The Indoor Riding/ Zwift/ TrainerRoad etc. Thread

I got blown out the back on the crit city the other night after only 4 laps.

Another daft mass start of all grades event, I wish you could see how these were setup.

That circuit is too small for anything other than 1 grade per time, the A/B mix was too hard and then after 6 laps we were passing D riders.
 
And Zwift crashes..... lucky over an hour in when I had planned just 10 mins cool down.

Graphics driver related googling the error... funny never had a problem for all the time it’s been installed until it updated today.

Put brand new drivers on, now I need to faff about with the settings again as for some reason the shadows are too dark and you cant see ****. I’ll do the gamma/lightness tweaks in the control panel. Grrr
 
Roady said:
I've got the 'joy' of leading our WTRL TTT team later, but we're back in Latte this week with a bunch of new cat C riders so it could be fun...
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https://www.strava.com/activities/4259916606

The newbies done good! Shame about the leader! I ended up muting myself on Discord just as the timer stopped to burst out the pen... So found myself up the road alone riding hard frantically trying to figure out what had happened! Once regrouped things worked really well considering we had 4 new riders along in a 7 man team. After the start my ride clock was 10-15s out from most of the others so timings all over the place when calling people through. Took us a little while to realise that, thankfully one of the other regulars stepped in with the correct timers and called people though. , the 3 B riders along really keeping the speed up and then doing a 3 man rotation for most of the second half. Pulls at 3.5-3.8 w/kg actually felt good for me, so I even did a bunch of unnecessary gap closing (so others didn't have to) and a couple of tows when people got caught on other groups as we passed. We lost one of the C's around 2/3 of the way but he was blown at that point and didn't want to continue. I put a big turn into the final as I was feeling well. Did 3 minutes and then a long sprint lead out, worked well and they all hung onto me somehow! :D

Berger said:
Put brand new drivers on, now I need to faff about with the settings again as for some reason the shadows are too dark and you cant see ****. I’ll do the gamma/lightness tweaks in the control panel. Grrr
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Rubbish. Guess one benefit of using older hardware is the lack of frequent driver updates! I'm very much a firm believer of only updating non-security related stuff when something really needs it! ;)
 
I’m rubbish now I’m on the wahoo kickr.

Old Tacx trainer, Alpe du Zwift - 57 mins

new trainer 1hr 30!?

I’m feeling a little under the weather too, but I was clinging on the whole ride!?
 
Hey folks, unsure if this is the best thread to ask this but giving it a try...

Have been working my way to putting together a home gym and though we weren't quite planning to do so yet this new lockdown has us spooked about availability so bringing forward our purchase of an exercise/spin bike to go in it. Willing to spend a decent amount but really not sure what to go for, we don't want to go cheap and get one of the sub £500 bikes you see on Amazon (JLL and the like) but also don't really want a "smart" bike like the Peloton (in that doing the virtual classes and paying a subscription is not what we want)

Any recommendations? Currently looking at the Life Fitness ICG bikes - the IC1 seems okay but it seems like a magnetic resistance bike would be better which would mean the IC4 (or IC5 maybe since the 4 has no computer or connectivity at all I don't think). Or maybe the Echelon but just using the Freestyle mode with no subscription?
 
@uncle_rufus DO NOT GET A PELETON!!

They are ridiculously expensive! You could buy a reasonably decent road bike AND a top model smart trainer for the same price!

I've got a Wattbike which is brilliant, but of course that is a static 'gym style' bike. No subscription needed, and it's a Wattbike......so it just works.

What's your budget?
 
Definitely not going to get a Peleton, for the reasons above and just because it seems like it's all geared up for the live classes and subscription and that's just not what we want. We're looking for a static gym bike which we can hop on every morning for half an hour to do some steady cycling for now (whilst we regain some sort of level of aerobic fitness after months of doing very little) and then eventually get back to HIIT as part of the rest of a proper workout

Budget isn't unlimited but fairly flexible - we were planning to save up but since we're worried about an extended lockdown making everything sell out for months again we're going to dip into savings to get it asap. So ~£1k would be ideal but I guess we could stretch to £1.5k ish if it was for something really worthwhile.

Also inb4 just get an actual bike - we both already have bikes but we want to train regularly and in the winter + rain that's just not viable

Edit: Meant to say... because of eventually using it for HIIT we do want to be able to track stats, cadence/rpm and whatnot. Not bothered at all about it saving user profiles or past stats or anything just a basic live readout that isn't crap or going to break on us will do fine (I'm more than happy to jot down anything I want to "save" between sessions in my notebook). That was partly what I was dithering about between the Life Fitness IC4 and IC5 - it seems like the IC4 comes with no computer at all but the 5 does - but it's like £400 more just for that?!
 
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For that sort of budget, I would say a good smart trainer would be the best best. You could get anything for 1k.

I haven't read much into the gym style 'bikes', such as Life fitness etc. They look more like fancy spin bikes.

I guess it also depends on what you want to use it for. Zwifting, Rouvy etc. Or just do your own thing.....
 
