The fact that you have to do your homework in order to figure out what is going on speaks volumes

It's hard to imagine how Zwift could have released the baseline ride to the public as essentially an alpha piece of software. I responsibly read the directions before the ride but had no idea how poorly documented the three segments were going to be. I love Llama's UKposts channel. But users should not need the guidance of outside sources, or recon rides, to be able to successfully execute the baseline ride.

Of all the live streams and other rides I've watched of Shayne, never have I seen his HR as high as that effort in this video. 191 bpm is mental!

The beauty of that opening shot is knowing I’m not the only one who grimaces like that when doing some of those Zwift climbs… 😎🤜🏽🤛🏽

The segments were so badly marked that I expect most people's improvement won't be due to increased fitness.

luckily Eric from Zwiftinsider rode with us at our Baseline ride so he gave the information while we were riding. still some people thought it was a race and were broken half way up the volcano KOM.

I wrecked myself the first time I tried, because I was riding zone 3 between the segments so by the final climb I was toast, then saw your live ride yesterday. Redid it Today and it was much better just taking it easy between segments and got accurate solid efforts. Thanks!

Yeah I screwed mine up too. 😕 I started giving it the beans and looked around and noticed no one else was going hard. I backed off and found out it was the segment when I saw the finish. Guess we will all be redoing it.

Top tips Shane, very useful.👍

The rider that was giving it the beans between segments and then you glided past on the Volcano climb. That was me

Thanks, Shane. Will try the baseline ride tomorrow. KM markers added to by wall.

Love your face there at the reverse KOM I'll make print and tape it to the wall. Pain face deluxe!

Good video - very helpful

Thanks for the tips 👍

Even knowing where the segments are I barely saw them. Have to retest. Thanks for the tips

That’s a right send it face!!

Great video, very helpful - although really it wouldn’t/shouldn’t be needed if the rides were better set up by Zwift with prompts and better marking of segments and on-screen text. They are horrible at this stuff

Along the lines of consistency in testing; if you choose to split up the efforts between multiple rides, then you should continue to do so on future baseline tests.

They say the coming winter is going to be very cold. I usually ride outside year round. I think I'm going to signup for Swift as an early xmas present to myself. Thanks for all the info about it.

It would have been nice if the start lines showed up in the maps. Also If the Start marker was a smidge bigger, maybe with the word "Start" not just some non descript glowy thing. And maybe with a distance sign?

Good to have your times for each segment but maybe list the length in Kms of each segment ? You'd think that would be part of Zwift's instructions unless I've missed something ? Thanks !

I had a similar experience, I went full throttle for the whole session. I will have to do it again. I love Zwift but there are so many parts which are really confusing.

I was made aware of this Baseline Ride by your compatriot Tilly. Apart from Zwift academy, it also seems like a really good performance benchmark, ideal to do like once every 2-3 months. Is there a way to ride this (or something similar) that way? I found out that the original one, discussed in the video is an "event" and thus not possible to ride on own terms.

Ahh...the Baseline Ride. Did it twice and still screwed up, missing the start points and not knowing how long each segments were and therefore dunno how much effort to put in for each. I gave up.

You need a bigger fan/AC and a bucket...great video and it's fun to see people on Zwift suffering.

I agree the segments were poorly marked. But they haven’t moved, and have been in zwift for a long time. So we all knew where they were. It’s a baseline “ride” not a race, said so the instructions on companion app. So if people raced it, then that’s their fault for not paying attention. Granted the syntax in the “long baseline ride” explanation looked more of a copy and paste from the “standard baseline ride” and was poorly worded. Eric’s article on the route was very useful and between that and the companion app instructions I understood 1) where I was going & 2) what I was doing. Did 5 minutes of reading before I started my warmup save me hassle? Clearly. There were plenty of on screen messages flying around of “where am I going” “what’s next” “you know this isn’t a race”etc. Not to mention a few who were trying to psych out and trick others. I really feel investing 2 mins reading the event description would have explained it and there would have been fewer complaints. But, compared to other ZA events there was a lack of on screen instructions. Maybe those who didn’t read in were caught out expecting them on screen? Shane, awesome you managed to reach out to Zwift directly. If there were enough people complaining, then surely something had been missed.

