40k Holiday Time Trial Challenge Throw Down

The Archives Archived: General Discussion
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So it seems most people like to ride for about an hour or so. How about for a holiday challenge we do a 40k time trial? That might be easier for more people to complete than spending 3 hours on your trainer trying to finish a metric.

So here’s the challenge! Ride a 40k time trial on Zwift Island anytime between Saturday December 20th and Sunday January 4th. Post your times here…actually I’ll create a separate thread for posting times to and we’ll keep this thread for discussion/questions.

Ideally your posted time should also include a link back to a Strava post that supports your claimed time.

A few notes/rules:

This is an “unofficial” competition and is not sponsored by Zwift. This is just a fun challenge proposed by me and for the community of Zwift riders.

There are no prizes other than bragging rights. If you live in the continental US and win, maybe I’ll mail you $1…then again maybe not. I may not have any $$$ left after the holidays!

Please ONLY include your actual 40k ride in your supporting Strava link. If you plan to warm up or cool down, please do it separately from the actually challenge ride. That is do your warmup lap or laps, then log out and log back in again to start the challenge.

To keep the route as consistent as possible, please start your 40k from the LOGIN START POINT by hitting the JUST RIDE button at login. DO NOT start from any other point, so please do not JOIN any riders in progress and jump to another location on the course.

Yes, you can do it more than once. If you improve your time, feel free to post your new, improved time. Best time wins, regardless of how many attempts you make at it. The goal is to improve our fitness, so have at it as often as you like.

While I’m calling it a time trial, I really don’t care if you draft AIs or whatever. If you can draft someone for 40k and get the best time, then more power to you. Basically the challenge is to simply ride the fastest 40k you can on Zwift Island using your regular trainer and equipment.

To see kilometers instead of miles hit the “U” key on your keyboard to toggle back and forth…but 40k is just under 25 miles.

It’s for fun…play fair, be honest. Lying/cheating just gets you bad karma. What goes around comes around as they say.

Ride and participate in the challenge at your own risk.

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Good idea. I am in.

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Thanks for organizing this.

I’m in. Is there a prize for last? Seriously, I haven’t been able to keep up with anyone, not even close.

We should have an hour challenge sometime.

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I wanna see some pictures of everyone’s before/after!

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I’m in, and feel confident about crushing the field in an all-out bid for last place. Great idea!

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Awesome guys. I am glad to see the response!

I’m also happy to see that everyone has the right attitude! This should be about having fun in the Zwift community, not about who wins or loses. The real goal is to just get as many people as possible involved.

The individual numbers in the time that you post aren’t what’s important. What’s important is simply that you POST one, regardless of what the actual numbers may be.

I especially don’t want anyone to get scared away after Mike “The Diesel” McCarthy posts his time. He’s only a world champion in the team time trial, a 17 time National Champion, an Olympian and a member of the USA Cycling Hall of Fame…but who’s counting???

Just do your best and be proud what you accomplish! I think it will be a lot of fun to see who comes out and joins in. Maybe even a few surprises!

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@WalterWong - actually an hour challenge is a great idea…we’ll load that up for next time!

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As Zwift is currently norming to 75kg for riders, the Holiday feed shouldn’t affect the watts/kg, right? May see what effect mimosas in the bidon have though…

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@EricC - …as long as we get to see pictures of YOUR before/after!

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Truthfully I kind of like that everyone weighs the same…kind of an equalizer, no?

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great idea! I’m in

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GREAT idea. I’m totally in for this one as well. Though my off-season fitness-abilities is gonna do me absolutely no good…

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This is cool Greg. It’s gonna be a killer though! So much for short intensity training. Never hurts to mix it up though. based on the terrain I’m going to predict I’ll be lucky to pull a 1:08. Working backwards, that means a 1hr power PR is in order. That is PAINFUL. I’ve done my share of these in olympic length triathlons, but on those you get a little coasting on the downhills. On here this is gonna just be a festival of suffering. BRING IT!

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@GregGibson and @WalterWong - not to derail the thread but it seems only right to hold off on the hour challenge until the Zwift Velodrome comes into being. :slight_smile:

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Good stuff. Was waiting for something like this, as I was invited just after the Thanksgiving challenge finished. Lets do this!

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I just got invited to Zwift tonite. I’ll play around with it this week, if I can figure out how to get this going, count me in! Great way to get in shape with some challenges!

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@Jerry I think you’ll surprise yourself. I predict you’ll do much better than 1:08. I did 25 miles tonight in 1:12:32. That included 2 warmup laps, then two 20min low threshold efforts with a recovery lap in between…so wasn’t really trying for 40k.

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I did a 40k tonight just to see what the numbers were like, and I ended up doing around 1:15, with pointless tom foolery at the sprints etc - and that wound up being about a 200W average according to Zwift, which Strava then translated into a 225w weighted average - have no clue why that discrepancy existed. Also noted that for me Strava has no elevation data (according to Zwift the 40km has about 384m/1260ft of climbing.
Also note - don’t import your Zwift files into Strava as “stationary Trainer” like I did - it loses all the map and segment data (but you can go back and unclick it to restore the geo data etc.) Strava record here http://www.strava.com/activities/230427523/overview if anyone is interested.

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I’m in!

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Count me in. I predict a placement somewhere in the bottom third of riders for me.