Training - Zwift Desktop Machine

So as most of you know I've been training indoors all year, and, really, since Christmas 2014. I did five rides outside in 2015 and one in 2016 - about a mile ride to the local garage to pick up the tow vehicle which had blown its master cylinder (i.e. no brakes).

Throughout this time I've been on Zwift, from somewhere in February or March of 2015. It's a great distraction, it motivates me, I've done more sprints on the trainer than ever, and it's provoked the completion of some projects that I didn't think were worth completing before.

One of them was building a new Windows machine.

I used to be all Windows before, mainly because of work. I had a Linux set up also but since I could log into Linux machines from anywhere I didn't bother really maintaining a machine at home. Then with the ContourHD and the helmet cam clips, I went to Macs. We got two, one in 2010, another in 2011. I do all my helmet cam clip editing on it, the native/included iMovie a great tool for my needs.

I did some minor IT work on our home infrastructure, building a Linux machine just because, then rebuilding some other machines. Then I let the Windows machines go, just stopped using them. Power supplies failed. Hard drives failed. I unplugged my back up drives and my back up to my back up drives, to preserve what I had.

And I left it like that for a few years.

Then along came Zwift.

It got me to work on my rocking trainer.

It got me to fiddle with my powermeter.

It got me to resurrect my Sportsiiiis.

And now it got me to rebuild my main desktop twice.

Let me explain.

Limitations of a Laptop

I knew when I started Zwift that I'd be limited by the laptop we use as our main computer. I just didn't know how much. The main thing with a laptop, at least our basic one, is that it doesn't draw pictures on the screen very quickly. It draws a static/stationary one great, but ask it to draw it 30 times every second... no.

I tolerated it because Zwift doesn't really punish you in a microsecond kind of way. Everything lags a bit so it takes a second for Zwift to register that you just did a massive jump. Also, with a limited drafting engine, you really can't just jump into a draft, you have to time trial into it. And it's not like a shooting game where a dozen milliseconds of lag/delay can mean the life or death of your character.

But I saw some weird stuff out there. Riders scattering randomly on straights. The laptop would slow down to about 4-6 frames per second in really heavy traffic. Group riding wasn't really enjoyable, it was more a stutter thing, like watching the world lit up by a strobe light.

Another limitation of a laptop - when I sat up quickly with earbuds on... yeah, I yanked the laptop off the storage totes and onto the floor. This happened a couple times. I wanted to stop exposing the laptop to that risk.

The laptop on the totes.

The Mac is on the right. The left one died in the last storm.

Desktop

I wanted to get my desktop back in action. Zwift doesn't work with Linux so I'd have to rebuild my machine. I'd need a better video card for it also. Good video cards draw pictures really, really fast, and in fact the CPUs in them are faster than the main CPU (but they work differently so they're not your main CPU).

The problem is that I didn't have the parts to make a working desktop. Dead power supply, my throwaway hard drive for the operating system died (but the mirrored image I'd stored might be working), etc. Plus it was an older machine, one I built something like 8 or 9 years ago, an eternity for IT.

I unboxed a bunch of parts I had bought to upgrade the machine a few years back and put together the system . Fortunately for me CPU speed really hasn't increased, limited by physics (printing of CPU wire stuff), so my 5 or 6 year old kit was still pretty good. 3.33 Ghz CPU, 3 core (or maybe 4?). 16GB of RAM. A fast underlying motherboard chipset.

I did add a new video card to the batch, some 2 GB not-too-crazy thing. I have an aversion to paying too much for a video card just like I don't want to pay too much for carbon tubulars. I think I spent less than $100 for the card, my limit.

I put it together, added a (new) working power supply, and tried one of the old drives. Booted right up. I distracted myself by going through some of my old files, it was like Throwback Thursday. Then I went to install Zwift.

No luck.

I had a 32 bit version of Windows, and Zwift requires 64 bit.

I stopped at this point and pondered my options. That means I thought about it for a few weeks, if not more. I could get an iMac (Mac desktop) but that would run a lot of money. Or I could get a refurbished Windows 7 machine and install the killer video card in it. But all the machines I could find that cost not-much-more than Windows 7 itself weren't compatible with my middle-of-the-road video card.

So I went and bought Windows 7.

Then I decided to "do it later" because life got a bit complicated.

Fast forward about a year.

Zwift Update

The last Zwift update, from last week or so, crashes on the 5+ year old operating system on my Mac. Although a fix has been promised I decided after a few Zwift-less rides that this would be the time to do the Windows 7 install.

Yesterday I selected another throwaway drive, installed Win7, installed Zwift, logged in, everything worked.

Group Ride

The Missus got me some time this afternoon to do a group ride so I logged on. Lo and behold there was a Sub2 ride starting in 30 minutes or so. Sub2 rides are rides that average under 2 w/kg, which, for me, is about 145w.

Start of the Sub2 ride

Zwift handicaps me about 35w so that's actually about 180w for me. That's a really, really hard race for me - one of my Limerocks in 2015 was under 160w, and even the epic 2010 Francis J Clarke race was 187w. So Sub2s are about all I can do. I started the ride and realized the graphics were just amazing. In fact they made me realize something.

The scattering riders.

They weren't scattering.

Zwift, you see, has been developed by guys that think bike racing is cool. They want to replicate what you see and feel out on the road. When you go hard on your trainer, your avatar sprints out of the saddle. Not only that, the avatar rocks the bike smoothly, like they're supposed to.

And when someone rolls up past you, or the drafting algorithm takes a few of you to one side of the road and a gap opens up, you don't just ease on back.

You dive back, like it was the last lap of a crit and that was the leadout that would win you the race.

The scattering riders were actually riders diving onto wheel, but in a strobe light kind of freeze frame thing.

Strung out but people are trying to ease - basically everyone is well under 2.0 w/kg

In the end I wasn't the fastest sprinter, not by at least a few seconds. In fact I wasn't the second fastest or even third fastest. But I got to the sprint at least, the first time I'd done that.

And I got to experience a little more of what Zwift is about.

After The Ride

The ride really wiped me out in less than an hour, just thrashed me. I was three pounds lighter than I was in the morning, to give you some idea.

