Yesterday I had a morning ride because I wanted to participate in the Tour de Zwift event. Yesterday the track was London and I was riding slowly for the first half, conserving energy. Eventually, when I got warmed up I started to ride harder and harder until I was overtaking quite a few other cyclists. I took advantage to play on the sprint and got the Green jersey. I took some time to recover and then I pushed myself.
Today I participated in two Zwift events, a social ride and a race. The social ride was one hour of pedalling at a comfortable pace trying to keep to the same speed as the group. Rather than trying to be as fast as the group I was trying to pace myself to be within the peloton rather than riding off. Social rides are amusing because you start on the peer and wait for the counter to get down to zero and when it does you go from being on a home trainer in the real world cycling on a home trainer in the virtual world to cycling on the roads of Watopia.
This summer I climbed over 8848 metres in a single month and now I have just completed the Zwift Everest challenge as well. This challenge, on Zwift, is much easier than in the real world because you are not carrying water, the weight of your bike, dealing with keeping yourself balanced on your bike or traffic. Using a Fluid Trainer. I don’t use a smart trainer. I use an Elite Qubo Fluid trainer and to climb I use information on speed to decide how hard to work.
Recently I have been thinking about bike locks. I have been looking at the variety of options that there are and for a while I was worried about bike theft. It is for that reason that I never left my bikes unattended for more than half a minute to a minute during bike rides. This is easy when you’re going on 30-100km bike rides where you spend all of your time with the bike but what about when you replace your scooter with a bike.
When I heard that Zwift would allow us to ride our bikes through a virtual New York I joked that I would use my singlespeed and I hoped that I could ride through the streets. Unfortunately you get to ride through the New York countryside, otherwise known as Central Park. Imagine riding through the Autumnal Hamptons at this time of year. I have ridden three or four times in virtual New York, once for pleasure and two or three times for training.
The challenge is being gradual enough to react to the lag in power reading. A few training sessions ago I tried pedalling hard, overshooting the watts required but found that it was hard to catch the momentum just right. I then tried the opposite. I tried pedalling faster, to get to the desired wattage and then changing gear and keeping the wheel going at that momentum. This worked for a period.
Komoot is an app based on socialising through sports. The sports are cycling, mountain biking, bike touring, hiking and running. It integrates well with Garmin and allows you to track activities from your mobile phone or import GPX, Fit and other files from other brands. It also allows you to create your own tracks ahead of an activity as well as plan it for a specific day and time. Sports Running and hiking are two distinct categories with no differentiating between hiking, walking, nordic or rambling.
Yesterday I was stung by a wasp while cycling and when I tried to remove the stinger I couldn’t. I was in pain and almost stopped cycling. I was in distress as a bus passed on a main road. I was on an agricultural path by some apple orchards. I stopped where the agricultural road reached the main road. It’s almost twenty four hours later and my lower lip and one of my cheeks have swelled up.
Yesterday I rode an e-bike over 5km and played with the eco, touring, sport and turbo modes. I experimented with the gears and I experimented with a variety of gradients and surfaces. Through this trial I got to understand how e-bikes work. Gaining momentum E-bikes are great for helping you get up to 25 kilometres an hour and after that, if you have the strength then you can ride the bike at over 25 kilometres per hour for as long as you last.
Assembly It took me one hour this morning to assemble a single beltdrive bike. It was relatively simple, unbox it, assemble the saddle, add the handlebars, add the pedals, add the front wheel, inflate the tires and I think that was it. The part that took me longer was finding where the front wheel bolts were. They were in the plastic inserts to stabilise the bike in the box.
First test run I then went for a bike ride on a variety of gradients to assess how it felt on each.