Good video. Strange that at 3:23 and when you show the segments, the distance between your best effort and other effort is only 1 min, you did your best effort Sep 02, 2021 | 07:56 and the other effort Sep 02, 2021 | 07:57, is that a bug from Zwift?

Also maybe there could be comments maybe triggered by having gone a fixed distance along a course that could give comments like "Coming up is the XXm sprint look for the blue marker..."

Why is this not explained before we take the baseline! I’ll have to re do it now!

I've only completed the baseline ride and thanks to this video was a major success. I noticed on the schedules they are up to Workout #2 now. Did I miss Workout #1 ? If so can I catch up?

Any idea how many times we should be doing the workouts in each block Shane? I can't find anything about the optimal number. Cheers

So I can't even find the Baseline ride!?!?!?!?! I've done the ZA Orientation ride, but that's not it, is it???? The next choice is Workout #1, which is VO2 Over/Unders, and I did that this morning. HELP PLEASE!!!!

Here is a full breakdown of the segments to jot down. Hope it helps. Please notify if I get something wrong. VVVVVV ____ ADVANCED Baseline Ride Route: 18.6 mi // 30 km Lead-in: 669.6 ft // 204.1 m Short Segment @ 2.6 km/1.6 mi 65 ft // 20 m effort Medium Segment @ 11.9 km/7.4 mi 2,952 ft // 900 m 6.6% Long Segment @ 21.7 km/13.5 mi 3.9 mi // 6.3 km 6.3% ____ STANDARD Baseline Ride Route: 15.5 mi // 25 km Lead-in: 666 ft // 203 m Medium Segment @ 4.1 km/2.5 mi 2,952 ft // 900 m 6.6% Short Segment @ 16.5 km/10.2 mi 1,312 ft // 400 m Long Segment @ 20.9 km/13 mi 2.3 mi // 3.8 km 3.2%

The people from Zwift are a bit delusional if they think you're gonna see much improvement from six workouts. 😅 Speaking of the workouts. The warmups start at 50%. Stronger people need a lot of watts right out of the gates with cold legs. On workout #2 I started my own custom warmup (35%) and switched over to the ZA workout when I reached 50%.

Oh wow, I really missed the middle one. Do you know if I have to do the full ride again or can I just quit after the middle one? I will probably not improve on the long one.

Any recommendations as to which baseline to do (advance vs standard)? I'm fairly new to cycling with an FTP at 229W (76kg)

Cheers Shane. I also assume there's no power ups available either.

I did the baseline ride but when looking in the companion app for the results i only have medium and long, its missing the short (and yes i sprinted the heck out of it) anyone any ideas why its missing ?

The comments on the Baseline ride I did showed that a lot of people didn't know the format and we're treating it as a race. The same with Workout #1.

So what do you do if you lose or gain weight? Won’t that skew your results when you do the finish line ?

Can't wait for podcast so you guys can rip on Zwift for the epic fail

RTFM Lama!

I did the zwift academy and tell you what mate, talk about a basic fail in terms of visual cues, why don't they have a star wars like scroll to inform you what's going on at the start, then you have these tiny blinking lights for the start of segments, so cryptic, and visually non existent at the least have a dude with a flag, maybe a sign, sheeeeez. give head honcho mr zwift a call and get it through his head, its called signposting. such a fail for a large online platform, they could learn so much from the real world that we ride in - ingenious ideas like a white line.

LOL, wth was I thinking yesterday going hard for 30K.. Good workout though..

Seems like a glaring oversight to have end points marked but not the starts.

Boggles my mind how they can make something relatively simple so complicated. Why not just have a banner telling you how close you are to the start of each segment? How hard is that? Zwift really is run by a bunch of rookies.

LOL!

Your VO2 angry face looks like you are about to passout

Great tips…but people can’t help themselves and will still treat this as a race… 😅

Wow the font in the logo look just the same as another company that offer training programs 🙄 and who also use road in their name.

Here's another tip for those who have done ZA in the past: there are ZERO text prompts ... no welcome, no guidance, nothing. You are on your own. Personally I think it's a huge UX fail.