I got off the bike, showered, and ate dinner with Junior. He asked me to read some dinosaur books after, so we sat down on a couch, got a blanket, and I started reading.

A bit into one of the books I started garbling words or just inserting random words. I do this when I'm tired, and I think because it happens semi-often Junior doesn't really bat an eye at this. He waits for me to make mistakes and corrects me. Or he'll wait if I close my eyes a bit. Not too long, though, because after 10 or 20 seconds he'll put his nose to mine. I'll open my eyes to see his face pressed up against mine.

"Can you read?"

This time I thought I was doing okay until at some point I startled myself awake. I looked over at Junior, still sitting tightly against me. He was looking at me expectantly.

"Can you say the words?" he asked me, pointing to the right side of the page.

I read him more stuff about diplodocus.

Training - The Group Ride

One of the things that bugs me about group rides is that inevitably some riders treat the ride as their own personal race. Or they do their own thing during the group ride.

I know that in the old days I either rode with a pretty disciplined group (generally speaking it was with the club I belonged to) or, sometimes, less disciplined ones.

I have to admit that when I was in charge of the school's cycling team I started losing some control over the group rides. It's not as much being weaker, because I was, but it was that some riders would just hammer themselves into oblivion regardless of the goal of the ride. If the ride was supposed to be hard, okay, fine, but if it was supposed to easy, or if we were in the warm up part of the ride, the expectation was that you'd ride the same pace as the leader.

It's tough to slow down, I get it. Think about when you're driving on the highway, whatever speed feels about right, maybe 63 in a 55. Then you get behind someone that's going, say, 61. Or 59. Most people will pass when they can, not slow down to the slower driver's speed.

Unlike driving though with bikes I'm the engine, and with group rides I'm already pretty challenged to maintain pace. My FTP is definitely on the low side, 200w on a year like this one, maybe 220w on a spectacular year, like in 2010 when I upgraded to Cat 2. In races I can work with those numbers because I "snipe", meaning I target specific races. I select those that are flat or, even better, have a short hill at some point. The short hill courses, like Bethel or New Britain, work best for me because I can always punch up a short hill and there's got to be some descending elsewhere and I recover on that bit.

At any rate I avoid races with hills and, given reasonable form, I can hold my own.

Zwift Challenges

On Zwift I'm even more challenged than normal. The main reason is that the drafting engine isn't quite there so the benefits of drafting don't stack up like they do in real life. In addition there's some kind of virtual brake so as soon as you stop pedaling it's like you're braking. In real life I coast a LOT during a race, or soft pedal at zero watts, literally 10 or 20 seconds at a time. I've even seen as much as 3 to 5 seconds of coasting during a sprint where I contested the finish. Coasting is how I survive a race and average 160 or 180 watts. In Zwift if you coast for 20 seconds you'll be off the back of any group out there, of any size. If you soft pedal for maybe 5 seconds you'll realistically be at the very back of a big group, off the back of a smaller group.

To make things worse Zwift shorts me some power, about 35w with the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, at least compared to my SRM. I believe the SRM before I believe the calculated power from Zwift, else it means I upgraded to Cat 2 with an FTP of 185w, which I highly doubt, or that I averaged 27.5 mph during the 2011 Tour of Someville while doing just 140 watts, which, again, I highly doubt.

Who knows, maybe my SRM is optimistic but I seriously doubt it. For whatever reason Zwift shorts me about 35w with the KK Road Machine.

With Zwift my 160-180w race pace becomes more like 125-145w (because Zwift shorts me 35w). At my current weight that's 1.6-1.8 w/kg. Although I'm barely capable of holding 2.0 w/kg in real life, on Zwift I fall below that cusp. I can't hang with a B ride for sure, nor a C ride, and I struggle with D rides, the 2 w/kg rides.

If I do a group ride on Zwift I look for the Sub2 rides, which over the 2015-2016 winter typically targeted 1.5 w/kg on the flats, 2 w/kg on the hills.

I joined one the other day and we were out of the blocks at well over 2 w/kg, which, if you look at the numbers above, is like me averaging at least 190w in real life. One of the hardest races I ever did was the 2010 Francis J Clarke race and I averaged 187w there. 2011 Cat 2 Tour of Somerville, 175w. So 190w, which is only 2 w/kg on Zwift, annihilates me.

I dropped off that ride pretty quickly.

Fine, I'm Weak

I understand I'm weak on the bike, and I'm okay with it. What gets me is that people are joining a Sub2 ride and then not riding Sub2. If someone joins a group ride then there's this implication that they're going to follow the ride's goals, the ride's stipulations.

For example, if I go do some super hard group ride, I'll go there with the expectation that I'm going to get shelled and it's my responsibility to figure out how to get back to the cars. Generally I'll be okay until the road tilts up, I get shelled, and then I decide do I turn around or should I keep going.

And that's fine.

At the same time if I'm on a easy group ride then I don't expect anyone to do any hard riding, or if they do they'll be waiting, foot on the ground, at the top of the hill or at the next intersection or something like that.

With Zwift it's even more... I don't know, it's more clear cut. You can see riders long after they're out of sight. Not only that, you can see their power, and, if you click on their name, you can actually see their heart rate and cadence.

You get a good idea of what they're doing, if they're struggling or just sightseeing.

Why Join A Too-Slow Group?

So why do these riders insist on joining an easier group and then blowing it apart by riding above its advertised level?

I don't know. Is it ego? Insecurity? Ignorance? Lack of self control?

Celebrity Rides

Every now and then I'm fortunate enough to have a celebrity ride with whatever group, sometimes even a race. Marc Wauters, a long time Rabobank pro, showed up for Gimbels one day. Because he wasn't riding hard we got to talk to him, and it was great, to be able to talk to this guy that you realize when you get home that, oh wow, he was in the finale in Paris Roubaix! and he was leading out Tchmil for the finish of Ghent! And he did the Giro. The Worlds. And this and that and the other thing.

At one race way, way back a recently crowned Mike McCarthy showed up at a race in World Champion colors (US Pro Crit champ, world pro pursuit champ, technically not WC on the road but hey, he's a WC at something). The first lap was like a wedding reception paceline thing were there was a line of riders dropping back and saying congrats to Mike, who, to his credit, was politely thanking everyone for their congratulations. Then after everyone got that out of the way Mike just smashed the field to pieces.

