Zwift has improved my outdoor riding tremendously, buying a smart trainer has been a game changer. The ability to climb and descend with a smart trainer has been the biggest contributor to my gains because we just don't have mountains hear in north east Ohio. The next best thing for me is the races, even if you are not into racing there's something about riding in one that makes you push your limits beyond your normal levels of output thus creating more gains.

I used to dismiss Zwift as full of cheaters, until I discovered Zwiftpower, and I started to win races. I am no cheater, the worst I do is rounnd my weight down to the nearest KG

Indeed some people do cheat, however, Zwift is actually full of really strong cyclists

No way I would ride as hard on TR as I do in a Zwift race, when you are competing for a podium you need to be full on, leaving nothing on the table. A very effective way to get stronger is to train and race with stronger riders, in Zwift, unless you are a pro, I can pretty much guarantee you can race against stronger riders 24/7

On important thing many forget is to not take those races too seriously. Maybe someone cheated maybe more ! Only a real world race can tell you who is the best cyclist. Just have fun, i've won a fair number of racer and been beaten both by better riders and cheater many time. I had fun, that's the point guess.

If you enjoy the trainer, Zwift takes it to a new level, I do 95% of my bike training on Zwift, super sweet!

I respectfully disagree. I've only been Zwifting for two weeks (lockdown convert, my wife has been at it for years) but I've seen quite a bit of blatant weight "Z-doping" - maybe Zwiftpower isn't quite coping with the amounts of new users? All I know is that there's a surprising number of people whom I know personally that lost a tremendous amount of weight since the lockdown started. There's no obvious way to flag weight, as far as I can tell; today at the Haute Route event a couple of local hot-shots were prominent but their weights are all at least 5-6kg below actual weights. Maybe it's just the locals? We're not exactly known as a particularly rule-following country.

(but yes, this completely changed my indoors experience during lockdown - very happy with Zwift these days)

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

Love Zwift. Love the smart trainer. Love the RockrPlate.

O.k., now why. Zwift makes trainer riding palatable for me. I hated riding the trainer. I think the biggest thing Zwift provides is Community. If you are just free riding, you can work on passing and catching people. If you're doing group rides, you find yourself pushing to keep up or not slow down the group if rubberbanding is enabled. If you're racing, you push yourself into the red to keep up and compete. And then there are meetups for friends and teammates. I ride with 2 groups IRL and 4 in Zwift. There is always something for me to participate in.

For the record I also have a Sufferfest membership for those times when I want to do something different. Like I'm sure many of you I have several bikes (Road, Tri, Gravel and Mountain). What this really means is I like riding multiple way and multiple platforms, inside and out. But Zwift was a game changer for me for trainer riding.

Wow - There's a lot of people racing in the wrong categories at the moment!
There's always some, but I think it's gotten much worse due to the large numbers of new Zwifters. I did a race yesterday in Cat B (3.2-4.0W/kg). I'm towards the bottom of that range and still managed to place mid-field so overall things were reasonable, but there were several guys who averaged significanty over 4W/kg in the results. The winner in Cat B recorded a figure of 5.62W/kg which was way higher than even the Cat A winner! A huge swath of the Cat C riders also averaged power figures way above 3.2W/kg, many being around the 4W/kg mark and some above that.

I reckon a lot of this is confusion as new Zwifters figure things out. Hopefully people will mostly settle into the correct categories after a while although some are always wrong. But as per my previous posts, I don't think this ruins things. I just raced against the guys at my level and enjoyed the race.

Yep, agree. You will always end up settling into a group, just race those guys. Have to forget what’s happening up the road or whatever, they’re gone. If you can do that it’s a lot of fun.

And zwift power is great because they will remove people from the results that either aren’t registered or go over the category w/kg limits.

I did the Yorkshire Grand Prix race yesterday at 11:30 AM Eastern, in the B category. Roughly the top 20 were all As racing down a level. That being said, it was the "least" wrong of the non-As: the first 50 or so results in C were off, and about the first 75 results in D were 3.5+. Makes it tough if you're in C/D to really get a good gauge of where you should be.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I used to ride 90% of the time outside but since COVID I joined Zwift and its made a big difference training inside. I don't race on Zwift but I can do any kind of workout that I did on a trainer before......Zwift just makes is better. Tried Trainerroad and to be honest I rather be beaten like a harp seal than do that again.....it was terribly boring. I much rather be outside any day but when I can't I'm glad I'm on Zwift.

Good news!
Zwift are finally going to implement some automatic sandbagger controls. It's been requested and talked about for some time but sounds like it's about to happen.

https://zwiftinsider.com/anti-sandbagging-plans/

This just came out today, so very timely to our discussion.