Two days ago I started playing/training with Zwift. I tested it on my phone, the ipad and the laptop and it worked with each. Pairing both the apple watch with the iOS app on mobile phone and ipad worked well. Pairing between the bluetooth cadence and speed sensor as well as the suunto movesense heartrate monitor worked well with the laptop.
A set time or distance limit
When you are riding loops in the real world it’s easy to plan on a one hour ride and end up taking two hours as you add additional segments because you feel good. Sometimes you get home and two to three hours have elapsed. With Zwift training programs will last for a set amount of time with set goals.
Type of rides
Two days ago I rode around the streets of London that I have ridden around in person in recent years. Yesterday I tried the Walonia course and I tried the pre-training grand fondo program. This track is based on a location in the Solomon Islands near Mulle. They added the volcano. If you check on maps you will see that you were riding on water. Maybe I was using a pedalo. I rode for 50 minutes with 3 minute peak power output of 130-150 watts.
I used the Zwift companion app to get information about the power output. It gives a more complete appreciation of the power range you are aiming to maintain. This is a useful addition because there is a lag as you go from generating about 50 watts of power when you rest to 130 watts when you’re meant to be making an effort.
Previously I followed several of the indoor trainer videos made by GCN and I found them enjoyable. I was training according to feel and followed their recommendations. I had no feedback on pedalling speed or power output until I reviewed the data at the end of the ride. I also had to skip the adverts as they play during workouts. Interrupting an effort to skip an advert is not ideal.
GCN have a complete video explaining the features of the app.
Summary
When it’s raining outdoors you can still train for an hour or more without getting bored. You can also have an enjoyable ride despite the rain outside or instead of dealing with rush-hour traffic. It is also available to you twenty-four hours a day if you set it up at home. With structured plans you can train and reach personal goals with the right level of commitment.
Hermance is a place where I have dived frequently and so it is only natural that I hard to ride from Geneva to Hermance on a bike. The ride is an easy and pleasant ride. It takes you out of Geneva and through the fields to the East of Geneva before taking you down to Hermance where you have a good view of the lake. The ride back takes you through a few villages before getting back to Geneva.
The landscape undulates with only one climb as you leave the lake and take the back roads towards Pallanterie. From that point you follow the road until you get to the French border and cross to the left and head straight for the lake. It’s at this point that you start to see signs for Hermance and follow them down a steep road to the lake side.
I love for the GPS track of my rides to be a loop so to ensure that this was the case I cycled back via the lake road. There are bits where you are with cars but for the majority of the route you have a dedicated cycle path.
I installed WP Strava on this blog to share my Strava cycling and running activity. At the time of this blog post you can see my most recent bike rides in the left column as well as the most recent map. With a minimum of code you can also include your bike rides within a post like you see below. You write activity id=number of activity and the ride will be integrated within your blog posts without the need for embed codes and an iframe.
This is useful for activity bloggers such as myself. The code is simple and easy to remember, as soon as I find the right keyboard keys to avoid the need to copy and paste. Shortcodes are to add information to blog posts and the widgets are for the side bar.
SHORTCODES
activity id=NUMBER – add to any page or post. Also takes the following
optional parameters:
som – english/metric (system of measure – override from default setting)
map_width – width (width of image in pixels)
map_height – height (height of image in pixels)
WIDGETS
Strava Latest Rides – shows a list of the last few activities
Strava Latest Map – shows map of latest activity with option to limit
latest map to activities of a certain minimum distance
Limitations
It would be nice for the maps that are included within posts to be zoomable, so that we can look at the details of the bike ride and see information for specific segments. This functionality is available on the website but there is no easy link to the strava posts. It’s an advantage because it’s native to your site but it’s a shame if you’re trying to grow a strava following. For that functionality you need the widget.
Overall it’s a quick and simple solution to add Strava maps and ride/run data to your blog post. You can then add images and a textual description to complement the map.
The Seventh stage of the Tour De Zwift was Innsbruck, a course that some people can do in about 388 minutes. It takes me around 54 minutes. As I have not ridden this course frequently enough I decided to try to keep up with others and that meant a 20 minute best of 197 watts.
My lack of familiarity with the course meant that when the climbs came up I did not push as hard or as long as I would have if I did know the course. I went up faster than some but was easily overtaken by others. On the Alpe de Zwift during my PR I did not have this issue.
Towards the end of this course I got to the sprint and at this moment I saw that the best time was around 19 seconds so I decided to give everything I had to get the best sprint time on this stage. During other events I have come in positions ranging from 38th to 200th or slower. This time I was lucky.
According to Zwift’s algorithms I generated an average of 823 watts with a peak of 1112 watts for 20s averaging 54.7km an hour and peaking at 59.4km/h. By the end of this sprint I felt faint. This puts me in 816th place on this segment overall. The top ten sprinters did it in 14-16 seconds. I am 45th for this year. That’s easy to achieve at the start of the year.
I don’t train hard enough to generate from 4-6 watts per kilo for an hour or two at a time. I can’t keep up with A and B riders. I do however have the ability to sprint and this does provide me with an advantage. When I climb I always try to sprint for the last four hundred metres or more. This means that I put down a lot of power for a short period of time.
According to Zwiftpower my strengh is uphill sprinting, where I can generate 17.61 watts per kilo. As a short sprinter I can generate 1057 watts. Both of these figures explain why I am theoretically good at sprints. I don’t use a power metre so these figures are hypothetical. As a rouleur or time trialist my ratings are 265-229 watts per kilo so this explains why I am easy to leave behind. Compare this to the 300-600 watts that we see Simon Richardson and others put out on Zwift live events.
