WHAT I LEARNED FROM A VERY CONDENSED ZWIFTING LONG WEEKEND

Words - James Raison

Like so many in these strange Covid-times, I recently cracked and bought an indoor trainer. Social riding had basically dried up, and we have been heavily discouraged from riding too far from home so I went looking for an alternative way to keep the legs turning. Alas, my fancy Tacx Neo 2 was deemed faulty straight out of the box after I sent Garmin (Tacx overlords) some footage of a horrid grinding noise when the unit tilts, and they recommended I return it. Bummer.

With the unit still generally functional albeit noisy, and it being a Friday when this all happened, I figured Zwifting hard over the rainy weekend would be a fun thing to do before re-boxing the Neo 2 and sending it back.

So, what did I learn about the indoor training leviathan that is Zwift; A platform that now finds itself the centre of the cycling world? Quite a lot. I’m basically a total Zwift novice. It’s something I had very little experience with. After 4 exhausting days plodding through Zwift, here’s the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

THE GOOD

There’s a lot of thing Zwift does great so let’s start there.

IT’S FUN

I genuinely enjoyed the strange sensation of pedalling in place, watching a render of myself ride through a variety of digital worlds. Obviously I gave my avatar the dumbest hairstyle available and plopped him onto an MTB before doing some research and finding out that bikes do affect speed. Turns out my commitment to being an idiot ends at actively slowing myself down.

It wasn’t long before I found myself enjoying Zwift. It scratches a lot of the cognitive itches that addictive games do; a levelling system, frequent rewards and bonuses, social interaction, peer encouragement, disarmingly cutesy mascots, and reward noises dialled to perfection. It’s a sportified version of the thousands of addicting games that have come before it.

The obvious caveat here my holiday (weekend, really) romance with Zwift should be fun because it’s still novel and new. Still, for a total novice and absolute die-hard lover of riding outdoors I found Zwift fun immediately.

IT’S CRAZY EFFICIENT

Set aside arguments about whether it’s “real riding” for a moment because it’s a real workout for sure. There’s no real-world limitations or barriers to you busting your butt so there’s surely no quicker way to grind yourself into a sweaty paste.

An hour on Zwift can be brutally hard because there’s no breaks. No traffic lights, no reason to stop pedalling, and trainers are very effective at doling out resistance and emulating all the proper ride sensations. Even descent kilometers are worth pedalling because you don’t spin out trainers like your real-world drivetrain, and can still throw down hundreds of watts.

There’s workouts too in case you want to outsource your pain to Zwift itself. As a fitness-building platform Zwift can be remarkably effective. I’d love to integrate it into my general training through the coming winter but the Tacx Neo 2 had other plans.

THERE’S TONS TO DO

WIthin the 6 worlds; Watopia, London, Yorkshire, Innsbruck, Richmond, and New York, there’s a stack of course variations to suit your workout goals. Watopia in particular has everything from flat TT areas to the monster Tour of Fire and Ice course with over 1,100 ascending metres in just 25 km from its start to the mountain top. All of the World Championship courses; Yorkshire, Innsbruck, and Richmond offer some great parcours diversity across them and rotate each day with all the other courses so there’s plenty to do. Watopia is the only daily mainstay and that world alone is massive.

I spent hours trying to run every course available to see what each offered and didn’t come close to the 80 total routes and 250 km of simulated road. The variety is excellent. Add to that; races, social rides, challenges, and you’ve got a few weeks of regular use before you have to repeat yourself.

ALPE DU ZWIFT

I freakin love climbing hills, and having a version of Alpe d’Huez is probably enough to keep my subscription dollars heading to Zwift. It’s got 1,036m ascending, 21 hairpins, averages 8% grade and will have you in a world of sweat by the top. It’s ace!

Ohhhh yes, this is the virtual training I can get used to

THE BAD

Not all is sunny across the island of Watopia so here’s some things that managed to grind my gears.

THERE’S A SOME LARGE REALITY GAPS WITH NUMBERS

I get that it’s a simulator but sometimes the relationship between power and speed is way off. While I lauded that Zwift riding as very efficient pain above, it’s certainly too efficient to pile up digital distance at rocket speeds. If you’ve ever looked at Strava and been shocked by your ride buddies busting out 100km+ at 35 kph it’s because speed to watts seem a little disconnected from reality. Low watts easily mean high speeds on the flats, and even some of the climbing speeds seemed way too high for the power and gradient. Jump into a bunch and the speed grows even faster.

This isn’t a major problem as such, more a reminder that some numbers don’t line up with outdoor riding. Focus on power and there’s no real issue, but distance and speed is frequently unrealistic.