It was awesome.

Now those are racer celebrities. There are other celebrities that you get to ride with. Maybe a state representative or a mayor or something. Maybe the President, or Vice President. They're not "cyclists" per se so you ride with them like you're riding with your mother/father (if s/he doesn't ride), or, say, your grandmother/father (if s/he doesn't ride).

You take it easy. You watch them ride. You adjust your pace to theirs. You make them feel welcome to the group. If you wanted to get a workout  you wait until after the ride to go hard, or, even better, you do a bunch of hard efforts before the ride.

Today's Ride

Today (Sept 22) I did a group ride, advertised at 2-2.5 w/kg, an "easy" ride, but with one catch.

A guest rider.

Romain Grosjean.

He's an F1 driver. Admittedly he had a tough start to his F1 career but he's matured and he's one of only 22 full time F1 drivers in the world. Significantly he's one of the drivers that actually gets paid to drive - many are pay-to-drive drivers - and he's held in high enough regard that just his presence helped legitimize Haas Racing's new F1 team.

As an F1 driver he has to be somewhat fit. He said (during the ride, one of the few questions he got to answer in an hour) he rides about 2500 km a year (1500 miles), runs 800 km (500 miles), and works out in the gym and plays tennis. But he's not a world champion cyclist or anything.

So automatically my thought was, "Okay, this is a celebrity, the group should take it easy. If he wants to push a bit then he'll rev up everyone else's competitive spirits and it'll be game on.

Remember the ride with your mother/father or grandmother/grandfather? You watch them, let them set the pace, then adjust to whatever they do.

You don't go and blast up the first hill and shell them.

So what happens at the start of the "Romain Grosjean" ride?

Literally 2/3 of the group goes and shells him, hammering at the front.

I don't have solid data but I saw lots of 2.5-3.0 w/kg up front. With Zwift's limited drafting benefit it is harder than real life to stay together, yet these riders were at the front going well over the advertised ride pace.

For what?

I say again, for what?

To say that they beat Grosjean in a virtual bike ride? To get him pedaling so hard he can't answer questions from fans of F1 who happen to be on Zwift?

It took a lot of CAPS LOCK pleas to get the front group to ease a bit, but as soon as Grosjean was on the hammer went back down.

I was off the back pretty quickly so I eased, letting them lap me. I was only on my second lap, they were on their third, and the third/last lap was an open free for all per the ride description. I had a selfish thought here - with such a big group, and with the group racing, I could try and beat my PR for the green jersey sprint. I usually start the sprint at about 24-25 mph, but if I could jump at a higher speed I could take literally a second or more off my PR.

Per the ride leaders they did keep it together until the start of the sprint, saying that the start line for the sprint was the place to go go go (the "go" words were in caps). Even Romain himself messaged the group to ride as they pleased once the "race" was on. This means the group did 3/4 of the lap under some kind of control.

So I got in the group just before the sprint (i.e. they caught me). I was looking forward to sprinting down into the 21s range, possibly into the 20s, depending on how my legs felt.

I got to the sprint, I jumped really late at the line per the ride rules (not 5-8 seconds before), went a few pedal strokes...

Then I stopped because it looked like no one was sprinting.

I mentioned before you can see other riders' power, specifically their w/kg ratio. If their power goes up a lot the number turns orange. However most of the riders weren't even bright white, they were still regular white.

Well one guy was orange but I didn't want to be one of the two nimrods that sprinted to show Romain just who's boss. So I chilled on the sprint.

Then, about 3 or 4 seconds later, I saw other riders sprinting, so, after a bit of internal debate on if this was a dick move or not, I did another jump.

Ends up that after all the stutter start/stop I posted the third best time of the group. The guy that jumped on his own posted the best time. It was insane, 19.9s or something, I've never broken 20s in this physics model. He jumped early, was in the 13-15 w/kg range, and held it to the line. I think it's justified and probably accurate. With a 30 mph leadout I think low 20s would have been possible, mid 21s would have been pretty slow.

Of course it helps if I had actually sprinted the whole sprint.

In looking back at the data it looks like I sprinted for 2 seconds before shutting it down, then waited about 5 seconds before doing a half hearted sprint to the line, sitting up a bit early because I was disappointed that I didn't jump at my normal mark before the start line and go all the way to the finish.

Nonetheless I did a 22.97 second sprint. This is the same time as a pretty poor solo attempt a bit earlier this week but one that ended up my 30 day best until today (22.99).

I didn't take a shot of the leaderboard but I was third after the sprint.

The list of riders to the right are all part of the group ride.

I'm slowing hard (4 mph) so they're passing me en masse.

After The Sprint

After the sprint I recovered at my normal 0-1 mph, 5-20 watt pace. The group quickly disappeared, literally in fact. Once a rider gets to the end of the ride they revert to a normal rider, not a group rider, and dropped off the visible riders in the "group ride list". Ends up me and a guy named Mike were the only two that decided to do the third lap solo, and he was a few minutes ahead of me, looks like about 12 minutes by the time I finished the final lap.

Typical road race result for me. Dead last, 35 minutes down from the leader.

This would have been a short road race, like 30-40 miles.

Note that all the other riders have zero heart rates. They're already logged off the ride.

In group ride mode you can't see non-group ride members except when they pass you. Can't message others. Can't search for them. Etc. So although there were about 500 riders on the course I was really alone.

I started thinking of stuff on this final lap.

I understand that I'm weak on the bike, weaker still on Zwift. But the 2-2.5 w/kg ride pace should have been possible for me, at least for a lap. I got about 8 minutes in before I had to pull the plug.

I understand riders want to go hard, go fast, go at whatever pace they want. I get that.

What I don't get is when a rider joins a group and blatantly, obviously, rides above the pace and shreds the front of the group. The ride leader has a couple options. One is to ignore the offender. Another is to call them back. A third is to chase down the offenders.

