Greg and Adam discuss the upcoming NYC course release and the strong connections between Zwift HQ and Central Park then take a listener question “Why do I keep getting dropped on downhills?” The answer may be the trainer difficulty setting…
Visit inthepens.com to access the podcast archives.
Editor’s note: Ian Murray is using Zwift to train for the International Triathlon Union Long Course World Championships held in Odense/Fyn, Denmark July 2018. His weekly Zwift Insider series discusses the previous week’s training and the plan for the upcoming week.
Ok folks. It’s that time. It’s race week! Well, it’s actually race eve right now as I type this. The bike is checked in, and the transition bags are nestled snuggly in their respective piles in transition. Now, I’m just waiting on a pizza dinner, final preparations, and bed time.
If you remember from Week 31, I had to buy a new bike the day before departing on the first leg of my trip. Prior to heading out on the final leg to Denmark, I got in one ride of about nine miles, so we were not yet very acquainted. Sunday and Monday were pretty much rest days due to travel, so I had to wait until Tuesday to get some time in the saddle. A few minutes after setting out on my ride, I got out of the congested area and put the pedals to the test out on the open road. Well, it wasn’t really the open road. It was a separated bike lane that ran alongside the open road. Oh yeah, this place is awesome for riding! After a quick 30 miles on the bike, I transitioned to the run to see how my legs would feel after 90 minutes on the new ride. It felt pretty good, so I was satisfied enough with the fit. On Wednesday and Thursday, we got in a couple short swims, working on a few skills to prep for the swim start.
Later in the day on Thursday, Deirdre, an Evil Elf Racing and ODivaZ athlete, and I ran most of the run course to get a feel for the trail and the one hill on the four laps. If all goes well, it should be a fairly fast course. Friday came, and I knocked out a quick brick before heading to the athlete brief, bike turn in and the expo. At the expo, I had the opportunity to chat with Alex Rasmussen from Zwift and ride on the Wahoo Kickr Climb for a few minutes. Alex was logged in on his profile and was kind enough to lower the weight to my weight to really see my effort in W/kg while on the climb. After that, I spent about 10 minutes in some Normatec boots, which I did not like as much as my Air Relax boots. Well, they’re really comfortable but not five times the price as comfortable. Finally, we headed back to the house. Whew, it was a busy day.
Now, we’re ready to go. I about to sit down and chow down on some pizza to load my body up for tomorrow. After that, I’ll get the final nutrition ready in my bottles, prep my morning bag, and get some sleep. The weather looks a bit chilly, but favorable for tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes. For anyone wanting to follow the live tracking, you can find it here at https://www.sportstiming.dk/event/5608/tracking.
Sorry for the short post, but it’s been crazy busy here on race week. Plus, I want to save up some words for the race report, as I tend to get a bit wordy on those.
There’s a great benefit when you sign up for the 2018 Zwift Academy: a free premium account at Today’s Plan during the course of the Academy! Your premium account with Today’s Plan will open just before the Academy begins. This is a great perk. It will also power a special feature this year: being able to see and compare your efforts with the top fifty results in the Academy.
Here is Today’s Plan page for those new to the Zwift Academy and Today’s Plan. There are a lot of unique analysis tools you will have available. You’ll want to familiarize yourself with them, especially if you are serious about the Academy.
When you open your account, you will need to fill in your information of course. You will be able to construct your dashboard. One thing I love is the PI (Performance Index). It is a graph that helps you see your strengths and weaknesses. Here is a video explaining how to use the PI:
My graph shows I do well in the long sprint zone but not in peak power or a short sprints. The zones are Peak Power, Sprint, Long Sprint, Lactate Tolerance, Maximum Aerobic Power, Sustained Aerobic Power, Short Endurance, and finally Long Endurance. It can be quite a challenge to target one of these zones as a max effort. At times you should work on your weaknesses and at times, on your strengths.
There are helpful articles on the Today’s Plan blog. I suggest you read how you can understand your activities. Here’s the page: Today’s Plan Blog – Activity Graph. You will also want to see your power curve and best efforts on your dashboard. It will list your best efforts from 3 seconds to 3 hours. To start with your background, you can do one of two things:
If you entered the 2017 Academy and opened your account last year, all your Zwift activities will have continued to upload. You can see your activities in the basic account. However, if you chose not to continue premium membership last year, you won’t be able to see the full analysis of your activities with the exception of your heart analysis. When the Zwift Premium access begins in August, your information will be up to date.
