Zwift – Interval Training

I’ve rarely been told that a scheme I was in was moving from free beta-test to paid monthly subscription and felt excited about it. But that’s what happened this month with Zwift. The excitement was down to two factors. One was the endless potential Zwift has to expand with new courses. And the other was the introduction of Interval Workout Training!

As can be seen above the intro screen now has an option to select

Workout

rather than just the option to Ride.
On selecting Workout the rider is presented with a number of options :

I opted to go for the 73 minute (bizarrely specific) FTP Test. Your FTP or Functional Threshold Power is a measure of the maximum power you can hold for sixty minutes.
The ride started out looking like any other ride but it became clear early on that the Wahoo Kickr was running in “ergo” mode – i.e. no big changes in difficulty when hitting hills etc – just a flat level of intensity depending on the amount of effort put in.

The next thing apparent were a few new on-screen stats. On the left was a panel showing a breakdown of the various segments to be undertaken and at the bottom a spidery line represents the riders’ current progress.

A little message welcomed me to the test (welcome to my nightmare) and the test began. Nice and easy easy to begin with and then with intervals of varying intensity.

The start/end of each interval is marked by a glowing arch:

It was a little disconcerting forty minutes in to be told “your FTP test is about to start” – at that point I was already blowing out of every orifice

And then it was twenty-minutes of kick-your-own-ass grunting shouting effort to the point where the neighbours must have been wondering what on earth I was up to.

At the end I managed an FTP of 232 – which to be honest I have little idea at the moment of whether it’s good, average or (as I suspect) poor. But bizarrely enough I thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s not many times when you can ride a fixed bike for over an hour and feel disappointment when the session is over – especially not interval training which is usually both boring and painful,  but the Zwift/Wahoo Kickr combo manages it with some style.

I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying the Zwift effect.
Highly recommended

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Elliptigo – Channel View Leisure Centre

A few weeks back we saw a few new Elliptigo elliptical bikes on display at the Channel View Centre in Cardiff Bay and our curiosity was tweaked. If you’ve ever seen an elliptical trainer in a gym then imagine that set on wheels and you’ve got a good idea of what they look like. I have to say I wasn’t too keen to hire one as the thought of scooting around Cardiff on a giant-sized child’s scooter in electric green was less than appealing. But she-who-must-be-obeyed insisted and so there I was this morning signing away my life to rent an oversized scooter

In the words of my daughter when she saw the photos – “you guys are so embarrassing”

A quick tutorial in the car-park by the Elliptigo evangelist in-residence Steve and we were on our way

And what fun it was! The most fun I’ve had with clothes on all week.
The experience is like cycling without the butt-ache and like running without the knee impact pain. Pretty much the perfect exercise for an arthritic old fart with shot knees like me.

The raised upright body position means that you have excellent all-round vision and the bikes stand out so much that traffic did not feel like an issue at all – although we cycled mainly off-road today. (I have to say that Cardiff Bay and the linked Taff-Trail which runs all the way to Brecon and beyond make Cardiff heaven for cyclists).

If I were to describe the motion of the bike then I’d say it’s akin to running on air, or like running in water without the water resistance. You travel along at what feels like a huge lope and the Elliptigo really comes into its own on long open stretches of road such as the one crossing the Cardiff Bay Barrage – so good we did it twice

It did help that the weather in the Bay today was pretty glorious and that there was so much to see such as a visiting Swedish sailing-ship, “Eye of the Wind”

a chap carving maritime figureheads

and a weird new building near the Dr Who exhibition – which appears to be made of Japanese “shou sugi ban” shingle in the shape off a strange stubby legged toad

The missus and I (who both suffer with various joint or muscle problems) were very taken with the Elliptigo. Enormous fun and a real head turner. I lost count of the number of adults that gave us a smile or a “what the… is that thing” look, and of the number of kids who looked on slack-jawed or said “Wow!” as we glided past.

The bike’s build feels very sturdy and well engineered and it has some neat little details such as the ergonomic grips

We only managed a very flat ride in the short spell for which we used the Elliptigo today. My heart rate for the ride averaged 70BPM and I got it up to 110BPM without too much effort “sprinting” across the barrage.  Bearing in mind my resting rate is 45 that’s pretty good. We are keen now to see how it goes on hills – Steve assures us it’s the shizz so next week we’re looking to tackle Penarth Hill.

Overall we were impressed however I have a few concerns. Firstly although stable and easy to ride, they are quite cumbersome – so right turns, gates etc can be tricky. Secondly the clearance is not huge so I would imagine even the gentlest off-roading would be a non-starter. Also it wasn’t clear to us in this short trial how easy it would be to deal with a puncture or other technical issue.
Lastly and most significantly is that price is an issue. The eight gear version goes for around £2000 for what is essentially a bike – a huge, potentially prohibitive investment. It makes the £6.50 an hour charged by Channel View seem a bit of a bargain but even this had a drawback. Each time a bike is rented a £50 deposit is taken off your credit-card and then re-deposited on safe return of the bike. Actually taking the money seemed a little “heavy-handed” and I did wonder if there isn’t a better easy of handling this – maybe similar to the way hotels hold a reserve without actually taking the money from the account.
But rental definitely seems the best option especially as there is a 4 hours for the price off 3 deal.
To begin with at least renting is what I will be what I’ll be doing until I’m utterly convinced that I need to buy.  A plus-point to this is that you get to meet Steve and the rest of the staff at Channel View – all of whom are lovely

All in all a great day, a really fun experience and a fantastic piece of kit – I can’t wait to give it another go.

Zwift – Richmond VA

Zwift have released a new course to coincide with the UCI Road World Championships.

Their course designers have been out on the course mapping all the nooks, crannies and cobbles, every uphill climb and downhill rush and have come up with a corker.
For a fuller description as to how the course was built read the  blog by the awesome DC Rainmaker here http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/09/course-championships-richmond.html
At 16km it’s significantly longer than the 9km Zwift Watopia Island course although probably not as pretty.

Richmond is more”street” – I half expect to see old newspaper blowing across the road at some points and there are a few under-passes where I wouldn’t want to get a puncture. Definitely a course to ride with Bruce’s “Racing in the Streets” or “Darkness at the Edge of Town” blasting in the headphones.
At the moment it’s taking me about 28 mins to complete which puts me about 1300th of 4400 – not too shabby but I can get better (I CAN).
I was getting some well-dodgy wattage statistics out of my Wahoo Kickr but a restart seems to have sorted that out.

A recent amendment saw a second sprint section and a second KOM section added to add even more spice to those Strava segment comparisons

My Fitbit tells me I burn about 700 cals an hour riding the course which is less than I burn when running or playing five a side – hard to believe as my legs are jelly and my lungs are burning when I hop (fall) off.

My current setup is not quite ideal – I’d love a big immersive screen for the course image but with Zwift on my laptop and Rugby on my iPad I can easily spend an “enjoyable” hour getting my ass kicked on the bike

This will have to do until I can persuade the grrrl that we need to rebuild the glasshouse as a purpose built man-cave. Tiny steps.

Intro

This is an occasional blog from sunny Welsh Cardiff from someone who loves the city, it’s food, film and especially it’s live music scene and sometimes feels the urge to wax lyrical about it all.
On top of which I might rattle on about tech, keeping fit, crap guitar playing or anything else that takes my fancy. But hey! It’s my blog and I’ll write what I want to.