popeye

/www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/pros-explain-why-crush-road-205400224.html

Now you have an excuse.

burnthesheep

These two statements don't seem to complement each other very well. 5w/kg for 5min literally sounds like it should be nothing for a P/1/2 rider. To podium a P/1/2 TT race I would damn hope you could hold 5wk/g for a full 10 mile time trial.

Especially since those C riders doing that likely got bumped from official results anyway.

Sure, 5w/kg isn't "easy". But if I can do it.........he damn well should be able to do it. Multiple times.

“I can sit in most regional Pro-1-2 USAC races just fine as a 46-year-old Cat 2. Very good at TT. Have podiumed in CA state TT in the Pro1/2 race.”

In Zwift, it was another story, he wrote, “I’m fairly awful. I sometimes struggle to hang with a “C” race –even C races have guys who’ll do ~5W/kg for four to five minutes, which isn’t easy for me.

DrIsotope

In other news, I watched a couple of Navy SEALs get obliterated playing CoD against a pair of pro gamers. The SEALs couldn't get their heads around being able to just jump off the roofs of buildings, or having unlimited lives.

As a gross generalization, Zwifting is to road racing what playing professional CoD is to being a Navy SEAL.

rubiksoval

Yeah man. That's why I'm a Cat 1 in real life and was getting dropped in the Cs on Zwift. Gotta approach it as its own thing with its own "rules" and "strategies."

rubiksoval

P/1/2 time trialing is its own thing, and I don't think most would consider it "racing" in the same vein as actual mass-start racing, and with enough attention to detail, it's certainly possible to ride very quickly on relatively little watts (27+ on 300w isn't unheard of around here).

And in mass start racing, you can do a whole lot if you've got the skills and experience. I'm not surprised by the 5w/kg for 5 minute thing, honestly. It's certainly not "nothing", and for an overweight Cat 2 who's been racing for 20 years and can still find the podium, it may indeed be something. Most road races and all crits where I live do not require five minute efforts; they require lots of shorter, more variable efforts. You can certainly do well without superb fitness if you know how.

This is the difference between training and racing. All that matters in racing is results.

Athens80

What they've figured out:

rubiksoval

I wish they'd get rid of powerups in races. Super dumb.

LAJ

Why shouldn't racing a crit in your garage have something like that?

Germanrazor

I use Sufferlandria.

rubiksoval

If they are going to use it, they should at least include banana peels or turtle shells or something interesting.

burnthesheep

I would agree then. I have no experience. Period. I mean, enough races to count on a single hand "on road" counts as no experience. So my power isn't utilized well.

TT wise, I can see that also. If he's a bit bigger then maybe it's a solid amount of watts for his TT's. A larger weight times a little smaller w/kg is still a pretty big number.

Voodoo76

Been on since Beta and kind of agree with this. The challenge with Zwift racing is strategy wise it's almost the inverse of live.

Pretty much every Zwift race I've ridden the big selection is the first 3 minutes. Miss that and you are racing for 10th. My opinion it's that the draft model being no where close to live that makes this a viable strategy. Even in double draft races. Live racing that's not a play, everybody fresh is just gonna sit in. So I think to some degree a lot of experience live racing works against you.

guachi

Having done only a few Zwift races I can absolutely agree with all of these. I was in the lead pack in a B group race on my favorite course and didn't push over the top of a hill (the only real hill) and of the 20 people in the front, 12 took off and eight of us were left to reform. I took no more than a few seconds recovery but that was enough and I had to put power back on the pedals.