Originally Posted by
carpediemracing
Ha. Well there's that too.
Around here there was a Masters rider that was out of the scene for a while. Then he popped up on Zwift, was rolling around at 5 w/kg for long periods of time. Everyone figured he just needed to calibrate or something. Then the outside racing started and he rode away from the fields, time trialing alone. Ends up as his son was getting way into racing and the dad wanted to support. Both had a tremendous season that year. The son (14 or 15 at the time?) could work in a P123 race, and contest a 3 race. The dad was doing super well in M45 races.
This is where I do feel Zwift is not an accurate demographic of all cycling at all. You've gotta be a bit more "into it" to pay the monthly fee for virtual cycling and even more into it to buy a $500 to $1200 smart trainer and fan and gear to do it indoors. To me, that narrows the scope from a ton of your C and B group real life riders a whole lot. In other words, the average power and w/kg on Zwift is probably a bit higher due to the population difference versus the real world.
If all those folks were there also, it might make more sense. So the story of the dad and son you presented would be much more common on Zwift than on the local isolated scene.
I'll tell you the folks smashing it now..........the freaking triathletes who can't go swimming. You go from folks who were just "middle of the road" Kona athletes doing 20 hrs a week 3 combined sports down to just two sports and probably dominantly the bike to avoid running overuse injury.........and yeah. It could get nuts real quick. Folks with no top end but a mammoth base and ftp suddenly applying that to intensity. Yikes.