It’s the penultimate day for our three Zwift Academy men’s finalists in Capetown, South Africa. Today begins with critical one on one interviews with team management followed by lead-out sprint training with Mark Cavendish.
Learn more about the 3 finalists >
Matt, Kev, and Greg share racing tips — positioning, course planning, gearing, and more — in this episode. They begin with tips from the pros gathered at the Innsbruck worlds, but eventually transition into Zwift racing tips with a focus on training for indoor races.
The Zwift PowerUp Cycling Podcast features training tips from host Matt Rowe (Rowe & King), with regular co-hosts Greg Henderson (Coach Hendy) and Kev Poulton (Powerhouse Cycling).
Episode 57 of Zwiftcast has been released, with a big focus on the new and upcoming Zwift features.
Simon, Shane and Nathan convene again for another hour of chat on all matters Zwifty.
The trio begin by getting the full story of Shane’s YouTube ban and how it affected him, before moving on to discuss another new extension to Watopia. “Mostly flat”, we’re told. The Zwiftcasters hope that really means rolling terrain.
And it’s definitely coming – world switching. We discuss whether Jon Mayfield’s solution is an elegant and clever thing, or a bit less than what Zwifters wanted.
Quite a lot is changing in the way Zwift could work, and the introduction of Double Draft or True Draft as the podcasters would prefer it to be called could end up as really significant. Simon, Shane and Nathan discuss the devil out of it, with input from racer and podcaster Greg Leo and aerodynamics expert Bert Blocken, an academic who’s modeled the draft effect in a big peloton.
The rivals to Zwift have been making some noise, with CVRCade the loudest. What does it all mean? The chaps chew it over.
After a quick catch up on trainer news, the Zwiftcasters round this one off with a discussion on Zwift Interval Art.
And finally, Simon has a bad knee.
We’re still in Capetown, South Africa where our three Zwift Academy finalists are fighting to win a contract with Dimension Data’s U23 squad. Fatigue is starting to set in after a few days of hard riding…
Today the finalists will do an early morning climbing ride with Dimension Data’s Ben King, followed by a very special “bike handover” with Qhubeka in the afternoon. Qhubeka is on target to give away over 17,000 bikes this year, and the Zwift community is responsible for 10% of those!
Two more days to go!
Learn more about the 3 finalists >
In this episode:
The DIRT Friday Sprintapalooza is a group ride happening at two different times each Friday. I wanted to let everyone know about this fun ride because I’ll be leading the new Pacific version beginning tomorrow. Hope to see you out on course (and no, you don’t have to be a dad to join us)!
Sprintapalooza was created so Zwifters could have fun and still feel fresh for the weekend. We start out at 2.0 w/kg and slowly ramp it up to a steady 2.5 w/kg. When we approach a sprint area we try, as a group, to go as fast as possible. This means forming lead-outs and talking on Discord so we can all work together to meet our goal.
And what’s our goal? It’s to get the green jersey, and best our time from the previous lap.
Join us on Discord at https://discord.gg/sUnwqPZ
Ride Times
Welcome back to Capetown, South Africa where our three Zwift Academy finalists are doing their best to prove they are worthy of a contract with Dimension Data’s U23 squad.
Their menu begins with a three-hour road ride punctuated with hill reps, all in preparation for today’s Zwift race which will see Martin, Alex and Oliver take on each other and 400 other Zwifters in a race up Alpe du Zwift.
Wondering how the Alpe race went? Watch it below…
Learn more about the 3 finalists >
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We’re back with the Specialized Zwift Academy Team on this one. I really find this inspiring content to be on a very high production level. I’m not a triathlete, but now I’m cheering heavily for my buddy’s attempt to qualify. I’m sure he’d need someone to support him on site…
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I’ve been glad about headwinds helping me slow down on descents before, but this is Zwift Insider and that Headwind is a fancy new gadget. Ronald’s review of the Wahoo Headwind might change your Christmas wish list.
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Maybe this one could spark some discussion. What really is the ultimate Zwift setup? As Juliett got hers sponsored by Zwift itself, we might say: this video tells us what Zwift thinks is the setup to own.
