Anybody tried zwift? I'm planning to download and try it this week.

For those who never heard of it - it's basically a multi-player game which connects to various sensors on your indoor turbo trainer bike machine and you can virtually race real people around the interwebs. So a game which is actually proper exersize.

Obviously mainly of interest to those who already have turbo trainer, bike, speed and cadence sensors, heart rate monitors etc ..

Nobody on it yet?

I've just done an hour tonight, about 35 virtual kilometres.. It's damn hard work. Saw a few Swiss flagged riders tonight in the game/race/course.

Felt quite good to be 420 out of 15600 on one of the starva segments. Seeing it on screen in front of me, knowing it's actual real other people is quite motivating i think.

I've got some friends back home doing it. Great for winter training I guess, but I've never tried it.

Interesting. Out of curiosity, is this an actual Strava achievement (as in you are now officially ranked 420 on the segment) or is it just a virtual segment placing ZWIFT gives you based on your performance. I've never tried to link trainer data with Strava, so I'm not quite sure how this works. But I'm not sure I like the idea of people on trainers getting QOMs and KOMs.

But I agree that in principle, "racing" against other real people would be motivating. I used to participate in group Tacx velodrome nights (with only one trainer, so one rider at a time) and it became quite fun. E.g. you could choose to race against John's performance from two weeks ago while the actual John was standing next to you screaming obscenities in the hope of demotivating you. Sounds bizarre, but the whole thing was somehow highly entertaining.

Anywho, hope the training goes well.

H.

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The integration with Strava is pretty good .. Starva does mark it as a virtual ride of course but all of the data from cadence, heart rate, speed, power etc is coming from the bike/trainer sensors so it's real data. And of course the segment is a virtual segment but everybody else is racing the same virtual segments .. As in most courses are not real places so you can't cross the segment on your real bike. Plus as you enter a segment the KOM is displayed with countdown.. really makes you push harder.

It's never going to replace going out for a few hours for a real ride but really, to me, it gives more purpose than staring at the wall or watching something on TV.

I fancy a try at velodrome.. Might be one of the Swift training plans.. hmmm

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I see you're in Nyon. Should you ever fancy a go on a real velodrome you should definitely sign up for an initiation evening at the UCI velodrome in Aigle. It's heaps of fun.