yeah if you try and just ride a steady effort in a TTT your group will end up all over the place.
 
ccooper

ccooper

Active Member
When I finish my pull I've been backing off entirely which lets me drop to the rear pretty easily. Of course, it then requires a little surge to get my speed up to that of the pack, but that's not too bad if I time it well.

The biggest difference that I noticed compared to our team is that when it is time to pull the next rider is right there at the lead within a few seconds. That acceleration is missing in our TTT, which means that the current leader ends up riding for some extra seconds waiting for his replacement. Sometimes the replacement doesn't get there for quite some time. That's probably part of the reason why we do 1 minute pulls instead of 30 seconds like you guys.
 
RojoRacing

RojoRacing

Donut Powered Wise-guy
If you notice all our pulls are on the minute and 30s so even without calling out who is next and when we already know exactly when we should be surging to the front. The main reason we call out who is next is that everyone is maxed out and mental fatigue will make you quickly forget who is or was on the front. I wish we would all pick a different jersey so for example the blue rider knows he is after the yellow rider is was after the red rider and so on. We wouldn't need to keep such a close eye on the rider list or call outs. The other reason we call out who is next is even though rider 3 may be taking their pull, it's possible they were late to get up there is someone else accidentally surged past so if I glance at who is one the front I may see rider 6 up there and think 7 is next. In the video when Nathan starts talking and forgets to call out the next rider it's my voice you hear interrupting him to call the next rider because like people driving their cars riders also can't hold a conversation and focus on the task at hand.

I'm not saying your teams aren't pushing hard but I really feel as the teams get faster the margin for error in keeping the group together narrows extensively.

Setup your team to rotate at set intervals using the in game timer and make simple # assignments to call out the rotations, it will make the rotation predictable and I can't stress enough how important being predictable is when you are at 95% HR.
 
RojoRacing

RojoRacing

Donut Powered Wise-guy
@ccooper upon watching a bit of Nathan’s video from his earlier race I say he is much more bipolar with his watts than the average rider. His style remind me of the kids riding across town on BMX bikes, pedal hard fast then coast until you do it again and again.

this video also shows what it takes to go 2 minutes faster than what my team did last night.

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/620884229
 
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