ridethecliche

Ordered a black 41.5 and highlighter green 42 from competitive cyclist in the non track version. I think the 42's will work better.
I think the track ones have a tongue and I'm into the overlap fit of the regular sphyres. Might give the trackies a go if these don't pan out, but I'm over shoe shopping at this point.

burnthesheep

ridethecliche

Pactimo is having a decent sale on some of their winter ish if anyone's looking. I might pick up a jacket and some tights...not that I've ridden in the last month or so.

I really want to go snowboarding today but my back is flaring up a bit after our board trip last week, though I think it started a couple of days after the trip. I'm up for testing it out but really not tryna get a huge flare up right now.

Also the roads are trash and jersians and pennsylvanians can't drive for **** in rain let alone snow/sleet so...

gsteinb

Spring doesn't start until June here. There's snow on the mountains sometimes until July.

Flatballer

Once I can open the pool and start getting it clean and ready I get hopeful. That's usually mid-April. Only a couple months....

TMonk

I got the tron bike my dudes!!! Took me about 9 months, although I was only about 30% indoors and not super religious with climbing AdZ every ride haha.

cmh

Nice Tmonk! Remind me - what do you need to do in zwift to get the tron bike?

rubiksoval

Nice! I finally got mine this winter, too. Took me three entire winters to get it. Felt like forever.

TMonk

You have to climb a cumulative 50,000 feet. It's a bit onerous haha. The bike is marginally faster too on most routes.

edit: oh yes oops, its meters.

himespau 

I think it's 50,000 m not feet. Either that or I'm way overshooting. I need to set it so every workout is AdZ (or better yet Ventoux because it doesn't have the segments to get me to ignore my workout goals) because it's taking forever just riding my usual courses/races. Of course, the fact that I did 30k m climbing while stupidly doing the other 2 challenges first doesn't help.

Psimet2001 

I'm determined to never spend any "drops" or change any bike or equipment on Zwift. Ever. I put on the Computrainer jersey when I started and I am leaving it on for as long as I can. I guess it's good that I always pic the flat routes so I don't have to worry about ever having the Tron bike.

hubcyclist

I have the tron bike but never use it, I have myself set to an s-works tarmac, I think, since it's like my allez but better lol The nice thing about doing all my workouts with TR is that I can simultaneously rack up all the points in zwift without actually doing anything in sim mode. I have 21 million drops at the moment as well, lol I might have purchased the canyon aeroad but I don't really care about what I'm riding, it just happened that I wanted something comparable to what other people were using in a race.

gsteinb

I just don't really get the game effects on zwift. I thought it was about athletics. What's with special features?

Yep

If you're 30% indoors in San Diego, you'd be a 130% indoors in Scotland. Anyway, nice job.

Psimet2001 

Agreed. I used to ask about that and point out the entire point was to train out of complete interest in knowing the motivation. Then it turned into me pointing it out to needle everyone. Now I just shrug it off.

Riding a bike in the dead of winter indoors on a dumb trainer is one of the purest forms of torture ever invented. I figure giving people anything to get their mind off of it is useful if it works.

Also I liken it to someone saying, "well you're training outdoors so why don't you ride the heaviest crappiest bike so you get a better training effect." we have all sorts of reasons and explanations for that. I am sure the Zwift disciples also have the same arguments lined up to justify or explain why these same things matter in a game.

It obviously works.

gsteinb

Does it obviously work? IDK. I think ultimately if their end game is indoor winter training, sure. If it's to be a legit competitive platform I'd think not.

furiousferret

Funny Zwift came up, I was at the shop yesterday and someone referred to my miles as fake. I've been averaging about 300 miles a week on Zwift, and TBH, you throw those same hours outdoors its probably 50-100 miles less. Around here its either up or down, and if its flat your either on a death trap with no shoulder or there are lights every quarter of a mile. I'm only slightly annoyed by it, at the end of the day results is the most important thing so we'll hopefully see this summer.

It would be nice if they showed Kilojoules in Strava because that honestly is a better metric to gauge workloads. Zwift does give a ton of free miles, but so do some group rides. What I do on Zwift is lightyears different than what my teammates are doing on the road.

Yeah, I added it up when I got mine years ago, its like 165k feet.

TMonk

It's fun! You guys are overthinking it.

Zwift can be as much or as little as you want it to be. There will always be people who will be super serious and others who will be insecure, just like anything else really. I think there are even people who even get paid to do it... For me, it's just a reasonably enjoyable way to get more training done in a safe, time efficient and moderately stimulating manner.

I've spent a winter before doing 2x20's religiously on a dumb trainer (hardcore like gsteinb style) and as Psimet2001 suggested, this is way, way better. Do the miles count? IDK, don't care really. The training does. There are some people who do it for fun, some who do it for training, some who do it for competition. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, at times it has been all three, but it's mostly training and all the game-aspects make it stimulating.

