Zwifting for fitness

So I just dove into the electronic trainer game full force. I bought a Cycleops Hammer, and took the rear wheel off my bike.  Now before everyone is all like “trainer riding is lame, ride outdoors!” I give you exhibits 1 and 2: it’s -6 F out and my kids have activities at every moment of every day. Riding in the AM on rollers for me has been the way I get things done for a long time during winter. I have been training with power for about 17 years and have been used to that feedback, augmented by metrics in TrainingPeaks. 

But electronic trainers and Zwift etc are a pretty cool development. And it isn’t that you can ride through a virtual world and have the resistance change while going uphill. (Believe me, it’s only been a month and if I see that climb to the top of the cable car once more...I might lose it).  Rather, putting workouts into Zwift and having the software control the power output in erg mode is where the real benefit lies.  You can connect your TrainingPeaks account and it’s designed workouts with Zwift. If your coach assigns warmups, tempo, warmdown etc in a workout, “erg” mode in Zwift allows you to have the power controlled. 

I have ridden long tempo blocks and held a reasonably consistent average power. I have watched my Power/HR metric and felt good that it was staying below 5%. But Zwifting a long tempo block is another level of difficulty.  When it says: Ride “X” Watts for 20 minutes, it doesn’t know you tire at the end of the set. And since power is proportional to torque, and torque is affected by  cadence, when you get tired or lose focus and drop cadence, the electronic trainer ups the resistance to increase torque and keep power constant.  This is motivating because if the resistance gets too high...you are grinding it out at low revs!  Watching a power number and keep it roughly at the average yourself is not the same as a machine constantly making it exactly obvious that you will ride “X” Watts and that only. 

So this is where the real benefit of winter training on electronic trainers becomes so much better for getting you fit. When you are pushed to complete sets on target and to the end, you build muscle endurance and increase conditioning. The intensity of the set further drives this home. Riding 10 min at threshold there is more opportunity to fade vs 49 min at aerobic or easy pace. 

Mixing this strength work up with regular roller rides at lower intensities as well as open rides on Zwift where you can ride with others and sometimes race them is a good diversion. And always, there is the 4th and 5th options: riding on the road when it’s safe and fat biking the local trails.