Unfortunately the third option will push people over the edge. I've seen this happen where the ride leader says, "Okay, follow me, I'll pull you up" and half the riders basically explode. They were already redlined and the pace increase killed them. Limited draft, redlined riders... not a good combination.

The first option, ignoring the offender, works sometimes, but if people start bridging it gets tough. There's a critical mass point where if, say, 2/3 of the riders ends up in the front group, well, that's 2/3 of the group.

The second option, calling them back, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

I don't understand the mentality of "winning" a group ride.

Racing

One big difference, I think, is that I actually race sanctioned races. We race for a known goal, typically the finish line after a number of laps, and with a controlled environment you usually get a good idea of where you stand. Sometimes I do okay, often I don't.

I'm good with that.

When I'm not racing I don't need to "beat" other riders. You want to pass me while I'm climbing this hill? Go ahead. Want to sprint past me to make the light? Be my guest. In Florida in 2009 my 7 year old niece wanted to race me, her on her scooter and me on my bike.

She won every time.

In fact with Zwift I toodle along at ridiculously low wattages, 60 or 80 watts or some absurdly low power like that. I like doing sprints at designated points because, frankly, I want to see if I can get the green jersey, but it's a 100% effort that makes it even harder for me to hold even minimal power levels after the sprint.

Going for lowest average power possible.

If you look at the above screenshot you'll see that I averaged 51w, 87w, 65w, 145w, and 93w. What's kind of ironic is that the hardest ride, the 145w one, I quit after 26 minutes because it was a Sub2 group sustaining well over a 2 w/kg pace.

I also skipped mentioning the 33w partial ride since it was me briefly contemplating riding on my own and deciding I'd much rather read to Junior.

Put me in a group ride (not a race) and it's all about the group. I don't sprint unless the ride leader says we're sprinting. I don't attack the group, I don't push harder just because I can. Admittedly I'm rarely in that situation but it's happened.

It's disappointing to go through everything I need to do to join a group ride and then have it ruined because the ride doesn't follow the advertised pace. I've gotten my dad settled, or, worse, asked the Missus to handle some of my responsibilities. Left Junior for bed without reading him a few books or even checking up on him as he's drifting off into la la land. But I do that now and then because I'd like to get in a group ride that has a pace I can handle.

Then the group hammers, redlines me, and eventually sheds me.

And to join this ride I made the choice to sacrifice a bit of family time. I could easily ride later, on my own, but then I wouldn't have the group to ride with, the conversation, the feeling of solidarity, etc.

However this is what I miss when I'm joining a Sub2 ride at 8 PM:

Reading to Junior.

Bella is the feline sitting on the edge of the bed rail.

I make the call to ride instead of read to Junior, I acknowledge that. However I make the call with a certain expectation of the ride.

On the Romain ride I elected to stay on, mainly because it was a weird time ride (2:30 PM) and we'd all have time after the ride. However on that 145w ride a few days prior?

I climbed off the bike, went upstairs, let Junior know that I'd read after I showered, and then I got to read some books with him.

Training - Why Should You Get A Better Fan?

In 2015 and this year I trained basically 100% indoors, going outdoors only for races or a few event rides (the latter in 2015 only). My last regular outdoor training ride was around Christmas 2014 when we had unseasonably warm temperatures here in northeastern US.

Indoor Training Advantages

I've always trained indoors throughout the year, in the winter to avoid the cold/chill, but even in the summer, usually to escape the heat/humidity outside. This has been the case for about 25-30 years. Training indoors is great for a number of reasons, like road safety, no scheduling problems if you encounter a mechanical, immediate parts/tools availability for said mechanical, immediate water/food availability, etc. For about 10 years I trained inside the bike shop so I really had any and every part available if something happened. I've done outside rides only to puncture at a critical time, like on a ride where I gave myself virtually no time cushion to pick up Junior from daycare. Although I rode harder than I thought possible it was an irresponsible way to motivate myself.

Indoor Training Challenges

Training indoors is tough for a number of reasons. The absolutely most significant thing with indoor training is that it's simply harder than riding outside. No one can really pinpoint exactly why but this post offers some possible suggestions. Basically it suggests that not being able to coast, not being able to rock the bike, and less external stimuli as factors that make indoor training harder than training outside.

However the main one most people cite when talking about training indoors is boredom. Nowadays, with all the tech available, there's quite a bit of distraction available to combat this problem. I find that watching bike DVDs, using Zwift, and listening to music make time fly on the trainer.

A dominant Race Across America rider, Lon Haldeman, defined the anti-thesis of a bored indoor rider. He would ride rollers in the dark to condition himself to riding through a dark night in the middle of nowhere. Although I don't turn out the lights and I generally don't ride rollers, I still find myself regularly reverting to riding with my eyes closed, particularly when pushing hard. I count pedal revolutions, focus on maintaining a consistent pedal stroke, and open my eyes to do a time/effort check.

Another indoor challenge is learning and conditioning to ride out of the saddle. Due to the nature of trainers and rollers it's hard to rock the bike out of the saddle (Kinetic Rock N Roll notwithstanding). For me this is significant since I simply cannot sprint effectively without being out of the saddle. I admit that I'm in the final stages of doing a very low buck DIY Rock N Roll using a converted CycleOps Fluid trainer frame (yikes, I started that three years ago?). If that works out I'll post about it, otherwise it was all just an exercise in experimentation for me.

Direct drive trainers tackle the problem of tire slippage. It's significant when making huge efforts. I'm not quite strong enough to regularly slip tires on my trainer/s but there are riders significantly stronger than me that probably have major tire slippage. Such a trainer replaces your whole rear wheel - ultimately you end up putting your bike's chain on the trainer's cassette. By eliminating the tire-roller interface a direct drive trainer makes the system virtually slip-free.

Direct Drive trainer (approximately $660), picture from the CycleOps site.

A "smart" trainer is the ultimate for indoor training. "Smart" trainers use software inputs to adjust resistance, so, for example, if you're using a program like Zwift and you're on an uphill, a smart trainer will increase resistance. In order to make it up the hill you'll have to shift into lower gears. With a regular trainer you have to shift into higher gears in order to increase resistance. Smart trainers should engage you a bit more, due to the fact that you'll need to shift gears to react to virtual terrain changes.

