I did a long training yesterday for first time on the Kickr.
It’s a whole different world to the Zwift Hub.
It feels like you’re getting some inertia from a heavier wheel, rather than fighting against an inconsistent braking mechanism that varies resistance even during one pedal revolution.
It felt so much easier to hold my usual Z2 wattage, even though it was tracking perfectly with the Assiomos.
It feels like actual cycling, as opposed to riding a 1980s exercise bike with a screw brake.
Can’t wait to race on it, and actually clock some race time in Z2, 3 and 4 for a change, rather than 50% Z6 and 7.
I can personally attest to the potential for “Accidental Cheating” on Zwift since that’s what I’ve been doing for the last coupla years. My Wahoo Kickr Bike V1 has been reading about 25% high during 5 minute and higher race pace efforts. I got called on it last summer during one of the first ZRS Zwift community race series events because my 30 second power was low enough to put me in the C pen (ZRS 535, I think). My FTP at the time was solidly in the lower end of the A pen though so I was able to ride away from the rest of the group. I had not raced anything lower than the B pen for the previous two years plus so getting tossed into the C pen was a surprise. Kinda blew everyone away; myself included.
Now, racing A or B pre-ZRS was a real struggle for me because I didn’t/don’t have any measurable sprint or punch and would get dropped at the first hint of anything more than a short burst. I could sit in on the flat and could hang on long climbs but things in the 30 second to 3 minute range would find me off the back. With the advent of ZRS, I was able to hang in the main group and actually animate things to some extent. I wasn’t able to contest the sprint but racing was fun again even in the ZRS B pen. Then I got a Kickr Bike V2 and discovered I was a fraud. I had to ZHQ reset my ZRS power and I went from 615 to 200 in a day; I’m “up” to 257 now. Literally one of the most humbling experiences of my life; you cannot imagine how it feels to find out just how slow you really are after months of being on the pointy end of things.
It certainly changes how I feel about “cheating” in Zwift races. When I started Zwift, there was no category enforcement so A & B riders would join the C pen and blow things up from the gun. Literally the entire peloton was strung out within 2 minutes of the start. It took Zwift YEARS to get that fixed and when it happened, racing became fun for the first time. And now, to me, that is the only real cheating because sandbaggers are cheating lower cat riders out of an entertaining race. The rest of it? We’re racing avatars against each other. If our avatar is in the correct pen, and capable of the correct pen power limitations as set by Zwift, then we have a race.
Go from being in the mix for the entire event in an 80 rider B pen race to getting dropped in a D pen Tiny Race on the first punch and your priorities change.
60 watts over in 5 minute power: 300 down to 240. Probably a 30-40 watt delta in 20 minute power. I’ve since verified the output of the V2 with Garmin pedals and it’s within 1% consistently. I sold the V1 before I could check it. The guy that bought it is not a racer so we don’t have to worry about seeing him kicking our asses on Zwift.
Wow, so similar power range to me, I’m at 280-300w for 5 minutes, around 275-280 for 20 minutes (after my crash I don’t have high peak power so that’s why the 5 min isn’t much higher than 20).
When trainers were dumb and all we had was z power, power was an estimate at best.
Several manufacturers got their mechanism correctly calibrated and could demonstrate good quality control.
Then the trainers got smart.
They replicated the terrain.
There were some real lemon smart trainers but the industry started cleaning up but now they have introduced a new variable of virtual shifting.
I think we will have to sort through some more lemons.
I wish more people would dual record and we could start a list of user confirmed accurate trainers tested under real scenarios.
Read some of the previous topics in this forum (and in this very topic) in the last few weeks where folks have described or shown power traces where someone goes from normal power with usual dips and peaks of power to a section where they are suddenly doing perfect level watts for 5-10 minutes or so with no dips or peaks, the power line is straight as ruler when they are chasing down a break.
That can also be something like a cheap spin bike with 500W max power. They get to the max fairly easily due to its fundamental inaccuracy and stay there even if they work harder.
I had similar issues with an Elite Direto, when calibrating it to the offset number on the bottom it was giving 10-15% more power over 20-30 minutes putting me firmly into A cat at the time, after a few months it started making noises and went back under warranty and I got a neo 2t and lost around 35-40w from my numbers
I read that the Elite Direto’s ‘Power Smoothing’ also provides sticky watts galore, and it has been removed from the list of permitted trainers for Zwift elite level racing.
I am not a strong zwift rider, ftp about 3.6w/kg, but as i don’t ride outside (when i have strava tells me I’m averaging low watts) or dual record i sometimes wonder if my kickr core is reading high. Its def 5-10% higher than the C2 bike erg i was using.
But if i had to bet, I’d say its fairly obvious when readings are significantly high like yours, if you’ve not got big recent cycling/endurance history getting above 4w/kg is pretty difficult especially as we get older!
