Yesterday I had a morning ride because I wanted to participate in the Tour de Zwift event. Yesterday the track was London and I was riding slowly for the first half, conserving energy. Eventually, when I got warmed up I started to ride harder and harder until I was overtaking quite a few other cyclists. I took advantage to play on the sprint and got the Green jersey. I took some time to recover and then I pushed myself. I was overtaking group after group. I gained at least 50 places in the standing.
When I got to Keith Hill I was pedalling hard. I was overtaking people constantly and I was pushing from one group to the next, catching up with them just to encourage myself to make that much more effort. Eventually, I got to the top of the hill and I saw that I had both the green jersey and the polka dotted one. “Meilleur Grimpeur” as you hear on French television during the Tour De France. It feels good to push that much, to exceed your previous rides and for it to be quantifiable. This ride resulted in quite a few personal records on Zwift. I also improved my FTP score.
Making such an effort on an ordinary day would be great. I’d have had a good workout and reached my daily exercise goal. In this case, it was a mistake. I went climbing without having a proper dinner in the evening and all the energy I had burned to cycle was now missing for climbing. This was my worst day of climbing in a while. I completed one or two routes rather than the usual five or six. Usually, before I go climbing in the evening I rest. When I get to the wall I’m impatient to climb and I do well.
This summer I climbed over 8848 metres in a single month and now I have just completed the Zwift Everest challenge as well. This challenge, on Zwift, is much easier than in the real world because you are not carrying water, the weight of your bike, dealing with keeping yourself balanced on your bike or traffic.
Using a Fluid Trainer.
I don’t use a smart trainer. I use an Elite Qubo Fluid trainer and to climb I use information on speed to decide how hard to work. If I feel lazy I can pedal at 100 watts for a long period of time to get to the top but that isn’t in my nature. I like to push myself. I push until I get tired and then I recover, and then I push again. I also loe to sprint to the end and try to beat my previous time. Yesterday I rode up at a relatively lazy pace. When I got to within 1.5 kilometres of the top I really put out a lot of energy and when I reached the summit I was spent.
I put out an average power of 291 watts for an effort of 2 minutes 29 with a peak at 612 watts and a cadence of between 100 and 121 pedal strokes a minute. It might seem strange to put out such a lot of energy on a bike indoors but the feeling of accomplishment is the same as if you had done it in the real world.
I like climbing challenges because I live in a mountaineous landscape therefore reaching long ride distances is more challenging. It’s not that I don’t have the ability to ride for four or five hours but that if I ride four to five hours I travel one hundred kilometres because I have to climb cols if I want an interesting GPS track.
Stamina and technique
Stamina and technique do improve as you get used to climbing. You might be in the easiest gear going just above “stalling” speed but you endure up that hill until you get to the top. On Zwift you ride your bike in the physical world but a top of the range frame and wheels in the virtual realm. This means that you’re achieving times that you could never reach in the physical world with your current bike setup.
With a dumb trainer like mine, in contrast to a smart trainer with force feedback, you only see that you’re climbing because A) your speed decreases and B)The gradient indicator tells you that you’re on a hill. With a smart trainer it does get harder and you may want to switch to an easier gear Some people even add a gradient machine at the front to tilt the bike.
With what I describe above there are two things that you do not get with virtual climbing. The first of these is a sensation of altitude as the air gets thinner and colder and secondly you do not get that fantastic ride down. On an indoor trainer whether you’re going up or down you still need to keep pedalling. In the real world when you’re going downhill you rest and recover unless you’re one of the top descenders of the Tour De France or other cycling races.
Conclusion
I haven’t tried a smart trainer so my experiences and opinions on virtual climbing are based on theory rather than practice. I have used recumbent bikes but they give you a power to achieve rather than a sensation of climbing. Virtual climbing, as I have experienced it, is easier than climbing in the real world because if you go to slowly you don’t fall, and you don’t have the sudden very steep gradients that you sometimes experience in the physical world. Most indoor trainers are blocked at 12 percent if my memory serves me well. In the real world they can reach 23 percent or more.
Recently I have been thinking about bike locks. I have been looking at the variety of options that there are and for a while I was worried about bike theft. It is for that reason that I never left my bikes unattended for more than half a minute to a minute during bike rides.
This is easy when you’re going on 30-100km bike rides where you spend all of your time with the bike but what about when you replace your scooter with a bike. I never worried about leaving my scooter unattended and so far no one has stolen it. Logically I should have felt the same way about bikes and bike locks but I don’t.
For years I was happy with the springy cable bike locks that everyone had but recently as I have seen D or U-locks I have been curious to see what works best. If you’re using D/U locks you need to find something to fix the bike too and that’s impractical most of the time. You could use a standard spring lock to get the appropriate distance but anyone with bolt cutters could knick a bike within seconds.
