Zwift: the Third Month [with a lot of companion sites]

Third month on Zwift.  Amusingly, I have a lot more climb in the week after I grabbed this because I was finishing off some Tour de Zwift hill climbing challenges called the Summit Seeker challenges.  I've been trying to do all the challenges each week - three.  The extended ones can be a bit heavy hitting with over 1000 calories of burn.  The big hill climbing ride was La Reine.  Only 14.2 miles, but 3875 feet.  The hill extended further upward, so I climbed to 4000 and then shot all the way back down the mountain for the mileage credit.  That seems like a gimme and you can just coast, but I often pedal rather than just bail on the exercise.

Taking a quick look, the last 7 days was 132 miles and 8579 feet.  So despite feeling like I'm slowing down, I'm just going more "up".

Some observations.

• My [right] hip was hurting with sort of an ache across my lower back.  I was paranoid it was some nerve issue.  But putting the seat down a notch made it pretty much go away.  So I put the seat back up [on 2/4] because I thought I wasn't generating the same level of power and it came back, so I moved the seat down half a notch [2/8] and that seems to be a happy middle ground.
• Sleep - huge difference if I've had 8 hours in my power.
• Beer - a 20/30% difference in power [downward] if I've had a couple beers within the last few hours.
• Carbs - if I'm doing a longer ride and want to maintain power [at say 80% + of FTP] I need to keep carb-ed.  Spaghetti is like a miracle drug.
• Q - how far your feet sit apart on the pedals.  I haven't thought too much about it, but apparently it's a thing that matters.  I don't know how I go about figuring that out.  I could use some better pedals on my setup.
• Seat - I took my first "coffee break" today where Zwift lets you just sort of roll along at 0 watts.  It was at about an hour and thirty-five minutes.  And it wasn't tired legs, it was a tired ass. Popping off to refresh my glass of water made a huge difference.  Makes sense.  I tend to ride for 60-90 minutes outside before I take a break.
• There is a LOT of drafting in Zwift.  I can't count the number of times someone has sat in my wake for a long time. Not my jam, but in a group ride it always kicks in.  Apparently three people ahead of you is maximum draft?  Mostly you know you're drafting by your character sitting up [unless it's the Tron bike, which I don't have].
• Zone 2 is 55-70% of FTP or 60-70% MHR.  That's useful...I aim for 60% for Zone 2 or 160 at the moment, and that's 67% and seems light.  70% is closer to 170 and 70% MHR is...  I recently updated my MHR to 175 using a new formula that's more accurate than 220-age [all my charts looked like I was giving myself an infarction] .. 123.  I averaged  today, so probably means I was pushing zone 3 from the looks of it [power bears that out, looks like I averaged 193 watts].

If I climb three Mount Everests I can have the Tron bike which is a good all around bike [I'm currently on a Scott Addict and Canyon Aeroad 2024.  I don't think I'll get there until end of year.  But it's fun to see the graphic for the challenge.

And finally, I learned that there all sorts of support sites for Zwift.

• https://zwifterbikes.web.app/ - tells you the best bike for your route.  It's funny, because if you look at the image below you can see that certain bike/rim configurations result in a difference of one second.  I think you should pretty much ride what you like within reason [riding a time trial bike up a mountain might be a lot of work, and you wouldn't really do it in real life].
• https://whatsonzwift.com/ - lets you explore all the routes/workouts
• https://zwiftinsider.com/routes/ - keeps a list of routes and when certain worlds are available.
• https://intervals.icu/ - a supplementary training site you can connect to although I do not.
• https://zwiftpower.com/ - tracks a lot of extra data about your racing. I decided I didn't want to know that much yet because I'm not generally racing, but an awful lot of Zwifters use it.
• https://alpeduzwift.com/ - the Alpe du Zwift calculator which tells you how long, based on power, it thinks it will take you to climb if you're at the P50 point.  
• One goal for many folks is to make it up Alpe du Zwift in an hour.  The calculator will tell you how far off you'll be [I think my P50 is about 79 minutes]
• Another goal for very few folks is to Everest, meaning to climb the equivalent of Everest [29000 feet] in one "sitting".  Alpe du Zwift is about 3400 feet, so you have to go up [and down, where you can coast and rest and find food]  8.5 times?  Yeah, pretty much exactly. Lots of videos out there if you want to watch people try it [they condense; you don't have to sit through a full ride]