Back to Zwift - so it begins

And just like that, summer has come to an end. Today I was supposed to be doing a century bike ride put on by a local cycling club.  Instead I found myself cycling indoors on my trainer for two hours, doing a Zwift community Zone 2 ride.  Not exactly how I pictured spending my final Saturday of August.  What stings even more is that this Saturday turned out to be a bloody brilliant day weather wise and closing out the month participating in a 160km bike ride would have rocked. Oh well. I guess some exercise is better than no exercise.

As summers go, this one was not bad for cycling.  I managed to cycle just over 6,800km.  Not too bad, considering the spring was cool and rainy meaning I could not get out on my bike as much as I would have liked in April.  Depending on how the fall goes, I might even close in on my 2026 goal of 8,000km. 

Anyway.  Off to Zwift it is for the next seven months or so.  Now.  Indoor cycling and Zwift is a far cry from the days of getting on the fluid trainer, putting on a DVD, and imagining myself riding through the streets for France or wherever.  So I guess I should grateful for that.  As far as indoor training goes, Zwift is pretty decent.  The ability to buy different bikes, upgrade those bikes, enter races, do planned workouts, and of course meet up with riders from all over the world is pretty cool.  A pretty neat concept really.  And the owners of platform are continually investing in it.  Upgrades such a new bikes like the S-Works SL9 get regularly introduced, not to mention new wheels, new routes, and the constant introduction of challenges for kits, trophies and badges. 

My fear is that the money for Zwift has come from several rounds of VC funding.  At some point in time those VC companies are going to want to get their money out and will sell Zwift off to highest bidder.  Call me skeptical, but I am not expecting whomever buys Zwift to have the same level of interest in supporting the platform and will be focused on extracting whatever financial benefit they can.

Putting the cart before the horse 

 

I realize I am putting the cart before the horse here.  Nothing has been announced about a Zwift sale and any sale is likely years away.  But there has been consolidation in the fitness community recently.  Garmin bought training peaks.  Zwift owns Rouvy.  And before that Rouvy bought FulGaz.  And on and on it goes.  My only hope is that if and when Zwift is put up for sale, Zwift is purchased by a company that actually cares about the user base and is not just going to milk Zwift as a cash cow.   

In my mind Garmin would make a good business partner.  Garmin is now rolling out the option to purchase a Tacx Neo trainer with the Zwift cog pre-installed.  Surely someone at Garmin is already looking at this possibility.  If only to keep Zwift away from Garmin's competitors.

Time will tell if this vision comes to pass. 

And now, I brace myself for months of indoor cycling.  I had better get a head start on building those playlists.

Hill climbing.  I love a good hill climb on the bike.  My favourite saying is "hills make you stronger".  And I truly believe that.  I have done many different century bike rides in the US and I notice that whenever there is a hill during the ride, the riders tend to fall off the back rather quickly.  Riders that blasted out of the gate are huffing and puffing to get themselves up the hill.  When I pass them, because I always do.  I never see them again.

And to be clear, I am not a particularly fast rider in the grand scheme of things. 

When you're doing a hill climb, there is nowhere to hide.  Riding flats?  Sure.  A good rider will find a pace line to tuck in to and enjoy the draft.  But on a hill, drafting becomes much more difficult.  Hills show all weaknesses.  At least at the weekend warrior level, which is where I am at. 

I am very fortunate.  Where I live I have several hills to climb and workout on.  If I am on a limited time frame, for me nothing beats finding a hill, doing some repeats, and enjoying the burn.  The other benefit of doing hill repeats or doing over/unders on a hill?  No stop lights.  So I find it is easy to get into a groove.

Funnily enough, I thought the hills I had to climb and workout on were pretty good.  But then a friend of mine shared some photos of where he lives and where works out and hill climbs.  His hills?  The French Alps.  So while I am excited about riding up my local ski hills, my friend is riding though glaciers, high mountains, and French villas.  I guess you always want what you don't have LOL.

Not me, as much as I wish it was! How amazing is that scenery!

