Zwift Chat

[Aleman]

I had yet another upgrade in FTP, so I know I was hitting it hard ... New PR's on both sprints and the reverse KOM, the second time up the KOM nearly did it for me, and I was well up for throwing in the towel, but it's only 10% legs and 90% head, I gave myself a stern talking to.

Got surprised by the slightly longer run in to the meetup finish than last time, which nearly saw the A's catch me, but the rest of the team were up ahead anyway so my slacking off didn't cause any major hiccup

 

[Del C]

Exactly, everyone was taking their turns and you guys absolutely turned yourselves inside out. Even blowing up at times and the team waited on every instance.
It's a win in my eyes, you guys probably averaged the same power as me. Hollow victory for the A's more like.

A team rode well.

Nothing hollow in riding as a team and riding to your handicap.

Not exactly the words or attitude that makes me feel like doing this again.

 

[mjd1988]

Video from the D team perspective: (if it shows up in 360p quality, give it an hour or so to finish HD processing)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3_hOtN78VE

Yes we ended up getting some "assistance", but we each still had to put in a major shift ourselves - it wasn't like we were cruising around behind @Milzy all the way doing hardly any work. For example, I was just one watt off equalling my highest 20 minute power this year and got PRs on both climbs (tied on the reverse, by 15 secs on the forward), neither of which I was in the draft for the vast majority of.

And we managed to keep our whole group together all the way to the line apart from @JLaw, who unfortunately succumbed to trainer malfunction just 7 minutes in. Okay, so the rest of the group had to slow down a few times to let me catch up, but I'd say our time would have been pretty competitive regardless of other factors.

That's definitely fair, you can only beat what's in front of you at the end of the day, and sounds like you rode as a team very well.

I like the TTT format but it does seem like a lot of work to try and make teams fair (and even then in the lap of the gods on the day as to what exactly happens!) is fortnightly too frequent?

Edit; probably need some rules. Anyone can start early accidentally but when it's flagged, you need to drop back to your group.

 

[Joffey]

I can totally understand @Del C that you are annoyed - you have put in a lot of work over the last few days and it appears that due to a drop out or two and a false start it has all gone to waste, but I don't think it did. You did a terrific job - these things happen and I'm sure that no one has done anything to spoil the ride on purpose. Everyone on here appreciates the time you have spent sorting tonight's ride.

We have to remember that this is a fun event. D won with an advantage, A were a close 2nd I think, C had a mare with Tim not been able to join etc etc. But what you can take from it is that 20 or so riders got a good work out on a Friday night and it was enjoyable for most. Job done.

I know when things go wrong it can be annoying. @Milzy messed up and by the sounds of it hasn't realised that some were taking it more seriously than others and has inadvertently agitated some on here. But he's taken some stick on here too. Once we have all slept it will seem like a distant memory and we'll all be raring to go again next week to wright a few wrongs no doubt.

One thing I will say though if I rode that D race - we certainly weren't dragged around the whole course by Milzy. I spent what felt like a lot of time on the front, PRs on all climbs (90 PR achievements/PRs on Segments on Strava), Jeff got a new FTP, Steve has already said he put so much in we had to wait up for him and Spartak said he was goosed too etc etc so to just rule our result void is a bit disingenuous. Everyone, D, C, B & A rode hard.

But ultimately tonight maybe instead of everyone being annoyed let's look to the positives as now, surely, everyone knows what NOT to do so the next TTT will be seamless.

Peace out CChatters - have a great weekend and enjoy Al's ride on Monday if you are doing it.

EDIT - Not sure if anyone noticed but when D were 4:38 into the ride C were showing 3:23 behind - surely they didn't lose 23 seconds in 1:38 of riding? Maybe the reason D had so much of a gap is we were accidentally given a bigger gap by the C team?

 

[Milzy]

A team rode well.

Nothing hollow in riding as a team and riding to your handicap.

Not exactly the words or attitude that makes me feel like doing this again.

It was fun. You definitely should do it again. Everyone loves TTT and it's only a game.

 

[Spartak]

That was my first CC TTT and hopefully it won't be my last, thanks to @Del C & @IrishAl for organising.

I have to admit I was confused as Team D rolled out and there was a different Jersey in our ranks !!! But we all make mistakes.

Even with @Milzy in our ranks we all pulled well, so thanks to the other team D riders @Joffey @steverob @Aleman @JLaw as well for a good workout... 🚴‍♂️ 👍

 

[Freelanderuk]

It was fun. You definitely should do it again. Everyone loves TTT and it's only a game.

If it’s only a game why didn’t you follow the rules

 

[Brendan Parker]

@del @IrishAl thanks for organising,
Was a bit of a mare for us but hey still a ride out and you can’t win them all.
but I would like to add I don’t believe I broke the rules when

despite Brendan trying to join us for a brief period!

As we have video evidence we slowed to let you guys through, let you go and it seems as if you boys slowed so I thought let s take them back, but it was just me who thought that so didn’t work , next time

anyway all’s fair in love and war. Great effort all and was still a laugh

 

[CXRAndy]

Did I hear Bob fell off his bike?







Again

 

[mjd1988]

@del @IrishAl thanks for organising,
Was a bit of a mare for us but hey still a ride out and you can’t win them all.
but I would like to add I don’t believe I broke the rules when

As we have video evidence we slowed to let you guys through, let you go and it seems as if you boys slowed so I thought let s take them back, but it was just me who thought that so didn’t work , next time

anyway all’s fair in love and war. Great effort all and was still a laugh

I don't know about the other guys but I certainly had put in a burst to catch you guys, so needed a bit of recovery when we got past so that makes sense (and definitely didn't get stickydrafted so assume we were let through okay).