The Academy will undoubtedly begin with an updated FTP test workout. I would recommend doing a twenty minute test in July. Many trainers recommend doing some 5 second sprint efforts, a 20 second, a one minute, and a five minute effort to help in evaluating your abilities. This will start your Academy with a good data background. A twenty minute test in July will also help you successfully pace your August FTP test. Here is a view of the 2017 test:Â Zwift Academy 2017 FTP Test. Note: To get your first Zwift FTP number, you only need the 20 minute segment. First timers might want to skip the three 30 second sprints as they may take too much of your energy unless you are able to do that kind of a warm up.
Today’s Plan premium access includes training plans. You might not have time to do an entire plan during the schedule of Academy efforts. However, it will be well worth your time to select the type of training you want to do and allow them to show on your calendar. You can view them, watch a brief video introduction provided by Today’s Plan, and download them onto your computer. It is pretty easy to drag the workout into your Zwift ‘workouts’ file. They will stay in the ‘Custom Workout’ section of Zwift, ready any time you are.
I found the support from Today’s Plan to be very helpful last year. It was my first Academy and I needed a little help here and there. I went to my.zwift.com, downloaded a few previous rides, and uploaded them to Today’s Plan with some guidance from one of their videos. Go to your My Zwift Activities and click ‘download’ to retrieve the file you want. If you do email their support crew, please remember, Today’s Plan support team is located in Australia. They may be going to bed when you are sending a question to their support team.
It’s going to be a great summer (or winter) next month.
In this first episode of their new racing-centric podcast, Greg Leo and Adam Zimmerman introduce the podcast, discuss their top 3 Zwift race courses and recent training for live events.
See all Zwift route details here >
Visit inthepens.com to access the podcast archives.
This week, Nathan and Karissa chat with Lionel Vujasin, winner of the CVR World Cup live race event in Vancouver. They talk about Lionel’s history in mountain biking and cyclocross, what it was like to compete on Zwift in a live event, and the future of Zwift racing.
They also dig into the following:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O2sUlUZhpU]
Zwift Community Live’s Weekly Wind Up features hosts Nathan Guerra and Karissa Minn discussing the week’s happenings on Zwift. Find Zwift Community Live at ZwiftCommunityLive.com, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch.
Editor’s note: Ian Murray is using Zwift to train for the International Triathlon Union Long Course World Championships held in Odense/Fyn, Denmark July 2018. His weekly Zwift Insider series discusses the previous week’s training and the plan for the upcoming week.
It’s taper week. I hate taper week usually. That’s because normally I drop my volume significantly during this week compared to previous weeks to bring my fatigue levels down. Due to the crazy travel program over the last five weeks, my volume really hasn’t been all that high since mid-May. It’s really been more of a struggle to maintain a high level of fitness. That being said, this taper would be a little different, as I had some catch-up to do on the bike and in the pool.
On Monday morning, I headed out on the bike just after 6 AM. The humidity was already picking up as I made my way to Haines Point to knock out an Endurance Lab workout, Pick up the Pace. Traffic on the trail and road closures in the park made it a little difficult to get all of my “stars” from the workout, but I got close. More importantly, I had no issues holding any of the target wattages for the prescribed times. In fact, it was more an issue of keeping my legs in check. After finishing up the workout, I made my way back to the house. Rolling through Old Town Alexandria, my right brake lever popped out of the bullhorn. That was no bueno since I was riding amongst the cars. Now, it didn’t come off because the brake cable and the Di2 cable kept it attached. It did make hand placement on the bar rather tricky, so I got a good core workout over the last mile or so. I made it safely home and ate something quickly before heading to the pool. After a short 35-minute swim, I headed in to work to take care of a couple of admin things before returning to the house to begin the long process of packing. Well, we weren’t really packing. We were more taking stock of what we had shipped in the move or carried with us and bouncing that against my race packing list. The next day, we changed up the routine and…. ok, we did not change anything. We headed for the pool where I did a 3K test. To hit the magical 3K number, I did the math and roughly came out with 3250, so I rounded it up to 3300 yards to account for any navigational challenges that might occur during the open water swim. As I proceeded through the workout, I realized that I kept getting a little faster every 1000 yards. My target for the test was roughly 51 minutes for the 3250. I ended up finishing the 3300 in 50:26. I was absolutely stoked. Despite limited swimming in the last month, it was my fastest time at that distance. Oh yeah!