Unfortunately for me, summer in my part of the world is coming to an end.  My days of hill climbing are dwindling.  Either the weather will turn and I will be enduring day after day of rain OR the daylight hours will not be long enough to enable any riding.  But that is a topic for another post.
 

Garmin CIRQA - two weeks in

 

I have been wearing the Gamin CIRQA for just over two weeks now.  For anyone not paying close attention the CIRQA is Garmin's first foray into the world of screenless fitness trackers.  Think Whoop or Fitbit Air.  The whole allure of a screenless tracker is less distractions.  Instead of constantly being notified of emails or total steps taken in a day, the screenless track just is.  The tracker sits on your wrist quietly recording your heart rate, steps, stress, and a host of other fitness metrics that would normally be recorded by a Garmin watch.

So.  After two weeks what is my verdict on the CIRQA?  Honestly the jury is still out.  

I like the CIRQA.  The band is comfortable to wear, gathers all the metrics that my Forerunner 265 would collect, and to my eye is not too big on my wrist.  For anyone who has been paying attention to the CIRQA release, the release has no been smooth.  There are plenty of bugs that Garmin still has to work out.  That said none of the bugs have been game stoppers for me.

So why is the jury still out?  Because I find I am missing the at a glance views of my current fitness levels.  I had not realized how much I enjoyed looking at my watch and knowing how many hours I had left for full recovery or what my training load was, or even how many steps I had taken.  Now of course this information is gathered by the CIRQA and contained within Garmin Connect.  But to see it, I need to pull out my phone.  With my Forerunner 265, a simple glance at my wrist gives me all the information I need.

This is still early day for the CIRQA and me.  Two weeks is not a long time to figure out what works as a daily wearer and what does not. And as much as I like being able to wear an analogue watch again, there is something to be said for tracking all those health metrics and being able to see them at a glance. DC Rainmaker, one of the most trusted voices in terms of reviewing fitness tech, has already come out and said the CIRQA is not for him.  He will continue to get all of his stats and information from his Garmin watch.  Whether I follow his lead, time will tell.

So why the Garmin Files?

 

Ah Garmin.  I own far FAR too many Garmin devices.  Multiple watches.  Multiple bike computer.  A scale.  A blood pressure monitor.   A sleep monitor.  And of course the most recently released item from Garmin, their screenless fitness track, CIRQA.  Why oh why does the CIRQA need to be all in caps when none of the other items are in caps is beyond me.  But there you have it.  Not one aspect of my life is not impacted by Garmin.

But in the grand scheme of things is that a bad thing? 

Yesterday, as I was out for a bike ride I decided that I wanted to keep blog of my training activities.  Or rather not a training blog per se, stating I did X number of intervals on Y pace time.  But instead share thoughts about what it is like as a middle aged man going out each weekday and weekend pushing myself to ride between 500 and 600kms in a week.  Or swim between 7 and 9km a week.  Not to mention whatever indoor training I get up to in the winter months.  And so because I track everything - and I do mean everything - in Garmin I figured why not start a blog called the Garmin Files.  For those of you of a certain vintage, you 'll notice the nod to the TV show the X-files too.  Although I do not expect any super natural stuff to be written about here.

So what will be written about here?  If the introspection I had during my bike ride yesterday is anything to go on, you'd have thought that an entire year's worth of posts had been written and /or mapped out!  Truthfully, I expect a mishmash or topics to be covered here.  From how I felt finishing a 160km bike ride, so suffering through a 4k swim workout when my heart and head were not into it, to what I think about the new tyre I just bought for my bike.  Basically anything and everything related to training or Garmin will likely pass through these blog pages.

Now.  This is of course easy enough to say when I have time on my hands and I am able to gather my thoughts and put finger to keys and draft up a blog entry.  The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding.  Being able to do entry after entry and coming up with topics.  Which if my bike ride yesterday is anything to go on, I have no shortage of.  The journey of a thousand steps start with that first step forward.  Here's hoping I am able to keep the momentum going.  Thanks for reading.