I recently remembered that my concern about bikes being stolen is based on the fact that a few years ago a gang came and stole every bike that was not secured from the garages. They tried to take my bike from 1996 but after a short distance abandoned it. By this time the tires were ruined and the bike was covered in dust and dirt from years of neglect.
A bunch of bikes were stolen a few years ago
After that experience I always kept bikes either in the basement or when I was riding a lot in the landing. When you ride a lot it’s nice to have everything organised and ready to go. Carrying it up and down a staircase, getting covered in dirt and potentially dirtying the walls is not ideal. I won’t disclose where I keep bikes between uses.
Organised Gangs taking bikes
I went to try an e-bike recently and at the end of the trial I asked the bike shop owner about bike thefts and both he and a customer laughed. He told me that organised gangs come to Geneva with a van and just take every bike that they can fit into the van, whether electric or other. I haven’t checked with police to see whether this information is correct so I class it as possibly true, rather than fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGvfiLla7X0
Yesterday as I walked around Geneva I looked at how bikes were locked up. I saw that most of them were using the Ugrip Bordo style lock. I saw them used to lock most kinds of bike. They have a security rating between 7-10 so they’re moderately secure. As you see from the video above a bike lock doesn’t take long to break if someone has the right tools.
Ugrip Bordo style lock
It is for this reason that I have two bikes. I have one bike for when I want to do medium to long distances ranging from 30-100km and another that I use for going to the shops. The one I use for the shops is one of the cheapest and simplest bikes I could find. After today’s errands it has its first mud splatters. I was using a level 10 D-lock but found it impractical in certain places so I moved to a ugrip lock instead. The lock is marginally less secure but I was encouraged by the fact that so many people feel safe enough to leave their bikes secured with such a system.
Vélostation
There is a third option. For 2 CHF per day, 7 CHF per week, 20CHF per month, 150CHF per year or 200CHF for every bike parking you can park your bike at the vélostations by these locations: CFF Cornavin, Montbrillant, P+R Etoile, P+R Genève-Plage, Hôtel des Finances, P+R Sécheron, P+R Sous-Moulin and Uni-Dufour. The strength of this system is that bikes should be more secure but the weakness of this system is that you don’t have the convenience of parking the bike by your destination.
In theory you could use this, if and when it becomes available.
Publibike
The last option is to use bike sharing services like Publibike. There are a few stations in the Canton de Vaud, you can rent by hour for up to 25CHF per day or go for other options. They offer both human powered bikes and electric bikes. A mobile app allows you to see where bikes are available as well as where to park them.
Conclusion
According to this website 40,000 bikes are stolen a year and only 500 are recovered in Switzerland. Bike locks offer protection from opportunists but not organised gangs as demonstrated above. If you have a higher range bike you can park it in specialist parkings and if you have a low to mid-range bike you can lock it close to your destination. People in Geneva seem to trust ugrip style locks so that’s what I opted for with a low end bike that I can use for errands.
When I heard that Zwift would allow us to ride our bikes through a virtual New York I joked that I would use my singlespeed and I hoped that I could ride through the streets. Unfortunately you get to ride through the New York countryside, otherwise known as Central Park. Imagine riding through the Autumnal Hamptons at this time of year.
I have ridden three or four times in virtual New York, once for pleasure and two or three times for training. As you saw from a previous post I really suffered on my second to last ride. I went rock climbing Saturday, to take a break from cycling and Sunday I returned and succeeded.
The glass cycling paths are an interesting idea. It’s nice to be able to ride above the traffic and see small parts of the city from a drone’s eye view. ;-). This isn’t today’s New York. Is is 2099 New York, with flying cars, glass roads and despite this modernity people wearing rather ordinary jackets as they “watch” cyclists go around the routes.
The Riding in circles glitch
Some people have found a “feature” whereby they can run around in a circle as if they were turning around over and over. When I asked them what the track looked like on Strava they showed that it shows that bug so it’s should not be complicated to resolve this issue, if it is always at the same point. Imagine if Zwift and Rockstar games created a mod so we could have virtual rides in GTA V.
Some elevation gains
In a one and a half hour session riding through Zwift New York, I climbed six hundred and sixty-six metres. A few people have commented that this version of New York is too hilly and others have commented that smart trainers can be set to 0 difficulty to negate those hills.
The challenge is being gradual enough to react to the lag in power reading. A few training sessions ago I tried pedalling hard, overshooting the watts required but found that it was hard to catch the momentum just right. I then tried the opposite. I tried pedalling faster, to get to the desired wattage and then changing gear and keeping the wheel going at that momentum. This worked for a period.