Unfortunately, that’s when the awesomeness of the week started to go a little haywire. We got home from the pool, and I started to get to work on the bike to fix the brake lever that had gotten loose. Somehow the retaining bolt that expands the collar on the brake lever had gotten very loose, requiring me to remove the rear brake cable. Great news…except for the fact that my stand, tools, and extra brake cable are all on a boat somewhere between Santo Domingo and the US. Luck was on my side, though, as my local bike shop Conte’s took care of me, fixing the bike that night so I could pick it up on the morning of the 4th of July. Happy Independence Day to me! Speaking of that morning, I went for a little run. Well, I planned on doing about 13 or so, and I had plotted out my water stops along the trail going north towards DC. Turns out, I planned poorly. My first planned water stop turned out to be a water fountain that was out of order. That was about 3.5 miles into the run. No problem. My next planned stop would be at mile 6 at a park near Reagan National Airport. Nope. Wrong again. I pushed on a little more in a futile effort to find a water fountain. At a little more than 6.5 miles into the run, I relented and turned around to head back. I ended up taking a slightly different route home on which I knew for sure that had functioning water fountains. The downside was that I had to spend more time in the sun rather than the nice shade on the trail. I didn’t care, though: I needed the water, as it was hot as all get out. An hour and forty minutes or so, I finally made it home and headed straight to cool off.
After a quick bite to eat, I swung by the bike shop to pick it up and pack it for the trip. In the process of disassembling it, I took a picture and posted it to instagram, tagging the bike company. This key event both saved me and sent my world into a chaos. The next morning, I got online to check my email and found one from the bike company. Unfortunately, the frame was not deemed legal by the International Triathlon Union yet. Thus, I would not be able to use the bike at the race. Oh, I got this information four hours before heading to the airport for the first leg of the trip down to Florida. I went in to full-on panic mode. I checked the race website to see if I could still rent a bike. Nope. All bikes were sold out. Then, my wife came up with a brilliant plan. Buy a new bike. I knew that I married her for a reason. She’s a genius! I reached out to two companies that I had been interested in for a while. One was in Florida, and I figured that I could go to the HQ to get a fit if necessary, and the other one was known for amazing customer service. The first one to answer was Premier Tactical, and the owner of the company Dan Keegan answered the phone. I explained the situation to him, and he immediately jumped into action. Within a matter of minutes, we had talked through a preliminary fit to match my current setup, and he got to work on putting the bike together. In less than three hours, Dan had put the bike together, packed it in the included bike case, and dropped it at FEDEX to ship to my parents’ house in Florida. Dan saved my race. Now, I would never recommend using a new bike at a race if you haven’t trained on it, but using a new bike is better than not using a bike at all. I do want to thank Rachel from Ventum who reached out to me a little while after I contacted them, as she was ready to help out as well. I’ll be forever grateful to Dan, though, for the superhuman effort he put into making sure that I could race.
With that solved, we headed to the airport to go meet the bike in Tampa. At about noon, it showed up, and I set about putting it together to take it out for a spin. That is when I found out that my between the arms hydration system doesn’t fit on this cockpit  (cue Price is Right fail sound effect). After a ride on the new bike, officially named Blue Wing by my nephew, I got in a quick run before going off on an adventure to find a new hydration system. I went to one of the local bike shops after making a phone call to see if he had what I needed. He said he did, but he was wrong (more Price is Right music). That fail ate up my time to look on Saturday, so I resolved to find a solution on Sunday before our flight. Not exactly ideal, but it was the only solution. So, I focused on packing everything up and preparing for the next day’s drive to Fort Lauderdale.
At about 11 AM, we loaded up the car and made our way to Ft. Lauderdale for our flight. Along the way, we stopped at three different bike shops, looking for the last remaining items needed for the bike, the BTA and the computer mount for my Wahoo Element Bolt. In the end, we found Conte’s Bike Shop in Ft. Lauderdale, a sister shop to my LBS in Alexandria. The crew there hooked me up by making a modification to a Garmin mount to get my Bolt on my BTA system. Finally at 5 PM, we had solved all of the bike problems (well, those that have popped up so far) and grabbed some food. Then, after all of the turmoil, we got to the airport, which is where I am wrapping this week up. Â
Planned TSS – 584; Completed TSS – 462
Well, it’s go time. I’ve got to get some time on my new bike, so the schedule below will probably change some. I feel pretty ready, but we’ll see how this week goes.