Smart direct drive trainer, not available yet, est. MSRP $1200.

Picture from CycleOps site.

A long time ago I got to use a smart trainer, something called a VeloDyne. It was really engaging, really motivating. It was a bit hard as it didn't coast well, making the downhills the hardest part of any route. There was also not much in terms of "courses". I think the 1984 Olympic RR was one of the courses, I think also Morgul-Bismark of Coors Classic fame, but one could not import a course, nor could one make their own. I might have a picture of it from my shop days but I don't know at this point. I did have an adventure delivering one though.

For all the indoor training I do I haven't been able to justify purchasing a smart trainer or a rocking one. Zwift started to change my mind on direct drive and active trainers, but at the moment buying such a trainer is simply out of the question.

Indoor Training Cooling

Finally indoor training is hard because it's hard to cool off.

When you work hard you generate excess heat energy. Your body tries to get rid of that heat energy, mainly by expanding blood vessels near the skin surface (so you get flushed, your veins pop, etc) and by sweating. Sweat gets rid of heat through evaporation. When sweat evaporates it must absorb heat energy - if the sweat doesn't evaporate then it won't do much good in removing heat.

For sweat to evaporate it needs two things - air and some dryness. If your sweat has no air volume around it then it can't evaporate. For example if you wrapped yourself in Saran Wrap you'd be mighty hot after a short time. On the other hand if you were in an indoor stadium or concert hall, you'd have a lot of air volume. When I had the shop with 20 foot ceilings and a 70'x25' floor foot print, I had a gazillion feet of air volume (okay, it was 20x70x25 so 35,000 cubic feet of air). With smaller areas you need to move air around so that you're introducing new air to your trainer area. A powerful fan works well for this, allowing you to move air around quickly.

Sweat can't evaporate if it's too humid. If you're in 99% humidity air then the air is basically saturated. Your sweat won't really evaporate and therefore it won't really cool you down. You'll feel like you're taking a hot shower. Air conditioning helps, since it dries the air. A dehumidifier is good also, although it heats the air while it dries it, making it a bit touch and go if the house is already warm. In the shop example above I had 35,000 of air conditioned goodness so even in the middle of a heat wave it was downright pleasant to ride indoors for an hour or two at a time. We even had "group indoor rides" with maybe 6 or 8 riders, without any problems with too much humidity.

Remember, air volume and humidity.

Indoor Training Set Ups

When I see someone else's trainer set up I always look at a number of things usually obvious by the picture.

1. Fan, like its size/velocity.
2. Air Volume, like how much air volume appears to be there.
3. Air temperature, like does it look like the rider is on a trainer in their garage with the door open during a snow storm?

Those three factors - air velocity, air volume, and air temperature - really affect how you'll feel on the trainer.

There's a fourth factor but it's hard to guess at, although it's often related to air volume. The mystery factor is air humidity. I'll put it in the list below.

4. Humidity

If I see central AC vents or a window AC unit or a cold/wintry background then I'm guessing the humidity is under control. If I see a dehumidifier, if I see five towels draped over the bike and nearby furniture and a puddle of water under the bike then I'm guessing the humidity is a bit out of control.

The other day (okay, the other month) I saw a picture of the local hero pro on his trainer It looks like a home decor ad, if you ask me, because it looks so neat and tidy:

Note the fan on the floor.

Photo courtesy Benjamin Wolfe (Jelly Belly Cycling Team p/b Maxxis)

(Let me put in this disclaimer right away. In my world 200 watts is a hard effort. 450 watts is basically a max 60 second effort. For someone like Ben he does 450w average for a long time, like an hour at the beginning of a long day of racing. This is based on the fact that he posted that it took 450w avg for an hour just to make the second laughing group at some stage in the Tour of CA this year. What I mean is that my recommendations may not hold water if you're a super human and don't generate much heat cranking out 400 watts. Maybe you don't even break a sweat at 400w.)

Anywho...

When I saw Ben's picture above I subconsciously went down my list. I'll skip #1 for now and start with #2, Air Volume. It looks fine - there's so much ceiling above him that someone could take this very stylish picture.

#3 Air temperature I'm guessing is okay since it's June and the windows are closed. This could be an indicator of air conditioning.

#4 Humidity... related to air conditioning, air conditioning would make humidity a non-issue.

The only thing left is #1, air velocity. He's using what appears to be the ubiquitous Lasko 20" box fan. Set on the floor it blows cooler air up at his head/upper torso, ideal for cooling off a working rider. It's a decent fan for moving air around - I should know, I think we have four in the house. We use one dinky little window type AC unit to cool our 1500 sf house. The box fans help move the air around so we don't have one icy cold room with the rest of the house sweltering in heat; instead we have one chilly room and an otherwise comfortably dry and cool house. Other than the low thrumming of fans in the background and the somewhat MacGyver looking fans set up around the house the system works well.

The ubiquitous Lasko box fan is rated at "up to" 2500 CFM, or 2500 cubic feet per minute. That's on high. I thought I read somewhere that low is 800-1000 CFM (I think when I worked at a place that sold such fans) but I can't verify that.

When I see these fans in front of trainers or treadmills I wonder how the person can possibly stay cool. Okay, in the winter, in an unheated basement, it's sort of reasonable since you may not need much air velocity at all. But when it's even sort of warm you really need a lot of air flow to evaporate your sweat to cool you down. If there's no evaporation happening then there's really no cooling off happening either. That's why a super humid 95 degrees can be so much tougher than a very dry 105 degrees.

My set up isn't quite as neat at the one above, as evidenced by the picture below. However there is one key element in my set up: a very strong fan.

You might be able to find the fan on the floor amongst all the clutter.

It's a 20" Hamilton high velocity fan.

Air volume is sort of low because the bike room is in our basement. Worse, in order to keep the cats out of all sorts of human-inaccessible nooks and crannies, we have to keep the door shut to the bike room half of the basement. For the trainer room and the bike "shop" room I have two small rooms for air volume. Two wall mounted vent grilles allow air to travel between the bike half of the basement and the regular half. I have two fans permanently pushing air around the bike room and out of one of the vent grills so I'm guessing that the air probably gets cycled once daily at most.