Today I hit the wall. The methods that I mention above work well on rested legs but because I have been playing with Zwift frequently, including fun rides after the training sessions I have fatigued my legs. They are unable to hold the gradual effort changes that are required by the training courses.
As I saw that I couldn’t maintain the required effort for the required time I aborted the effort in the hope of trying again in two or three days, when I recover.
It is frustrating and the natural thing would be to blame the tools and buy a smart home trainer with erg mode to do the mental maths for me. The second option would be to buy pedals with power metres. I am not going to do either of these things. I am going to rest my legs by going for easier rides for a day or two and, then, when my legs have recovered I will start playing again.
Komoot is an app based on socialising through sports. The sports are cycling, mountain biking, bike touring, hiking and running. It integrates well with Garmin and allows you to track activities from your mobile phone or import GPX, Fit and other files from other brands. It also allows you to create your own tracks ahead of an activity as well as plan it for a specific day and time.
Sports
Running and hiking are two distinct categories with no differentiating between hiking, walking, nordic or rambling. Running does not have sub-categories for trail running, road running or other variants. Cycling seems to be the sport they are most focused on. They differentiate between road riding, mountain biking and touring.
Creating routes
Creating a route on the website is easy. You can choose between a linear route or a loop. You can select which sport is for. I tried creating two or three walking routes as well as two or three cycling routes based on walks I have done in the past. You mark point A and point B and then add the in between points. I created the 100km route I tried from Nyon to the Col de Marchairuz, around the Lac de Joux and then down via St Cergue to Nyon. It automatically gives you ascent information, gradient, an average speed and an estimated route time as well as level of expertise.
It provides difficulty, estimated time of completion, total distance, estimated average speed, ascent and descent. With this information it is easier to assess whether it is in within our capabilities.
It provides a profile for the ride, with the ability to mouse over each section and even to highlight a segment you are interested in knowing more about.
Finally it gives you the type of road as well as the surfaces. You can see whether to expect traffic, pedestrians, farmers and more. By knowing the type of road surface you can evaluate whether your tires are suitable or not.
The same is true of hiking tracks. I did this specific hike in about 5 and a half hours. I did start in Eysins and skip the summit. I went via a col on the right rather than going to La Dôle.
With hiking trails it provides the type of road surface you can expect to find along the way. If you’re looking for a dirt track away from traffic you may decide to skip certain sections. It’s a shame that it doesn’t specify whether sections are main roads or agricultural paths.
The route is colour coded according to difficulty. Easy sections are in green and harder sections as well as their gradient are highlighted in orange or red. As you can see sections of this trail were steep.
Google Maps offers some of the same functionality but you do not get so much detail and it is not integrated within a mobile app or gps units like Komoot is. Finally at the bottom of the route you get weather information. This can be useful if you plan to do an activity in a few days.
Planning a group activity
A feature I would like to see on this app is the ability to create a group event or activity. I would like to be able to take a route I have prepared and decide on a time and date when a group of people could come together to enjoy a hike or bike ride. If and when this is included it would be a one stop solution for people to meet up and enjoy activities together.
Yesterday I was stung by a wasp while cycling and when I tried to remove the stinger I couldn’t. I was in pain and almost stopped cycling. I was in distress as a bus passed on a main road. I was on an agricultural path by some apple orchards. I stopped where the agricultural road reached the main road.
It’s almost twenty four hours later and my lower lip and one of my cheeks have swelled up. A few weeks ago I had a similar incident with a bee but I was able to remove the stinger while cycling and my quick action prevented too much poison from being pumped into my lower lip. When that incident occurred I was surprised not to have any swelling.
In previous years I have been stung twice to my right leg and at least once to the stomach. I had no adverse reaction. Being stung when you’re riding a bike or scooter is normal. Usually the windshield on the scooter protects your body so that’s where bugs get splattered. I often hear when bumble bees and other larger insects hit my helmet. There’s that little “poc” sound on almost every ride.
If you look at car radiators, windshields and side mirrors you will see a graveyard of insects. This year I have seen flying swarms of small insects and I’ve tried not to have my mouth open by accident when going through them.
I am tempted to get a face mask, to protect my mouth. I already protect my eyes on every ride for this very reason. A face mask would be a logical next step.
Yesterday I rode an e-bike over 5km and played with the eco, touring, sport and turbo modes. I experimented with the gears and I experimented with a variety of gradients and surfaces. Through this trial I got to understand how e-bikes work.
Gaining momentum
E-bikes are great for helping you get up to 25 kilometres an hour and after that, if you have the strength then you can ride the bike at over 25 kilometres per hour for as long as you last. When you start to get tired the engine will kick in again when you slip down to below 25 kilometres per hour and assist you for the rest of the journey.
Bosch engines are gentle, they assist you from a standing start, following your pedal force to gradually get you up to 25 kilometres per hour and above. Once you reach 25 kilometres per hour and above the engine cuts out and it’s a normal bike.