We literally just want to be able to jump on it, stick on a podcast and do ~30 mins of decent cardio on it and that's about it :D when we still went to an actual gym I used to start with a sort of HIIT based thing where you'd build up with a couple of minutes at various rpm (85, 90, 95, 100) and then a few bursts (10 sec burst or max speed then 50 sec slower) followed by longer intervals (3 mins at 100-120rpm then 1 minute at 90rpm) or something along those lines

Thanks - I will Google around but using the phrase "smart trainer" as that's not what I've been searching for and I'm unsure what the distinction is. Any recommendations?
 
uncle_rufus said:
Thanks - I will Google around but using the phrase "smart trainer" as that's not what I've been searching for and I'm unsure what the distinction is. Any recommendations?
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Ah.. sorry for double post but I checked and I don't think this is what we want either - they seem neat but our bikes are dirty mountain bikes and I don't want to drag them into the "gym" area of the garage to attach to one of these, nor deal with the hassle of attaching/detaching the bikes. I think we are looking for a permanent gym style bike
 
A smart trainer is basically one where you can connect it (wirelessly) to a computer, and that then controls your resistance. Or if riding in the virtual world of Zwift or other platforms, the resistance goes up or down depending if you ride up or down a hill.
 
uncle_rufus said:
Ah.. sorry for double post but I checked and I don't think this is what we want either - they seem neat but our bikes are dirty mountain bikes and I don't want to drag them into the "gym" area of the garage to attach to one of these, nor deal with the hassle of attaching/detaching the bikes. I think we are looking for a permanent gym style bike
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Fair dos. I imagine one of the gym style spin bikes might be your best bet by the sounds of it.
 
Shadowness said:
@uncle_rufus Atom :)
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Wow looks like a lovely bike, but probably a bit more than I can stretch to...

I think the wife and I have maybe come to a decision... from what I can tell the Life Fitness IC4, 5, 6 and 7 are all essentially the same bike in terms of the frame and everything, with most of the differences being in the extras... so the IC4 is £1250 and has no onboard computer/monitor of any kind it is literally just a mechanical bike, the IC5 simply adds a little TFT monitor + computer with basic stats but costs £1650! £400 extra just for that! (similarly the IC6 is another £200 for a more advanced monitor, and so on)

But I think what we are going to do is grab the IC4 and then since the only thing we are really bothered about is having an idea of cadence we are just going to buy one of the Garmin or Wahoo cadence sensors and attach it to the crank. It appeals to me I think because it means the bike is really just a bike - there's no onboard software to become outdated or electronics that break and let it down eventually - if the cadence sensor breaks or gets old we can just replace it (they are about £30)
 
floatindolphin said:
I’m rubbish now I’m on the wahoo kickr.
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Welcome to the real world! :D ;)

Hate to say it, but that's the difference between on-wheel and direct drive. To get a real comparison if you really wanted, do an FTP test on the old then one on the new.

I 'lost' around 60-70W in the move (Vortex to Flux), but it is far more accurate. My Flux may under-read (slightly), but the Vortex was certainly over-reading a significant amount. I dropped from a competitive B right down into a middle of the pack C. I lost lots of motivation and I probably lost more fitness, motivation and power from that than the actual power loss as it happened at a 'bad' time for me (Spring). But when I returned to more riding in the Autumn I just worked my way up again, to being a competitive C, then this year progressed back up into B. But I'm nowhere near a competitive one - for various reasons! ;)

uncle_rufus said:
Which wattbike do you have?
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Kinda the wrong place to ask - might be better to run it past the general 'fitness' guys rather than the cyclists like you'll find here.

Hate to say it - but with my limited understand and experience, without riding lots of gym bikes (out of luck doing that from Thursday!) then going the Wattbike route might be your best option. Of all the 'spin' type bikes they're probably towards the higher end, as they're far more of a 'fitness' type bike. But because of that they are immensely popular in gyms, homes and studios around the world. With lots of people using them as far more than a 'spin' bike like you're after.

Also might be some cracking deals on them new & S/H due to all the gyms being shut and now having to shut down again! ;) :D
 
Roady said:
I 'lost' around 60-70W in the move (Vortex to Flux), but it is far more accurate. My Flux may under-read (slightly), but the Vortex was certainly over-reading a significant amount. I dropped from a competitive B right down into a middle of the pack C. I lost lots of motivation and I probably lost more fitness, motivation and power from that than the actual power loss as it happened at a 'bad' time for me (Spring). But when I returned to more riding in the Autumn I just worked my way up again, to being a competitive C, then this year progressed back up into B. But I'm nowhere near a competitive one - for various reasons! ;)
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As I'm bored at the moment, I'm doing a test tonight where I've put my Assioma pedal PWM on my Wattbike to see how things compare. I've never been able to run two PWMs together, so I'll do my own Rainmaker/LlamaLab test :p

Hopefully it'll confirm that my Wattbike isn't overreading!!
 
Shadowness said:
It certainly is, but as you say, it's probably a lot more than you need at this stage. As Roady says, see what the gym go'ers think, as this is probably the wrong area to get the best advice.
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I have copied it across to one of the gym threads and will see - thanks! I think I mistook the meaning of "Indoor Riding" :p
 
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