With a change of seasons, comes a change in training

 The heat has arrived early here in North Queensland. Given the winters here are so damn warm (I think I wore arm warmers on one ride over "winter"), and no-one locally is excited by the arrival of hot water. 

What actually does hot mean? Well this week ahead is forecast as a solid week of 32 & 32 °C maximum temperatures (that's 90 fahrenheit for you metric challenged types). The real killers though are the minimum temperatures and the humidity. It's only dropping to 24 °C at night. And the humidity is bloody high.  The upshot being an hour after dawn it can be close to 30 °C with 80% humidity. Ugh.

You do get a break from the heat & humidity when it rains, but when it rains it tends to be biblical rather than the odd splash of rain.

Not exactly conducive to riding long & hard. Which is what I need.

The good news I have a cunning plan. 

Well to be fair it's not overly cunning - I'm planning to use Zwift lots over summer. I've got a smart trainer, and it's set up in a nicely air conditioned room. 

 

 

Now if those two sentences made no sense, Zwift is an app you run on your laptop or table which is designed to give you a fun virtual riding experience (it looks a bit like you are riding through a video game). Zwift then connects with your smart trainer to which you attached your bike. The Smart Trainer and the Zwift app not only record your riding metrics, but the two also combine to give you a real world riding experience. So if you're going uphill on Zwift, the resistance on the smart trainer gets harder, and it feels just like you are going uphill. Same goes for downhill. And the system is rather clever - it not only adjusts the resistance according to how steep the road is, but it also changes very quickly. Here's a good intro vid if you'd like to learn more. 

There's all sorts of rides & routes that have been set up in the Zwift world, ranging from easy flat rides through to brutal climbs like the Alpe Du Swift (a clone of the iconic Alpe D'Huez climb). Here's actually a vid comparing how good a job Zwift does of matching the real world experience (based around said climb).

I really like riding outdoor with mates, but there's a lot to love about Zwift:

• It's weather proof
• You can ride exactly the terrain you want as hard as you want whenever you want
• Because I'm riding at home, it fits in with life of the family better
• No flats 
• You can sleep in a bit longer
  

There's even a number of training programs you can follow that are part of the app. And I think I'm going to start off with one of the plans.

Now it's not like Zwift is only known to people who know the secret handshake - it's widely known as used in the cycling community. Hardly uber-cunning. I do though think many people use it as a way to compliment their outdoor riding rather than their training foudation. Let's see how it works out.