Weight and gearing
E-bikes can easily weigh 23kg or more so having the right gears is important. I tried riding an e-bike without changing gears for the first few minutes and I was able to move it along. When I started to shift gears I saw how light the e-bike felt. This is important for uphill segments if the battery dies.
Two types of engine
There are two types of engines. There are gentle engines such as Bosch, to give you a more pleasant cycling feel and then you have other engines, such as Yamaha and others that are meant to be more forceful. In a sports supermarket, I tried another e-bike and that engine was punchier in that you pedalled a quarter of a crank rotation and it threw you to 25km per hour. The latter option felt more like driving a scooter than riding a bike. It defeats the purpose.
Summary
E-bikes assist you in getting to 25 kilometres an hour and if you’re a strong rider the engine will sit in the background and kick in again when you get tired. Although the bike’s engine is limited to 25km per hour it is not like a car or scooter. The speed limit is for the engine, not your pedalling power. If you’re a strong cyclist you can easily reach a higher speed. This implies that on downhill segments you could reach your usual speeds of 50+km per hour.
As a next step I would like to do a full range test, from Nyon to Geneva and back along the roads I take on a bike. Those are undulating and there are moments that get exposed to strong headwinds. I would also ride the route du Lac. If it survives those routes I would be confident to replace my petrol driven scooter with an e-bike.
I could opt for a 45 kilometre per hour bike but I’ve found that I love my 2-5 hour bike rides so an e-bike that assists up to 25km/h is sufficient.
It took me one hour this morning to assemble a single beltdrive bike. It was relatively simple, unbox it, assemble the saddle, add the handlebars, add the pedals, add the front wheel, inflate the tires and I think that was it. The part that took me longer was finding where the front wheel bolts were. They were in the plastic inserts to stabilise the bike in the box.
First test run
I then went for a bike ride on a variety of gradients to assess how it felt on each. I found that I wanted to instinctively change gears but I couldn’t. It required me to get out of the saddle more than I would with a geared bike but other than that the ride was pleasant.
Beltdrive bikes are silent but as this isn’t a true fixie, just a fixie by name there is a noise when you stop pedalling and start freewheeling. The ride felt less smooth than when I ride the road bike but that might be due to the surface I rode on rather than the bike or the tires. The tires are 700c 28s so they should be smoother than the 25s I use on the other bike.
I managed a few personal bests and my best 20 minute average was 24km per hour. That’s in line with the speed an e-bike will get you to so in theory it negates the need for one. We should however keep in mind that this was a short 15km ride where I avoided full steep climbs.
Near the end of the ride I went for a speed test and got to about 40km/h before I met the limitations of this gear ratio. The gradient was about 0.2 to -0-3 percent.
Intended use
My intended use for this bike is for when I go shopping, when I go to a nearby climbing gym and when I go to visit people who live nearby. It could also be used for critical mass events and riding around towns. It is as a replacement for the scooter on small trips.
My average time riding a bike over the last four weeks was seven and a half hours per week. When I’m not riding the bike I’m usually using the scooter but that’s mainly because I don’t want to leave the bike unattended. It is for this reason that I’ve been looking for cheap alternatives. I’ve looked at folding bikes but they cost as much as a scooter and I’ve been looking at electric bikes but they also cost as much as a scooter.
Aside from the issue of price folding bikes weigh from 17 to 23kg or more. For a bike that is meant to be portable it is grossly overweight. Can you imagine riding that around a mountaineous country like switzerland? I did see a cheap folding bike for about 169 CHF. It would be nice to keep in the car. You could park in an area where it’s free and then explore towns and cities without the hindrance of public transport.
Yesterday I rode to Geneva on the bike and an e-bike limited to 45km/h overtook me and I did enjoy sprinting after it and trying to catch up with it. I matched the speed for a little bit and then turned onto another street. E-bikes that go at 45 kilometres per hour are meant to follow the same rules as motorbikes and scooters so they’re less interesting than those limited to 25 kilometres per hour. Those limited to 25 kilometres per hour are no longer interesting because I can cycle at an average speed of 21-24 kilometres per hour on three to five hour rides.
I also looked at mountain bikes, trekking bikes and other options. The issue with these is that the affordable ones are heavy and the fun ones are expensive. I finally found an option that would be fine in a flat country like Belgium or Holland but could be regretted in Switzerland. A single speed bike, or a fixie.
My logic in this choice is that it’s apparently easy to maintain, it costs little and it’s probably easy to place in the back of a car without making a mess. The one I was tempted by has a belt rather than a chain. The version with a chain is cheaper but it’s around two kg heavier. The fixie with a belt weighs around 11kg, the same as the road bike I use.
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