Not only that, because of all sorts of reasons I can't leave the door at the top of the stairs to the basement itself open except for late at night so there's very little air flow into for most of the day - it's whatever seeps around the door along with about a 5"x5" cat door (we removed the flap so it's always open). Therefore the basement air itself doesn't get "refreshed" very frequently. At night in warmer weather I use one of our Lasko box fans to push air into the basement, allowing the hotter air down there to travel up the ceiling into the first floor.

Very low air volume cat door in our door to the basement stairs.

This doesn't bode well for air exchange between the main house and the basement.

In the winter the furnace naturally creates circulation, heated air rising to the first floor, cooler air sinking into the basement. It ends up the basement is pretty warm in the winter so it works out.

For air temperature the bike room is fine in the winter, typically 45-65 degrees F. In warmer weather it gets a bit hot, like 75-80 degrees F.

Humidity is all over the board. In the winter it's about 35-45%, ideal for indoor training. Sweat evaporates quickly and the room doesn't feel like a sauna. In the summer about 70-80%; that's not that great, I get sweat running down my face, I have to use a towel to keep my eyes clear, and, probably most significantly, I'm simply aware of sweating. I run a dehumidifier in a different part of the basement so the temperature may go up as much as 10-15 degrees F, but with judicious basement-door-opening I can keep the basement at about the 70 deg F mark.

Air temperature, air humidity, that's sort of based on your trainer room environment, your house. You need to take into account what you have, what you don't have, and figure out how to fill in the gaps.

Air Velocity

For me, for air velocity, I'm all set. The 20" Hamilton, model SFC1-500B, is rated at 3900 CFM on low, so at its lowest setting it moves about 150% the volume of the ubiquitous Lasko box fan on high. The Hamilton pushes 4700 CFM at medium and a hurricane-like 6100 CFM on high.

To give you an idea of how powerful the fan is, during a particularly bad storm I had water come into the basement (this was in our old house, leak was due to a crack in an add-on foundation area which we eventually found and fixed). Initially it looked like some water had just seeped into the basement, simply wetting the floor. It looked like I'd spilled a bucket of water down there. I set up the fan on high to "dry" the floor, pointing the fan at the wet floor to maximize air movement and therefore evaporation in that area. I also ran a dehumidifier on a counter top down there to dry the air. This set up my trifecta of air velocity, air volume, and air humidity. I hoped to check in a couple hours later to a nice and dry basement.

Unfortunately when I came back to check up on my "drying project" I found that the water level had risen unexpectedly. We had a few inches of water in the basement, with the shallow bit about 1" just near the fan - apparently our basement floor wasn't very level. I was worried that the fan would get shorted out, sitting in a puddle of water. But to my great surprise I found, in front of the fan, a miniature wave an inch or so high about 3 feet away from the fan. The fan was blowing so hard the water couldn't approach any closer. The floor in front was bone dry and it's where I staged the wet/dry vac to start cleaning things up.

So I have a very powerful fan for my trainer.

As a side note I've had the fan for maybe 12 or 14 years now, if not longer. I use it regularly. In some situations I'll move the fan to move air around in other parts of the house, like the wet basement (when we lived there) or, when we get hit with debilitating heat waves, I'll set it up to blow air around in the main part of the house. It's a solid, durable, reliable fan.

Air Humidity

Drier air will help comfort on the trainer. You cool off by having sweat evaporate off your body, but if the air is too humid the sweat simply cannot evaporate quickly enough or at all. When I was a kid we didn't have air conditioning so if I got sick and it was hot and sticky out it'd be hard to cool me down. If I was running a high fever my parents would carefully dole out aspirin to reduce my fever. I knew if they were really worried, or if it was really sticky out, when they patted me down with a towel dipped in a water and rubbing alcohol solution. The slight bit of rubbing alcohol was there to evaporate quickly - it evaporates quicker than water. My dad, the chemist, knew that the rubbing alcohol mixed with water would cool me better than just plain cold water. Just to be clear you should NOT be dousing yourself with rubbing alcohol on the trainer. There are problems with rubbing alcohol that far outweigh the benefits of its cooling properties when on a trainer.

Nowadays, in our house, we have air conditioning in the main part of the house but not in the basement, so the ambient (trainer) humidity is typically 70% or higher in the summer. On the first floor it ranges from about 50% to maybe 60% if the AC is falling behind. Temperatures in the basement range up to about 80 to almost 90 deg F; upstairs it seems that we aim at keeping it at 76-78 deg F, and at 80-81 deg F we want the AC on.

During recent trainer rides, with trainer room ambient temps into the mid 70s deg F and humidity about the same, I've had to use medium speed on the powerful fan, and I've started rides with it on low. Normally I use just low speed and I don't turn the fan on until about 10-30 minutes into a ride.

When it's super humid in the basement (I don't have a % number to reference but I'm guessing at 85% or higher) the problem is that so little sweat evaporates that I have to move a lot of air past me. Even on high I find that the sweat drips off me before it can evaporate effectively. These are the worst rides, I have to focus on making sure I have ice cold water in my Podium Ice bottles. The thing is that if you can't cool off from sweating then you need something else. Ice cold water helps a bit, at least a bit more than luke warm water. It also helps to douse a towel in ice cold water and then rub it on my neck, sort of the rubbing alcohol hack without the rubbing alcohol.

The Open Secret To Training Indoors

So that's my secret to training indoors so much, the high velocity fan. It's not that much money, about $45-60. I know the box fans are much less, but for you, someone interested in riding a trainer or rollers, it's a small price to pay for the difference in comfort going those trainer sessions. Even frugal me bought one of them a long time ago, I simply couldn't do trainer rides with a regular box fan.

Training - Zwift Sprint, 21.67 seconds

Things have been super busy with me lately and it's hard to find time to post stuff in the blog. One thing that I've been doing is riding the trainer while logged into Zwift. I usually go for the green jersey sprint (a timed few hundred virtual meters sprint). I occasionally go hard on the KOM (my best time is over 3 minutes, typically it takes me 5-7 minutes).

