sanmateoclimber

Hey all,

Starting dipping my toe into the Zwift waters over the last few weeks... pretty cool but somewhat confusing. I've got various questions if anybody wants to dig in.

This is my first time measuring power. Neat. I'd love to get into zone based training and look forward to playing around with interval programs. I did a factory spindown on my kickr core, and did a ramp test that gave me an FTP of 256. I'm skeptical that I could actually hold that output for an hour or whatever... how do Zwift ramp tests compare to more standard FTP tests? Are they inflated or anything? Is there a preferable way to determine a baseline FTP on my trainer?

I'm finding that I really don't have a good sense for how to dial in and maintain a certain amount of output, and it fluctuates a lot. Is it normally difficult for riders who are new to power measurement to work in consistent zones? I can tell my legs "okay now increase from 220W to 240W," but they just respond "yeah actually we have no idea what you're talking about..." Anything I can do to improve at this, or does it just take time?

I moved the "realism" of the resistance changes on hills from the default 50% to 100%. I can't understand why I wouldn't want the indoor experience to feel as much like the outdoor as possible. But I know a lot of people don't set that at 100%. Can someone explain the logic to me? It just seems like if I want to get better at transitioning from a flat surface to a 8% grade hill in real life, then the resistance of an 8% virtual hill on the trainer ought to be as comparable as possible; I totally don't understand the counterargument.

Lastly, how do I suck less? Based on my 3.08 w/kg FTP, I raced in the C category of a 30 min-ish race on Wednesday. I think I came in 21st place out of 71 males, pretty good and probably pretty well suited to my ability. I also just thought it was a really fun and motivating way to push hard on an indoor weeknight ride. So tonight, I figured I'd try a cool looking group ride (Pedal Racing Training Ride,) which is category B. Dear reader, I got dropped hard. I ate dust about 32 min into an hour-ish ride when the group kicked it up to 3.4 W/kg. I really liked the idea of this ride (the intensity ratchets up with passing laps, and includes recovery periods; seemed like good fun training,) but I clearly lacked the stamina. So I'm wondering, are there other good social training rides that are better suited to a C+ rider? I was surprised at what seemed like an enormous difference in difficulty between the two experiences. And considering I still finished out the 9 laps ahead of like 40% of the other starters who got dropped, I'm wondering if this ride was actually harder than a standard B ride. Would people recommend group rides and races as a way to push my endurance, or should I really be focusing on ERG stuff for that?