Planned TSS – 758
As race week progresses, I’ll try to get a post or two up to let everyone know how it is going. Soon after the race, I will be back up and training on Zwift for the final two races of the year. For anyone interested in watching the race, it will be aired on Facebook. Just look go to https://www.facebook.com/ITUMultisportFestival/ and watch the stream. I do have to warn the non-European crowd that the time difference may cut into your sleep time. But hey, you can get up and ride along with us! I’ll be looking for the Ride Ons during the race. Ha! Until then, Ride On!
Episode 52 of Zwiftcast has been released, from day 2 at Eurobike 2018. Here’s the full episode description:
Simon and Shane mop up the things they couldn’t squeeze into yesterday’s coverage – including a “no contact” trainer that works by magnets; what the Zwiftcasters think about delivery timelines for all the new stuff unveiled on Day One; the antiperspirant for your bike (sort of) and a few other oddities and curiosities that caught their eye.
Episode 51 of Zwiftcast has been released, from Eurobike 2018. Here’s the full episode description:
In a slightly challenging environment (Eurobike is loud) Simon and Shane wander the halls, checking out as much as they can which will interest Zwifters. Ranging from a designer Smart Bike aimed at “people who own yachts” to the new and almost ready to ship Tacx Smart Bike, via new products from Wahoo and Elite, there’s plenty to chat about.
Editor’s note: Ian Murray is using Zwift to train for the International Triathlon Union Long Course World Championships held in Odense/Fyn, Denmark July 2018. His weekly Zwift Insider series discusses the previous week’s training and the plan for the upcoming week.
Finally back in the DC area, it was time to get in a little more training and a little more settled in to the new place. Oh, I also had to find new running and biking routes and a place to swim. So, yeah, it’s been another challenging week, but my legs are starting to come around after two big weeks of running.
After five weeks of upheaval and limited pool time, I really needed to get back in the water. Of the three disciplines, it is my worst by far. Fortunately, I finally had access to a pool with regular hours. Monday morning, I set out on a short run, but I just had nothing. My feet hurt from my shoes being completely worn out and two weeks of higher-than-normal mileage. I chalked it up to fatigue and the crappy shoes an headed out to the pool later in the afternoon after stopping in at work for a few minutes. I’m not sure if people are aware of this, but it is way hotter in the Washington, DC, area than in Quebec, Canada, in late June. I had to cut my swim a bit short because I started getting a bit sunburned. I actually felt pretty good during the swim, but my shoulders and back let me know that it was time to stop.
On Tuesday, our first shipment from the Dominican Republic arrived, so I had to wait until later in the day to get in my first ride in two weeks. I had gotten some advice about going up and down one of the roads near my house, having been told that “it wasn’t too busy.” Yeah, that was not true. Well, it was partially true. There was not a ton of traffic, but there were a bunch of traffic lights. I ended up getting onto one of the many trails in the area after the second lap of the road. I wasn’t able to hold the efforts for the prescribed time due to traffic on the trail, but I did knock the rust off and had some pretty hard but short efforts. Wednesday was another busy day, as I had to take a French proficiency test to prove that I actually learned something in Quebec. Apparently, treating immersion training like your personal vacation is frowned upon by work, so the pressure was on for some good results. I led off the morning with a quick pool workout, doing the 2700-yard Pace to Fatigue workout. Basically, that workout entails turning 200s on a five to ten seconds per 100 faster pace than what I plan to hold during the race on 25 seconds rest. Surprisingly, I did not fatigue, and I made it through the workout, hitting all of the times right on. After a quick shower and breakfast in the car, I rolled over to the testing center to take the test. I sat down with the goal of finishing it in about five hours and at least hitting the same score as I had two years ago. Boom! I passed the audio comprehension portion and scored a maximum on level on reading comprehension.Â