On that note, when I was doing my opener ride today (on Zwift), I saw that I was on target to get the fastest time (~1:56) on the Zwift KOM right out of downtown, so it probably gave me another 20w over the last 30s than I otherwise would have. Just one example of the game-aspect.

Oh, I got the jersey btw

himespau 

I kind of think of it like a video game that's good for me. Is it the same as riding outdoors? Obviously not, but I also don't have to worry about weather, stops, drivers who "didn't see me", flats, or having to make the call of shame after a mechanical. I can feel like I'm competing if I want to. Sure, some people may not be playing fair, but that's true of any online video game. There are a lot of things you don't have to do (handling isn't an issue, pack positioning is, but is different than outdoors), but it lets me push myself for a limited time (harder than I would outdoors because of the lack of turns or stops) and then hop off and I'm done.

No need to drive to a race, I just go down to the basement. **** comes up and I can't make it to a race, unless it's one that I'm on a team for, oh well, I can find another one later in the day (or not). It's not like I dropped any registration fees on it. On the other hand, my kindergartener can come down and stand in front of me and start asking me questions while I'm trying to survive deep in the red in the middle of a race, which doesn't happen outdoors.

In shooting for the market of people wanting to use it like I do, they've become successful in that they've gotten a lot of users. The whole bike or wheel upgrades thing is a part of that. I think there less than a 30 second difference between the worst and best setup on a 40 km flat time trial (more if you add in TT bikes or mtbs), but those tiny incremental games get a lot of people to keep playing for their next hit (even if it doesn't mean anything) and the fact that I've got all these miles invested in it means I'm a little less likely to try RGB (especially if all the other people chasing those goals stay on Zwift too).

burnthesheep

If you think that's a good way to annoy somebody..........

Whew, I pissed off a guy real good local to us about 6 months back. Don't get me wrong, it's some North Korea level torture to sit indoors on a bike for 14 hours at any power level. But this crap about "vEveresting" while only ever putting out 130w and spinning at 85 or 90rpm the entire time while watching Netflix is bunch of horse dooo dooo.

He rode, I forget, like 14 hours on Zwift up and down the Alpe. Only on like 130w or something, at like 85 rpm. So...........you running a 15t front chainring on that bad boy and at 36t in back?

I pissed him off by saying "it's not a true vEveresting unless you did it at 100% trainer difficulty". Then ensued a back and forth about theoretical gear ratios.

I'm sorry. When I first bough my Propel, I weighed more like 180lb instead of 160lb. I put a 50/34 on it and a 30t in back. Even on 34/30 ain't no damn way you're spinning up the Alpe at 85rpm on 130 to 140w.

So, yeah.........N Korean level torture......but I think they need to mod the rules on vEveresting to make it at 100% trainer difficulty.

Even then, it still feels easier than outdoors to climb. I put my trainer in ERG for a tempo/SS 2 hour nonstop workout this weekend. 7000 ft. Easiest 7000 ft I've ever done in my life despite it being a tough 2 hours of solid power (for me). I think ride time was 2:20 for 7000ft including the several mile runup to Alpe and descending Alpe for 12min after the first ascent.

rubiksoval

This is precisely why I don't let Zwift upload to my Strava.

I just upload my Garmin to Strava and then adjust miles accordingly to make the average speed commensurate with the effort as my Garmin is usually saying 17-18 mph unless I'm in a race. I add whatever is necessary to equal ~19.5 mph -20 for my weekly average speed and then I have year round consistency for mileage tracking.

rubiksoval

And doesn't Strava show it? Mine shows up right under ride time. Then the stuff in orange is from Strava Sauce (?) I think.

burnthesheep

Random different topic......

We have a driver's ed school that loves to use our neighborhood to teach driving students.

Every one of them, different instructors, has the students go down the street towards our house. They get to the cul de sac, they cross over to the wrong side of the road in the last 50 yards then proceed the "wrong way" for how I'd expect one to drive through a cul de sac.

I feel they would some day hit a car head on entering the cul de sac the "normal" way.

What gives with this? Is this something I've done wrong my whole life? Or is this driver's ed place nuts?

Flatballer

I'm gonna need a paint diagram (or even better, a video), but this sounds nuts. I always stay to the right, even when entering, driving around, and leaving a cul-de-sac. What benefit are they even supposedly getting from going the wrong way?

himespau 

What do you think is the wrong way? They should be going around it counterclockwise just like any other traffic circle/roundabout. Or am I wrong? That's how everyone here does it except a couple people who live on the "exit" of the cul de sac who cut off and some truck drivers (I assume that's something about it being easier for them to see that they're not hitting mailboxes if they turn right and go clockwise around it.