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The weather's gone to poo poo and I'm about to have much less free time so I threw one of my bikes on the turbo and tried out Zwift today. Pleasantly surprised at how much (relatively speaking) I enjoyed listening to podcasts and riding on Zwift compared to my previous turbo attempts of riding to just a power target and watching YouTube/TV. I mean it makes sense that it's popular for a reason but somehow I resisted trying it out even though I like when Number Go Up (and there's so many numbers here!) In about 50 trainer rides this was the first time I went for more than an hour - and definitely could have gone longer had I known better what to expect and how to pace myself for Zwift. I'm sure the ANC from the earbuds helped a lot as well, as a big fan + Tacx Flux S + lovely 3x9 Altus drivetrain combines for quite the racket.
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Oct 12, 2023 13:30
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 22:45 |
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Rode up Alpe du Zwift today for the first time, that was fun. ~3.2 W/kg, happy with that. For Zwift in general, the main thing I'm finding annoying is getting the gearing right. I've got a hybrid bike on the turbo and it has 3x9 with 48/36/26 x 11-32 gears which means that on flats (not to mention downhills) I'm always in the big ring and usually on the 5th or 6th gear when aiming at about 90 RPM and 200 or so watts - and this is at the Zwift "difficulty" set to like 5%, otherwise it's even worse on the downhills. For the Alpe climb I had it at like 40% so I could keep the cassette in the middle three and either spin on the small ring or push myself in the middle ring when going up, switching to the big ring for the hairpins (and still having to really spin that thing to get power out at those hairpins) Looking around on the Zwift forums and reddit I'm definitely not the first one to run into this annoyance, so a bit of a bummer that Zwift seemingly isn't interested in adding something like "change baseline resistance" to their options. I did find this QZ app thing that supposedly lets you do just that, but unfortunately it didn't seem to support my Tacx Flux S off the bat (though the developer seems pretty active so I should bite the bullet and ask them) The obvious "solution" is "just" getting a cheap road bike to stick on the trainer... Otherwise I'm just happy that indoor riding is now much more tolerable to me  Last year I rode outside all through the winter (meaning ice & snow) but I just started at a new job and have less spare time, so getting an efficient workout done on the turbo is great.
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Oct 21, 2023 14:14
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Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:Does the Tacx app let you adjust the wheel diameter? Yeah I know it’s wheel off, but this is a common issue on Kickrs that you can fix by maxing out the wheel diameter in the app. Thanks for the suggestion though. Hypnolobster posted:With the "new" Zwift Hub having virtual gearing, it's pretty likely that most other trainers will follow suit and start supporting it (in Zwift, at least) in time. That solves pretty much all gearing issues IME. e: Angryhead posted:Rode up Alpe du Zwift today for the first time, that was fun. E-mailed the developer two hours ago, got instructed to download Nrf Connect to get some info on the trainer, sent him some screenshots, got invited to TestFlight builds, did some configuring and restarting of the app & Zwift and as a result: does exactly what was needed, i.e. using about the same gears as I usually would outside on flat roads on that bike and putting out the appropriate amount of watts!
Angryhead fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Oct 22, 2023 |
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Oct 22, 2023 12:27
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 kill me bro - 25 laps of the Volcano route to grab that badge too.  Thanks to the first half of the newest Mission Impossible, GCN-s Giro photography film and finally a combo of Machine Girl's music and podcasts. Appropriate enough for the first day of the season where I woke up to snow on the ground. Apples and oranges since I don't have a road bike IRL but on my gravel bike my fastest 100k outside solo has been about 3h:28m.
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Oct 28, 2023 11:47
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I'm so tempted to get a dedicated indoor bike now, after about a month of indoor riding and with ~4-5 months of poo poo weather ahead. Stages SB 20 is currently 2099€, the KICKR Bike Shift is being sold locally for 3k and the Tacx Neo bike like 3.8k. Friggin' expensive, and my Tacx Flux S works fine but all the noise and potential vibrations generated from the setup keep from using it early in the morning. The idea of a near-silent thing sounds real nice...
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Nov 7, 2023 09:15
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I'm rocking a headband and recently switched from wearing wristbands to fingerless cycling gloves, works better for me re: sweat. Also climbed Alpe de Zwift twice yesterday and got the drat gloves both times 
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Jan 13, 2024 15:08
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I'm a bit worried about sweating on a tablet if it's directly ahead of you and doing an effort out of the saddle, but it's so standard that it must be a non-issue, especially if you wipe it after a ride. Still keeping mine off to the side a bit though. Anyways, finally went for a proper effort up it and crushed the sub-hour Alpe  Confident that I could knock off a minute or two in my current form, had a bit left in the tank at the end... Of course I still didn't get the dumb wheels. Been consistently doing ~12 hour weeks on Zwift this year, very satisfied with that too.
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Feb 29, 2024 19:05
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 22:45 |
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Did the Four Horsemen route on Zwift today finally the Alpe rewarded me with those dang wheels - my fueling strategy of "eat a piece of gummy candy on every hairpin... ok maybe two... and one more for each km" for it left me feeling pretty sick two thirds of the way up the Alpe so I'm especially glad to have been rewarded for my suffering.Withnail posted:upgraded my zwift setup
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Mar 2, 2024 19:13
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