Thursday morning was another swim followed by a good bit of administrative stuff at work. Unfortunately, I arrived at the pool about five minutes later than the previous morning, and all of the lanes were full. I had to wait around for a little bit, so my swim got cut short after finally getting in the water. I knocked out a quick 2000 yards and went through the same routine as the day before, scarfing down eggs in the car and grabbing a so-so coffee from the shop by the pool. My paperwork only took a few hours, so I rushed home for a rendezvous with my bike and a trip towards Mt. Vernon on the trail for the workout. I nearly killed a few tourists on the Mt. Vernon trail, as they didn’t really get the concept of staying to the right when going around corners. Fortunately, there were no accidents, and I didn’t need to beat someone to death for crashing my bike, as it is the only one I have in my possession right now. It wasn’t a great workout, as the trail is not the best for doing VO2 intervals, but I got a little more distance in than on the previous ride. Friday morning, the wife and I headed back over to the pool, where I got back to business. I love the 3 x 1K workout. It is mentally tough and can be physically draining if you don’t pace it correctly. Sure, this one was in SCY and not SCM like I had been doing in Santo Domingo, but it worked. The previous days in the pool paid off. I did the first 1000 in 15:26 and the second in 14:59. At that point, I decided to up the ante and do a set of 10 x 100 to round out the 3 x 1000. I managed to hit all of the 100s in under 1:25 on 15 seconds rest. I wasn’t hammering to hit those times, so I was pretty stoked. By that afternoon, the new shoes had arrived, so I set out for a quick 8-mile run…in the heat. I really need to remember that DC is way hotter than Quebec. I was completely cooked when I got home. Sooooo hot. It was time to get hydrated and ready for the next day’s long ride.
On Saturday, I planned to ride 120K. I didn’t plan on going hard. I just wanted some time in the saddle, and I wanted to work on my nutrition a little bit. I didn’t get out the door until a little after 8 AM, and I started sweating immediately. Holy cow! By the time I hit the 37.5-mile point to turn around, I already had gone through three bottles of water. At mile 41, I stopped at a cool BBQ joint called Carolina’s BBQ right on the W&OD trail outside of Reston, VA, and filled up my water, trying to cool down a little bit. The remaining 35 miles was an exercise in heat management. It was not all that bad when I was moving at speed. However, the closer I got to Alexandria, the more stoplights I encountered, all of them being red. The constant stopping and starting, along with being roasted by the sun, took its toll. I ended up stopping for water one more time with about 13 miles to go, dumping a couple of bottles over my head for some minimal relief. Right about that time, I noticed that I was getting a bit hungry and scarfed down my last gel. That satiated me for all of about 15 minutes. With 2 miles to go, I was totally bonked. Looking back on it (aka examining my pee color afterward), I think I was more dehydrated than hungry. I didn’t eat breakfast that morning, though, so it was probably a combination of the two converging factors. Anyway, I made it home safely, and headed straight to the shower to cool off. I spent the rest of the day on the couch, relaxing in my Air Relax boots and watching movies with the wife. We caught a great one, actually. Now, I’m not one to watch artsy films, but the one we watched on Saturday night was a great exception. I highly recommend CHiPs if you haven’t seen it. We laughed quite a lot. Wait, that’s not an art film?
Overall, it was a good week. It started out a bit rough, but the body has really started to come around. Next week begins the taper period, so training is done. Now it is about maintaining my sanity.
Planned TSS – 712; Completed TSS – 667
Next week is taper week and the start of our travels to Denmark. Like this week, it will be a heavy bike and swim focus before packing up and heading to Tampa for a couple of days. Over that weekend, I plan on getting in a couple runs before getting on the plane to head across the pond.
Planned TSS – 584
It’s been a long journey together, and we’re just about to wrap it up. I plan to get up some posts from Denmark up more frequently than only at the end of the week. It looks like I will receive the shipment with my Zwift setup after I return, so I’ll be back rolling around Watopia with you in August. Until then, I’ll keep sharing the experience from the road. That’s all for now. Ride On!
After 40 days of GDPR-induced shutdown, ZwiftPower is back online and processing Zwift race results.
Zwift added data sharing opt-ins to account profile settings approximately 10 days ago, and Zwifters must choose to share their data with ZwiftPower in order for their race results to appear in the final listings on ZwiftPower.
My hope is that Zwift will soon allow race organizers to restrict participation to those riders who have opted in to share their data, so racers can know those they ride against are those they will be ranked against. But for now, I’m just happy we’ve got ZwiftPower back!
A big chapeau is due to James Hodges and the rest of the team behind ZwiftPower for moving quickly to implement the changes needed to get the site up with Zwift’s revamped API. Nice work, team–we appreciate you!