 

[<Tommy>]

I think regarding the handicap time you’ll never get them perfect unless you’re very lucky. Just too many variables. But it’s still a great workout, gives us all the chance to race against eachother and up the pre race banter by about 200% ! 😄

@Del C i hope this go’s without saying but I think I can speak for everyone when I say we are all very grateful for your efforts. I don’t know exactly what happened last night or what the motives were. I’m not getting Involved after last time to be honest, but there is an element of reap what you sow about it. That’s not meant as a smug ‘I told you so’ it’s just the way it is really.

Either way... I love the handicap races! They level the playing field even if it’ll never entirely level. All the teams obviously pulled incredibly hard. I had no desire the C team has so much struggle, or the B’s had a disaster start! The D’s clearly all contributed and very well done on sticking together for the most part. In fact Very well done everyone!

 

[Brendan Parker]

I don't know about the other guys but I certainly had put in a burst to catch you guys, so needed a bit of recovery when we got past so that makes sense (and definitely didn't get stickydrafted so assume we were let through okay).

We were trying to get to the safe zone (is it 4km out??)

 

[IrishAl]

Thanks again for all the organising @Del C. A lot of people thanking me but all I did was set up the meet up so I got the easy job. There will always be techie issues with these things as I’ve seen so many meet ups were riders are joined but when the ride starts they’re stuck in the pen on their imaginary turbo trainer or have lost connections so we did well to only lose @Ketty at the start and @mjd1988 near the end...annoying for them both I’m sure,

as for a hollow victory for A...I wouldn’t claim victory at all. Ds won and we Will never know the Advantage gained by the extra man. B were down to 3 riders unfortunately, and ultimately our time in A was a minute slower than the last outing. All I can say I had a bloody good workout and it was great fun in the lead up to the event and great again talking to the chaps on Discord - I just hope the chaps could understand my accent as well as I could understand theirs . our time compared to last.

I noticed that B did well to hang on to our coattails for quite some time after we made the catch (allowing a suitable non-drafting gap I would add) . C team we only caught on the 2nd KOM and we could see on the map that D had crested the summit with over 60sec gap at which point I Think we knew the game was over but annoyingly Tommy kept driving us on. I was cooked at that point. @bridgy lost discord halfway round lap 1 so we did our best to keep the rotation going and hence some on screen messages to blind the rest of the teams.

thanks agian Del. As a suggestion I could put up a survey thingy for people to say if they’re available if that helps with the organising the teams, and maybe we finalise the teams just once on the morning of the event.

 

[bobinski]

FWIW some of us ride the TTT series on Thursday nights largely without issue. Even dischord seems to work. We ALL pay attention to times so we don’t let each other down. That’s all part of being a team.
It’s a bit disappointing that a group of men of a certain age can’t get their s**t together for a simple race - perhaps some of you should enlist the help of a significant other, young child or carer to help you next time 😁

 

[Del C]

Morning all.

Thanks for the kind words on organising last night.

I thought all the teams rode well, despite B and C being unexpectedly short of numbers at the start. And I really enjoy both the TTT and Hare and Hounds format, so to combine them is pretty unique and good fun, especially when its a bunch of friends racing with the banter that goes with that. I enjoyed last night.

I certainly wasn't annoyed by Internet drop outs and IT failures. I worked in Telecomms, Internet and IT throughout my career so I know these things can happen. That's life. And I don't get upset by human error. We all screw up from time to time.

I try not to write tetchy posts, but I did last night and maybe I was wrong to react that way. I was annoyed by a couple of @Milzy 's posts. Firstly, where he seemed to me to just gloss over his mistake in going with the D team. But I snapped when I saw the later comment about a hollow victory for the A team. Maybe it was just a poorly worded joke and I got it wrong, but I thought it was a poor thing to say.

Look. I've always been a huge believer in teamwork, whether it's a social thing like sport, or back at work when I was running large engineering teams. One of my weaknesses is that when I feel people let down the team, or breach the trust I put in them (when I was running engineering teams) I can be pretty unforgiving and I had an episode of that late last night.

Why last night and why did @Milzy 's comment make me snap? Probably because of the amount of time it takes to organise events like this. Others who've done stuff like this will know what I mean. Sorting out a course, teams, handicaps, writing them up in tables, continually updating them based on people becoming available/unavailable takes far more time than you'd think it does.

Writing up rules, because everyone wants to be clear how something like this works, answering questions, realising someone has raised an issue you've never even thought of, telling people how to unlock jerseys and a host of other silly stuff just adds to that. On top of that, I was sitting on here for a lot of yesterday afternoon, just to pick up last minute questions or in case anyone couldn't make it and we had to adjust the teams again.

I don't mind doing this stuff. In fact I quite enjoy it, as I've always been an organiser and I like to get stuff right so that people enjoy themselves and want to do it again. Surely, that's what it should all be about?

Anyhow, I'm perfectly relaxed now. Sorry if people were upset or just confused by my outburst last night, or have fallen asleep reading this rather long and maybe self-indulgent post, but I've got it out of my system now and I always make a point of being honest about how I feel.

On to the next event. Who's up for it?