Zwift awards you a boost when you cross a line (start/finish, KOM, sprint). Boosts can be weight reduction (15 seconds long, worth a few kg), aero (30 seconds, worth a second or two over a 30 second super hard effort), drafting (30 seconds, like drafting a truck if you're behind someone, otherwise it's nothing), etc.

If you don't use the boost (press the Space bar to use it) then at the next banner you don't get another one.

If I get an aero boost I feel obligated to save it until the Green Jersey sprint segment. Of course when I soft pedal through stuff I don't get the aero boost, and when I do a "okay this is the last sprint of the night" sprint I inevitably earn another aero boost. I've often ridden another 30-35 minute lap to use up that aero boost and I've extended a ride an hour at least once when on that "really the last sprint of the night sprint" I get yet another aero boost.

To give you an idea of what it's like during one of those sprints here's a short clip I made of a Green Jersey sprint on Watopia, the Zwift island. I got an aero boost at the prior banner (the KOM) so I was psyched to have it for the one sprint I planned on recording.

Enjoy!

Screen shot from the ride.

Training - Zwift

So a few of you know that I'm on Zwift now. For those not in the know it's basically an online "game" version of riding your bike. You ride your trainer and your character/avatar mirrors your power output in the Zwift world. Zwift figures out how much power you're putting down (based either on an Ant+ power meter or a calculated "zPower" based on a number of "supported trainers") and your character rides at the appropriate speed for whatever current part of the course.

Note: I have not played online games since about 2007? which is about when I stopped playing Counter Strike, so I don't have other online game experience to draw on. Some of what I "discover" with Zwift may be standard features in other games but I don't know. I imagine that many of the folks reading this aren't regular online gamers either so maybe it'll all work out.

Basically you need five things to get onto Zwift, and a smart phone helps.

1. Something to ride, meaning a bike and some kind of trainer. If you don't have an Ant+ power meter you need to have one of their supported "classic" trainers. I don't have an Ant+ power meter but I do have a CycleOps Fluid2, one of their supported "classic" trainers, aka "dumb trainer".

My bike on the trainer (out of sight to the right).

Wood frame in the back is part of my (rarely used) motion rollers.

USCF wood sign will end up in the trailer I think.

Note the aero wheels. They really help on the trainer. Ha.

2. If you do not have an Ant+ power meter then you need an Ant+ speed/cadence sensor. I have one of those, from my 4iiii Sportsiiii days, and it's mounted in tandem with my SRM speed pick up. It gets tricky - it's why my speed pickup was not aligned in my last race - but when it's right it's right. Picture will be after #3.

3. Ant + USB dongle. This item receives your Ant+ data from your bike (either the power meter or the speed/cadence sensor) and tells the Zwift world what you're doing on the bike.

Ant+ dongle on the floor; it's the part that looks like a black cap on the USB extension cable.

Ant+ speed pick up is the rectangle thing on the frame, the cadence is the cylinder thing.

SRM speed pick up is behind the chainstay under the Ant+ speed pick up.

4. The Zwift application on your supported computer. I think most modern computers will be fine - I use a 2011 MacBook Pro, nothing special, and it's fine. You need some minimum video card. I haven't tried Zwift on anything else.

Zwift app on the silver MacBook, at the screen where you can click "Just Ride" to start a ride.

My MP3 player resides on the black Toshiba. It dates back to 2000 or so and struggles to play MP3s.

Note also: white baby monitor, smart phone set on "keyboard shortcut" Zwift page, big fan on floor, TV, stacks of DVDs, wired SRM on bike, temp/humidity, DVD/VCR, speakers (not hooked up), backup bike laying on its side on a box in the background.

5. Optionally if you have a smart phone then you can download the Zwift app to your phone. It's not a standalone app because it won't display the Zwift world, it's a support app. It lets you see some things like a rider list, it's really the only way to text other riders (no verbal/mic/talking stuff yet), and it gives you some shortcuts for things like waving, wiggling your elbow, using a power up, or taking a picture. I mainly use it for pictures and sometimes for texting. I'll also use it to view the rider's full name (only the first initial appears on the computer app).

My smart phone (Android) with one of the three screens up.

Note power differential - I'll return to that later.

So once you're all set up you log in and set some parameters. At first it was just weight, sex, and… was that it? Recently they added height, FTP, and age.

You get to set your avatar (the thing that represents you in the Zwift world). I put gloves on my guy, a helmet, and I darkened the skin a bit (I thought the whole skin tone thing was interesting but I guess it makes sense).

Then you allow the Zwift computer app to find your bike (Ant+ powermeter or speed/cadence pick up if you're using a classic trainer), click "okay", and you're on the island.

Recently Zwift introduced a second island, and I have very few screenshots from it. I do have some screenshots from the first island.

My first screenshot on the first island, just testing things.

I'm in the grayish Zwift jersey on the double yellow line.

For the first lap I went around clicking all the buttons so I was waving, elbow wiggling, saying "Ride On!", stuff like that. Whenever I see someone going through those motions I smile because it seems pretty apparent it's someone new to the island and playing with the controls.

No idea who this is but I'm just in front of him.

If you click on someone else you get a small leader's board as well as the other rider's current ride data. Right now this is the only way to see the leader board, at least the abbreviated version. You do see the one leader board when you pass through the leader board finish line for that board (like the green jersey board when you go under the green banner), i.e. the three inflatable banner/bridge things.

A real life elite teammate in the Polka Dot, me in the green.

So what does Zwift do for you?

The biggest thing I think Zwift does is it gives you a lot of the normal (good) distractions you experience on the road. You see people you know, you go for familiar land marks, and you feel compelled to push a bit if it means hanging with a particular rider.

One missing aspect is the "big group ride" thing. Yes, you can ride with someone for a bit, maybe even two or three someones, but eventually one rider will pull away on a hill (almost always) and without any compelling reason to hang onto that rider the impromptu group starts to split.

I think when there are more people there will be more organized rides and therefore more groups. I can't imagine what it would be like to be buried in a 100 rider group but I hope to find out.

So barring the future big group ride thing I found Zwift did two big things for me.

First it motivated me to do some all out sprints on the trainer. I really dislike sprinting on my trainer because I can't rock my bike. Therefore it's not a natural motion and I quickly find excuses not to sprint. On Zwift, though, there are some clearly defined spots where Zwift times you, and if you're going for a sprint, Zwift only counts "right here".