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TrainerRoad’s “Ask a Cycling Coach” #184. Zwift and Trainerroad are an awesome combination, and just last week we featured a video on how to use both together. As we’re early in the trainer season, this feature on long-term training planning should be a must-watch. (Takes some time, but so does your Zwift session.)
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“Doesn’t mean I can’t go and date other apps” – twelve seconds in the video, Triathlon Taren demonstrates his standup talent. FulGaz has developed a little bit since we last featured it in the video series. Here’s how it can be a beneficial add-on to your Zwift training.
Catch up with Matt Stephens in Capetown, South Africa as the men’s Zwift Academy finalists are put to the test on day 2. Their day begins with a three-hour road ride with some hard efforts, but it is followed by the dreaded Zwift ramp test.
Learn more about the 3 finalists >
When you begin a workout in Zwift you may notice a “stress points” rating. And when you finish any Zwift ride you’ll see a guy at the top-right telling you how hard you worked.
Where do those numbers come from, and how are they useful?
Zwift’s “stress points” are really just TSS–the same number you see when you end a ride. Training Stress Score was developed by TrainingPeaks as a key workout metric. It combines both time and intensity into one metric which indicates how much stress your workout is putting on your body.
Let’s dig into TSS a bit more to learn how it is calculated and used.
The TSS (Training Stress Score) and IF (Intensity Factor) metrics were created by Dr. Andy Coggan and Hunter Allen. Coggan also created NP (Normalized Power). TSS, IF and NP would eventually be purchased by TrainingPeaks and trademarked.
Coggan, Allen, and TrainingPeak’s Joe Friel have done amazing work developing metrics and tools that help us train smart. They deserve kudos for the many ways they have helped cyclists take their training to the next level.
(Side note: if you’re ever looking for good books on training with power, pick up Coggan and Allen’s Training and Racing with a Power Meter and/or Friel’s The Cyclist’s Training Bible. Both incredible resources for anyone interested in getting faster on the bike!)
It’s worth noting that calculating TSS requires power numbers. Twenty years ago these numbers weren’t accessible to most cyclists, but nowadays with affordable power meters and smart trainers many cyclists have power data for every ride. It’s a great time to be alive and training!
If you haven’t yet done so, I recommend heading to TrainingPeaks.com (or downloading their app) and creating a free account. Upload all your ride data to this account and you will have TSS and other metrics stored for every ride.
Here is the formula for calculating TSS:
TSS = [(sec x NPÂ x IF)/(FTP x 3600)] x 100
Where “sec” is how many seconds your workout lasted, NP is normalized power, IF is intensity factor, and FTP is your functional threshold power. Most of those numbers will be familiar to you, but “Intensity Factor” may be new. It’s simple though: IF is the ratio of Normalized Power to your FTP for any given workout. So if an athlete with an FTP of 300 watts completed a workout averaging 200 NP their IF would be .67.
TSS calculation examples (assuming FTP of 250 watts):
Once you understand the formula you will see that you can earn more than 100 TSS within a single workout, but only if the workout is longer than an hour.
Since TSS is based on your personal FTP, a TSS of 100 is relatively the “same” for a professional athlete as it is for a beginner. This is the genius of the TSS metric.
As an example, if a pro cyclist “Pro Joe” went out and did a 1-hour ride that resulted in a TSS of 100, this would be a max effort for him. In simplified terms, if Joe’s FTP was 350 watts, this means he would have held 350 watts for the full hour. Animal!
Then a mere mortal, let’s call him “Cycling Bob”, comes along with an FTP of 225. Bob goes out and hammers for an hour, holding 225 watts the whole time. His TSS will be 100 as well.
Even though Joe and Bob moved at very different speeds during their rides, they both gave it their all for that hour. Their relative effort levels were the same, which is why their TSS is the same.
This is a massive topic, and one in which I’m no expert. What I can say with confidence is it’s the best metric I’ve found for how hard a day’s effort really was, and that helps inform my recovery needs that follow.
Many coaches and athletes also use cumulative TSS (per week or per month) to figure out the volume of training which will leads to improvements but avoid overtraining. Athletes might ramp up their TSS leading into a big event, building each week from (for example) 600 TSS to 700 then 800.
There is much more to this topic, but we’ll leave it here for today. I’m curious: do you pay attention to TSS? How have you found it useful in your training? Comment below!
