Sam’s list of six things she wished she knew when she first joined Zwift

1. The Everest Challenge as a route to the Tron bike. Yes, I’m making good progress. I’m more than halfway there. But at the start I rode for a few months without signing up for the challenge. Today in my group ride we talked about someone who had completed the climbing mileage and wondered why he hadn’t gotten the Tron. Turned out he’d never signed up.

2. Other people seemed to be better about giving Ride-Ons than me. But it was only later I discovered you can give more than one ride-on at a time. “Use the Zwift Companion App to quickly give Ride-Ons to 5 random people within your near vicinity. Just tap your location arrow in the app! If you’re in a group ride, those Ride Ons will go to others participating in the same group. Ride on.” From Zwift Tips. I also learned that if you want to give everyone you rode with kudos on Strava, you just view the list of people and shake your phone. Who knew? I didn’t. I do now.

3. When I first started doing workouts, I did them in any old place. It was only later that I realized (thanks Sarah!) that by doing my workouts on serious climbs, I could accumulate climbing metres faster. See THE EASIEST (LEGAL) WAY TO GET THE TRON BIKE IN ZWIFT for route advice.

4. It also didn’t occur to me–you’ll get the sense that the ‘game’ aspect of Zwift was new to me–that if I was attempting a climb to accumulate metres climbed I could turn around at the top and come back down to accumulate kilometres ridden. You can also just coast down and answer your email! Shhh.

5. You can return to the pairing screen and do things–like swap virtual bikes–without exiting your ride. It also took me awhile to figure out when to use which bike.

6. In real life, I don’t super tuck. I’m not a particularly nervous descender but I don’t adopt the aggressive aero position of pro-cyclists. I saw some avatars doing it in Zwift and I didn’t get it. I should have googled. At a certain point in real world cycling you go faster by aero tucking than pedaling. That’s true in Zwift too. See “How to” here.

From Zwift News: “In cycling, “aero is everything.” So pros like Chris Froome get into an aero-tuck (aka “super-tuck”) when descending, reducing air resistance and allowing them to travel faster with less work.

Looking for some rest while descending one of Zwift’s many mountains? You can use the super-tuck. It is literally the easiest way to go faster on Zwift, since it requires you to stop pedaling!

Here’s how it works: if you are on a 3% or steeper downhill moving at least 35mph (57km/h), stop pedaling. Your avatar will enter the super-tuck as soon as your power drops to 10 watts or less.

Once in the super-tuck your rider will travel faster, mimicking the reduced air resistance you would encounter when aero-tucking outdoors.

There is one exception: riders on TT frames cannot super-tuck.”

How about you? If you Zwift is there anything you know now that you wished you knew at the get go?