fitness

🚴 Updating my indoor bike setup

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Over the past three years, I’ve traveled more than 7,600 km through the virtual worlds of Zwift (adds up to a ridiculous 11 days and 11 hours on the saddle). This has all been on my main racing bike in a somewhat awkward setup that I described earlier:

I don’t have enough space in my house for a spot fully dedicated to cycling. So, I’ve got the bike trainer tucked in a corner of the basement and then I slide our basement couch out of the way and move the bike in front of the TV when I’m riding.

The whole setup is a nuisance, especially for some of those really early morning starts. Moving furniture around while in the dark and only half awake isn’t great. So, I’m considering the new Zwift Ride.

I think the pros are (in order):

1. Always ready without any setup required
2. Stays inside, so stays clean
3. Preserves the racing bike, avoiding all the indoor sweat (so much sweat 🥵) and wear and tear
4. Optimized for indoor riding and for Zwift specifically

While the cons are:

1. Only works with Zwift. What do I do with it if Zwift goes away or I want to switch to a different platform? (Although, there are developments)
2. Riding it doesn’t build up comfort and familiarity on my actual racing bike (although after close to 12 cumulative days on the bike, how much of this could be left?)

Given all of this, I’m leaning towards getting the Zwift Ride. There’s a spot in the basement with enough room for it and I like the idea of just getting on and riding. However, the recent tariff nonsense seems to have cleared out the Canadian inventory. So, I have some time to think this over, before making the investment.

For more on the Zwift Ride, DC Rainmaker has a good video.

🏊‍♂️🚴🏃‍♂️ Finding the return to fitness sweet spot with RTT

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Thanks to a pre-Christmas flu and general busyness over the holidays, my triathlon training took a dive.

This past week, I’ve really tried to get back into it. As a result, my watch and phone have been pointing out that my training load has spiked and are suggesting caution.

At the same time, my readiness to train has been correspondingly increasing. I’ve been using this increase, plus generally feeling good, to keep the training intensity at the right level without overdoing it.

Seems to be working so far. Now that I feel like I’ve regained momentum, I’ll ease off on the training progression to stabilize on a more modest increase over weeks. I don’t need to relearn the lessons of overtraining and injury!

Göran Winblad has a good video on how to use RTT and HRV as one indicator in training. Worth investigating for your training too.

🏊‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️ 2024 Milton Sprint Triathlon

Sunday, June 2, 2024

My third year in a row for this one and, despite pouring rain for the entire race, it was still fun and well organized.

My times across the three have been within minutes of each other. Although this one was slowest of the three, given the conditions, I’m happy with the overall results and ended up 12th in my age group.

At least in the swim, it didn’t matter that it was raining. I think they had less time between heats though and swimmers really bunched up for the last 200m.

As usual the trip up the escarpment is still a brutal climb and trip down terrifying. I maxed out at 70km/h coming down this time. With the poor visibility and slippery conditions from the rain that was more than fast enough.

Plenty of mud through the back half of the run. I almost lost a shoe!

Overall the conditions made for a good test of mental resilience which is always useful.

My only real problem was in T2. I couldn’t find my stuff! The area available for my age group was full. So, I put everything elsewhere and then couldn’t find it 🤣. The 3 minute transition was an embarrassment.