Therefore when you get to that spot on the lap you have to sprint or you don't get timed and you have to do another lap to get another chance to do a timed sprint. When I'm thinking of sprinting on a regular training ride I inevitably ease and think, "Okay, let me sprint in a minute or five".

And then after an hour or three I decide I'll do the couple sprints some other time.

Second, with Zwift also there's a sense of trying to do as best as possible. I didn't think I rode better "for others" but recently I did a set of intervals for someone else, and I found myself much more motivated to do the intervals since I had to upload the file after the ride so that someone else could check it.

Likewise Zwift puts you and your effort in front of everyone else, so you naturally want to do well. Call it what you will, competition, whatever, it's still effective.

On the first island I even went for a KOM. It took me about 1:23 (83 seconds) and absolutely massacred my legs, but I pushed about 75 seconds more than I would have had I made the effort in my own little "sitting on a trainer" world. With Zwift, with a timer staring me in the face, a concrete albeit virtual goal ahead of me, I pushed until I got to the banner.

I've probably done more hard sprints on the trainer in the last several weeks than I have in the last several years, and I can't remember the last time I'd done any kind of way-over-threshold effort lasting longer than a minute that wasn't in a race.

So Does Zwift Work?

Well yes and no.

First the negatives.

There are no structured workouts (yet). Zwift exists for you to use, not to tell you what to do, so if you want a structured training ride then you will probably ignore Zwift while you do your ride. That's how I did it.

It emphasizes fitness over virtually anything else. Zwift doesn't reward a good bike handler, someone who knows how to corner, any kind of real world group riding skills. It rewards numbers, high watts and, for climbs anyway, low kilograms. In fact in the new world Watopia there are two hard turns in the green jersey sprint and you really have to go 100% through both of them. It's so unnatural that I consciously look away from the screen so I don't try to lean or coast or whatever.

Finally, for now, it's in beta so there are a limited number of riders in the world. It's not like a true Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) where you drop into a road and there are riders buzzing back and forth such that you can't ride alone. The newness also means very little structure, meaning very few group rides, very few races, very few regularly scheduled anythings. I imagine in the future you'll find a 5 PM ride, 6 PM ride, 7 PM ride, etc, so that you can log on and join a 20 or 40 rider strong 6 PM group ride or whatever. But right now? Not so much.

Now for the positives.

First, the world engages you. It's not quite like the real world, where there's much more randomness. Sometimes a training ride is nutty, sometimes it's boring. In Zwift, at least for now, it's pretty stable, so no Godzillas or snipers or anything, just you, the other riders, and the course/world.

However that world gives you landmarks, some level of expectation ("okay after the left turn it'll start to descend a bit"), and it allows you to think ahead of your avatar. If you were just riding the trainer then every second is consumed by the here and now, and every second can feel like it's dragging on forever.

I've found myself so distracted/occupied by Zwift that I almost forgot that I was coming up on the green jersey sprint.

What this does is it makes time absolutely fly by. I'm good on the trainer for 2 hours at a time, without Zwift. Music, a bike DVD on low volume, that's all I need.

Last night I wanted to do at least two sprints. Ended up being three, but with Watopia the laps take me 30 minutes each. 3 sprints meant I rode 90 minutes. It didn't feel like 90 minutes because I was so focused on whatever was happening around me.

It was like being on the road.

Second, Zwift does make you put some skin in the game, meaning you end up with a vested interest. As I mentioned above I did repeated sprints on Zwift, something I never do on the trainer. I mean, why would I? My trainer power is much lower than my outside "rock the bike" power so I never saw the point to doing a trainer sprint. However, with Zwift, I now have a reason, so I sprint.

Zwift also gave me motivation to ride a bit harder than normal. Again, on the trainer before Zwift, I could ride hard but there was no point. Now I'll push a bit to see if I can stay on a wheel, or try to not be too pathetic in the KOM, or whatever.

Third, Zwift allows me to interact with riders from all over. Back in the day (23 years ago, give or take) I did the Tour of Michigan (part 2, part 3). Our host for the two years we did it, Alan, was super nice, super supportive, and… we never saw him again. Alan never came out to the East Coast and we never went back to Michigan.

So I never saw Alan again.

Until I was on Zwift.

Then, bam!, a guy with his first and last name went flying by me.

Not only that, he was up there in the green jersey leader board.

It was Alan, the same Alan from the Tour of Michigan.

And now we comment to one another on our own efforts and stuff.

I think that that is what Zwift really brings to the table. It's the social aspect, like Facebook on bikes, and although I initially thought of Zwift as more of a MMOG kind of thing, it's really a social tool as well. In most MMOGs you don't use your real name, so you don't see a Joe or John or David, you see SuperDuperHaxx0R or THOR or, well, SprinterDellaCasa.

Heh.

I plan on being on Zwift for the long term. I know the development will continue with the platform and I know the crew there have a passion for the sport and a vision for Zwift.

I know this because at the beginning, before any Zwift investment opportunity showed up, I spoke for an hour or so with one of the founders. He later told someone else I was "bullish" on the concept. A now-former teammate moved to join the team. And a fellow NYC race promoter (and former pro, which is way more than I can ever boast), also joined the crew.

I believe in all of them. I can't wait to see what they unveil in the next year or two.

Last Word 

There's one more data point I have.

In 2015, because of the insane amount of snow we had over the winter, the bitter cold lasting deep into March, I rode outside three times between January 1 and April 12. I rode outside March 15, 22, and April 12.

Every single other ride was on the trainer, maybe 70 hours worth.

I was sick for most of March and up until after Easter weekend. I therefore raced poorly on March 15 and 22, not even finishing the race officially on the 22nd (I stopped halfway up the hill in the sprint).

However, after recovering from my bout with what appeared to be the flu, I showed up April 12th hoping for something a little better.

I won.

I'm not going to credit Zwift with everything. But it certainly helped me, it helped push me to make race-like efforts, and the 30+ second solo effort I put in at the end of the race is something I haven't pulled off since about 1986.

So there's that.