Cheers James,
Great to hear the progress is still ongoing. It really sounds like we’re only a few months away from some very significant competition improvements.
Keep at it team.
Cheers James,
Great to hear the progress is still ongoing. It really sounds like we’re only a few months away from some very significant competition improvements.
Keep at it team.
Do you have an example of the stuff you mean. Looking for long term solution to my flooring.
yeah, this sort of stuff:
if you type in something like “rubber stable mat” or whatever on amazon or ebay you should be able to find sellers offering it in various thicknesses and sizes, textured or untextured. it’s grippy and easy to keep clean. avoid anything with EVA or foam in it though, you want solid rubber
That’s great thanks.
Albeit your $20 a roll estimation is a little out.
Just adding to what’s already been suggested, I’ve had great success with very heavy mats that are sold to go under washing machines to absorb the vibrations.
They’re roughly 60cm x 60cm and 1.5cm thick and seem to be made out of reconstituted rubber. Excellent sound absorption and gripping qualities, plus they’re dirt cheap in hardware stores here in Switzerland (not a phrase I use often).
Here’s an example from Amazon (UK) but which seems to cost double what I pay here.
I have my trainer on three stacked one on top of each other, and my front tire on two (and a bit) to keep the axles level using a Sterzo Smart in front.
Very little lateral drift – if any – over many months of regular riding, and the thick layers of rubber under the weight of me, the bike and trainer, provide some ‘give’ that’s like a (shallow) rocker plate.
if you get the 3mm thick stuff then it’s very cheap per square ft and it’s plenty thick for trainer use, you’ll never tear it by accident. you might want thicker stuff (which can get expensive) if your setup is in an apartment or house but mine is in an outdoor shed so i’m not really concerned with vibration or noise
It’s for the garage. I usually paint the floor but getting bored of it lifting around the area of my motorbike. Already got 2 mats under the treadmill and trainer so another mat would look like a patchwork quilt, have the thought of putting one giant mat/covering the whole floor.
Google up “horse mats” or “horse stall mats”, might even be called something else depending on your country/language. Thick, strong, and inexpensive.
This is a great tip! I can get a 4 x 6 foot 3/4 inch thick rubber mat from Tractor Supply for $50. What a bargain compared to those interlocking floor tiles. Thank you @Lin_Alan !
It depends, but sometimes they need some off-gassing. If so, leave them outside in the sun for a week flipping them over occasionally.
I bought similar here in UK, best £30 spent, extremely heavy duty and easily copes with all my gear and lakes of sweat.
To cover my garage floor completely is 12 mats.
The cost just spiralled. I’ll dig the paint out…again
why the entire floor and not just the area for the bike?
For UK members, FWIW I’ve been using this mat since late 2015 and have recorded 82 days of Zwifting. It might need a clean, but otherwise is as good as new. It’s mostly been used directly on top of carpet and for a few months on top of boards. Back to carpet now.
Apologies to the OP, but this has gone way off topic.
@Gerrie_Delport_ODZ can you break out the floor mat conversation to it’s own thread?
Just on the original topic,
Firstly, everyone will hit a ceiling of ability at some point, perpetual improvement is not possible so telling OP to “train harder” isn’t quite valid.
Also, the idea that you can pick a bigger race and have like power racers around you is a myth. Frequently riders dropped by break or peleton just quit the race. Either out of boredom/frustration or not wanting a bad result on ZP. I was in a race that started with 60+ Bs the other week and 16 finished.
Of course no categorisation system will be perfect, but I think any system in place need transparency.
I use these - got them in a sale for £10 and they work great.
I saw the floor mat derail coming from a mile. It’s a pattern these days, coming from you know who.
Back on topic.
This is a sad thread. Few get @David_Danser 's point and refuse to see that there is something deeply problematic about the new cat model. Hmmmphh… must… defend… new… model… at… all… cost!
@James_Zwift tells us that David needn’t worry. He can just train a little more (isn’t that actually an insult?) and that, besides, Zwift racing is all about 30s and 1 min power anyway, the rest is racecraft. What a load of reused old BS.
For David to get into position to compete with others in these 30s or 1 min efforts (sprints, short climbs) - well, he doesn’t actually match up to the others in A in 30s/1 min, but let’s assume he did - then he still needs to hang in there with them until they hit those sprints or climbs. And he can’t, not by a long shot, so his 30s/1 min prowess is of no use to him because he doesn’t even last the first few km’s.
Everyone in here knows I was no fan of the old WKG model (because it sucks) but at least it adhered to some sort of logic. You knew where you stood. You got promoted and you knew you’d at least be able to hang in there with the gruppetto in your new cat, per definition. You knew that to be able to compete for the podium in the new cat you had to be able to stay in the upper, and frankly quite narrow, W/kg band of the new cat’s definition. This was no guarantee for a podium, though, as you needed a strong sprint too, and high Watts correlating strongly with heavier-than-average weight, but as long as you couldn’t stay in the upper band for the duration of the race you at least knew for sure that you were not a contender. There was at least transparency that way.
Today it’s different. Some zwifters progress smoothly into a new cat, while others suddenly find themselves in a cat they seem completely at odds with. And people get promoted for different reasons, which is… a weird and opaque model. Unhealthy, I would say.
Before, there was one measure and then the assumption that everybody’s power curve was roughly the same. Now there are several measure points and instead of assuming rough similarity in the power curve you emphasize the peculiarities in someone’s curve, and then make the assumption that everyone’s power curve is the same. So if there’s a single (A-like) deviation in your otherwise normalish (B-like) power curve, as in David’s case, then you get upped to whatever standard power curve that deviation should belong to in a more normal/average power curve…?
Err… this is weird logics… really, it is.
And the rest is racecraft? I hate that argument. Racing in Zwift really isn’t very difficult. It’s not like racing IRL. Sure, you can screw up, but most racers actually do a decent job at drafting in this computer game. It’s not exactly rocket science or like learning to play the violin.
You simply can’t overcompensate a severe lack of Watts by “drafting smart” or whatever blue smoke they throw at you. You need the raw Watts to win a sprint. But you also need the Watts to keep up with the bunch 20 clicks before the sprint. Deep down everyone knows this. And yet…
But we also know what’s really at stake here, at least I do. The old model was obviously flawed and unfit as a categorization, all while the rest of the world used results-based categorizations, the only healthy option. So to save the performance metrics paradigm it all turned into a Roman Catholic Church vs Copernicus kind of thing, with an ever more complex model that would try to address the flaws of the old model, just to save their faces. The sun revolves around the flat Earth, really! And you can divide racers into power metrics categories and still make racing both fair, fun and intuitive, really!
No, you can’t. And you just make it worse by trying to save it. You’re wasting our time. We needed CE (completely unrelated to this) but the new cat model is just bad. The Emperor’s new clothes…
I’m staying out of the politics side of things, but I certainly agree with this particular comment (as a lightweight mediocre C-cat trying to compete with 90+ kg heavyweights). However, every time I raise this point I get shot down in flames; not sure why.