And Finally
It’s easy to think of indoor cycling as sitting on a recumbent bike looking at a bar graph and straining to keep up in a gym for fourty minutes listening to a podcast or someone exercising in the corner of an apartment watching tv whilst simply counting down until the 15-20 minute session. Zwift is much more than that.
When you ride on Zwift you suspend disbelief and you feel as if you’re on a real bike ride with real goals. Some days are terrible and you want to stop and others are excellent and you exceed your goals. This is about having fun as you get fit.
The first time I climbed up to La Barillette on a bike it took me two and a half hours. This time it took one hour and sixteen minutes. I was going so slowly that I had to work to keep the bike upright. Since then I have gone from a mountain bike with tyres that weren’t pumped enough and soft suspension to the same bike with slick tires, hardened suspension and higher pressure in the tyres. I then swapped that bike two or three years later and tried the same climb. I struggled with the road bike as well. I had to stop at least two or three times. I also found that clipped in pedals on such steep gradients are a hindrance because you can’t stop until the flatter bits.
This time I wore normal shoes and I set off from around Nyon. I cycled up to the start of the climb and i just started climbing. Above Cheserex I already had to stand on the bike to get enough thrust, then sit down, and then repeat. As I went up I saw two or three groups. One group set off just as I was getting to them and the second stopped where the first had been.
I like having a group in front of me. The group in front gives me a goal. It gives me a pace. I want at the minimum to keep up with them and ideally to overtake them. The person I used for pacing gave up within the first four to six kilometres. I then continued at my own pace as the other people were now a long distance away.
As I go up this hill I often daydream and my mind wanders to something completely different. It’s the closest I’d get to meditation. You’re making a physical effort but the body is so used to it that the mind has time to think of other things. I don’t remember what I was daydreaming about.
I’m used to doing this climb in the heat of summer when it’s 37°c or more. This time it was no more than 20 or so. I didn’t need to take two litres of water with me but I would have been happy with a rain coat and a third layer. The reason for this is that the beautiful weather I set off in turned overcast and cold.
As I got closer to the top I could feel the temperature begin to drop, and i felt the need to close the zips, to preserve heat. I even thought of putting my spare layer on. I continued.
When you’re climbing you know what your previous times were and during this time I got to a certain point where i saw that I was going to beat my previous best times by a nice margin so it encouraged me to keep going, but also not to stop and rest, and not to wait for two cars to figure out how to pass each other. I cycled through the grass to overtake them.
When I finally got to the top I saw people get out of their cars, smoke cigarettes and talk loudly. I had two Balistos and then headed back down. The view was so bad that I didn’t take any pictures.
As much as you think you suffer during the way up, which I didn’t this time, going down is the difficult bit. When you’re going back down you’re cold and you’re not doing much. You’re letting gravity undo the work that you just spent an hour doing.
My tyres have over 4000km in them so as i went down the hill I was slower than I needed to be. The surface was also wet and therefore could be slippy. I was holding the brakes for a good portion of the descent, to such an extent that I thought this was a good finger strengthening exercise.
Just before I got to the pond my rear tyre suffered a puncture. I can see two marks where I think a thorn or some other object punctured the tyre and deflated it within seconds. It didn’t matter as I had a spare tyre with me.
This winter I changed tyres frequently for the indoor trainer so the process has become automatic. What I especially enjoyed about changing a tyre on the side of a mountain slope is that you don’t have to worry about getting the floor dirty. Within minutes the tyre was changed and I could continue the descent.
This ride is unique because the night before I decided to do this climb we were discussing a via ferrata with two friends but they don’t have the equipment. The compromise was going to climb indoors but I didn’t feel like doing that because 1. the weather was nice and because 2. there are free sports to be enjoyed. I woke up that morning, opened the blinds and because of what a beautiful and warm day I saw it would be I decided to go for a bike ride and enjoy it. It felt so good to get on the bike after several days, or even weeks of not riding.
I was fully within the moment yesterday. I profited from the good weather, I set a goal and I achieved it, and I lived in the now, rather than later. This is rare for me. This ride, despite it’s physical nature, was relaxing.
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.
We’re just days away from Switzerland rebooting in Safe Mode. Rebooting in Safe mode means that children will go back to School on alternating days. Hairdressers and creches are already open. So are flower shops.
When I went to the local shopping the music festival maze to get into the shops was simplified and made more efficient. You don’t need to walk around so much. The doors to the shopping centers are also opening in the normal configuration again. Life is already to return towards safe-mode normal.
French people in Switzerland have fallen in love with the sentence «Il faut agir aussi vite que possible, mais aussi lentement que nécessaire». Translated it means “We must act as quickly as possible, but be as meticulous as possible” or something to that effect. It’s important to be responsive, and to take the time it takes, to get life back to normal, safely.
Part of this experiment should include a smartphone app to track who we’re close to and when. It’s developed by the EPFL and we’ll see how it behaves and if it provides us with any interesting or useful information. I’m a fan of apps that provide me with information about the information I’m providing. I like Google Maps for this reason. I’ll have an opinion on Monday.
Rather than go for my daily walk I went for a daily bike ride. I went as far as Versoix and back in a respectable loop. The borders are still shut so the paths I like to take are not accessible yet.
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