THE LEVELLING PROGRESSION IS WEIRD SOMETIMES

I generally think Zwift’s gamified model works well but I took issue with how it assigns XP. All kilometers in the game are treated equally when experience is given. So, you get the same points for suffering up Alpe du Zwift per km as you do rocketing down it at 70-80 simulated kph. Naturally, the first thing I did after finishing the climb was hit the turn-around button, grab my phone and start faffing around while slowly turning the legs over and harvesting points. It feels demotivating that your stem-chewing, eye-watering effort going up the hill isn’t rewarded more than doing bugger-all going down.

SHENANIGANS

For the first time ever, I suspect some cyclists might be dishonest and artificially boost their performance.

You’ve got everything from obvious under-reporting of weight to bizarre power numbers happening here. I get that there’s a broad variation in devices being used but flippin heck some of it is bonkers. At time of writing the KOM for Alpe Du Zwift is basically 28 minutes flat with an average speed of 26.2 kph, average power of 500 watts, and average heart rate of 115 BMP. Seems legit…

Then there’s the racing. Oh the racing! I entered a C Grade race which was the lowest available, knowing nothing about how it worked, with the intention of rolling through it as a learning experience. Oh how wrong I was! The race immediately blew up, and I stayed in the second group before finishing 10/90. Again, this was the lowest grade and it was savage from the beginning to end. The racing is pretty great but sandbagging has definitely infected the virtual world too.

SEGMENTS

Every inch of Zwift has its own segment, many of which have idiotic names. Time to clear out the clutter because it makes post-ride segment analysis annoying. Although I laughed at the puerile stupidity of the segment “ENGADINE EXPLOSION”. That’s a deep Australian politics meme.

THE HEAD-UP-DISPLAY (HUD) IS RUBBISH

The screen layout drove me bonkers because I’ve worked so many years in website development and usability, and Zwift is a mess to me. It’s a shotgun blast of randomly sized data wrapped around your screen and I hated it. Maybe it’s my years of expecting all data be presented on a cycling GPS screen.

The crucial data is splattered far and wide across the screen

I want a flexible HUD so I can cluster my data together and make it bigger. Movement data is spread across the full width of your screen and I’m not sure why. Much of the text is tiny too, borderline unreadable on my Macbook screen even though it’s so close.

Please let us change the HUD Zwift!

THE UGLY

Let’s move from the annoyances to the things that I wasn’t quite prepared for.

THE SWEAT

Oh. My. God. The precipitation that slowly seeps and eventually torrents from your body is like a horror film where a monster is draining you of life essence.

The second thing I did on Zwift, after quickly throwing my crappy “pain cave” together late at night, was get up for a social slog up Alpe du Zwift with some mates early the next morning. I didn’t have time to set up a fan so I jumped on and got a little silly attacking the bottom of the climb. That was a big mistake.

You cannot fathom how much you sweat without a fan. There were puddles on my mat and rivers running down the trainer. After groveling my way to the top, cracking hard from the horrendous overheating about halfway, there was audible squelching coming from my brimming shoes as I slid my way into the laundry to peel off my kit. It was no different to riding in heavy rain.

Get a powerful fan, a towel that’ll cover your bars and stem, and some sweatbands will be extremely useful. Even then you’re going to sweat appallingly with soaked shirts and saturated chamois after any ride of effort. The worst is your feet. With no air moving over your shoes they’ll soon get swampy and smell like burning portable toilet.

YOU CAN’T QUIT TO MENU

I used my laptop for Zwift and I got so mad at how the game quits when you end an activity. I don’t know if that’s just my version or all versions but I’m not a fan. You can’t quit to the menu and change worlds, look at your profile, analyse your activities, or do anything else. The game quits and you have to start it back up again. The only way to jump immediately between worlds is to go to a race or social ride. That’s unfathomably arcane. C’mon Zwift.

I WILL TURN INTO AN ADDICT

Oh yes, this game is showing every sign of sinking its hooks into me. I’m a sucker for exactly what Zwift serves up being a numbers nerd with a penchant for sinking deep into video games. Thankfully my broken trainer has already departed and cut off my access to the Watopian monster that was calling from the other room while I’ve been working from home. There were a couple of sessions where I thought “I’m cooked. About to bonk. I should stop.” But did I? No. I smashed another choccolate bar and completed the 40 km course I was doing as a warm down after earlier doing a lap of Yorkshire Worlds course, and a race on the Richmond course. Is that already an unhealthy relationship?

There’s no doubt Zwift would get a lot of my time and money.

WRAPPING UP

Zwift has a lot to offer cyclists. Whether you live in a sucky climate, have restricted time, or want to add another training dimension there’s a lot to like here. Not to mention it being invaluable in the strange world we find ourselves in. I’m bummed to stop after so little time.

My gripes are small relative to how robust and polished Zwift is. The riding may be virtual but the pain and sweat are very real.