Beer Drinkers' Appreciation Society (BDAS) 2020 Version - ALWAYS OPEN (Page 31)

To use Zwift you need a bike, a trainer with either some kind of power meter (either on the trainer or on the bike) or a known power curve and a speed sensor (most of the fluid trainers are just fine for this and you can get them for under $300).  You'll also need some sort of computer and a screen, so a tablet, PC/monitor, or Apple TV,  plus an ANT+ sensor for the PC if you go that route. If you use a speed sensor, Zwift will utilize that know power curve to estimate your power output (TrainerRoad also does this...it's not all that accurate for me and doesn't simulate actual road riding, but for training purposes it's just fine and I did it for 5+ years).

I've kept upgrading the different components over the years so now I have:

• road bike with Powertap wheel/hub on Kurt Kinetic Road Machine > this gives the power output that Zwift needs to know how fast you should be going
• Wahoo HR strap (I think between my wife, daughter, and I we have like a dozen HR monitors of different types - chest strap, arm band, watch, etc. - so choose what you want here)
• iPower PC with Intel i3 processor, 8 GM RAM 120 GB SSD hard drive, and GeForce nVidia 710 graphics card (this rig was $500 at Best Buy)
• 40" Samsung TV

All of that is overkill to start for sure, especially the gaming rig and 40" monitor but I like the immersive feel it gives you in the worlds.

Speaking of worlds, Zwift has six:  Watopia (a mythical island which looks like Hawaii with all kinds of terrain and weather), London, Yorkshire, Richmond, NYC, and Innsbruck.  All of them expand with new features and routes.  The Yorkshire, Richmond, and Innsbruck sites are all fairly small with a limited number of routes, and NYC is just tooling around Central Park but they also created this elevated platform route that weaves above some of the city and the park - it's hilarious .

Zwift accounts are $15/month I think, and they give a two-week trial or something like that.  There is a HUGE user community for the product on Facebook, plus there are forums like ours here that Zwift runs.  I've seen as many as 20,000 people on Zwift at the same time, so every avatar you see is a real person somewhere in the world riding a setup like yours.

Just Google "Zwift new user" or something like that and there are tutorials, you tube videos, etc.

Went back and forth yesterday about riding indoors vs. outdoors because it was pretty wet out from all the rain we had Friday and Friday night.  Finally decided to brave it and had a great ride for about 25 miles, chasing a couple of Strava segment KOMs including the 1+' (just under a half mile) segment right out front of my house - failed on that one even though I set some all-time power records in the 1:10 - 1:30 range.  Today's going to be an easy recovery ride and some strength work before watching golf. 

Happy Sunday!

Bet you'll be glad to be back home with all this stuff going on.  And good luck with getting some good weather - until the past few days we've been working on our 4th straight month of March.  We had the warmest February on record and we're working on the 2nd coldest May. 

Don't faint! I'm back. Had a week of doing nothing last week: hormones etc messing my motivation up big time. Managed a short ride yesterday (errands) and a longer one today (more errands) and then did arm w/o and core after; first time in a while, but it feels good. 

@dave - maybe see if the bike part of an ironman training plan would work?

Maybe a bit dehydrated from the workouts? That can impact on lack of weight loss. 

Managed my second day of ride and arms/core. Feels good. Hope everyone else doing ok?

Who the hell does that??? 

By the time you're all said and done this, you'll be ready to build your own house.

YAY - new gear.  Don't join the cult. 

We actually ordered an Echelon, because we're contrary (and it's like a grand cheaper).  My wife will use it mostly but I'll use it to change up a bit with a different bike position and it comes with all the non-bike group class workouts, which my wife loves.

Another Zwift race today, a 24km criterium.  Finished 10th/18 in C group, really small field today so tough to judge how well I did but my race tactics were good, didn't crack, and held good power numbers throughout so I'm calling it a success.