Room for improvement

In an attempt to maintain fitness but avoid the winter’s worst, Arrivée editor, Ged Lennox, test rides the Tacx flux S – and discovers a nightmare virtual world of relentless performance pressure…

I HATE WINTER. My normal habit is to service my bike in late October, put the clocks back and go indoors for the duration.

It’s wet, cold, dark and dangerous on the road and the lure of the comfy chair by the fire, a glass of something and a good book is irresistible. Even my old husky, who is far better equipped for the weather than I, is unenthusiastic.

The outcome is a slow decline of muscle tone and a faster loading of weight, which means it takes me time to get back to fitness in the spring. It’s surely just the normal pattern of living in northern climes.

However, this year I impetuously signed up to join a team of 22 planning to ride the end-to-end in July (22 in 22). The upshot of this is that I need to maintain fitness if I’m not to be embarrassed by all the keen and able youngsters in the team, many of whom seem to enjoy sea swimming in January… unfortunately I can’t afford the brain surgery to remove my hypothalamus, so I am stuck with working-out inside.

I considered re-joining the gym – it’s expensive and a potential vector for the dread disease, which I would also prefer to avoid. On top of all that, gyms are full of really fit people and I wouldn’t want to discourage them or put them off their protein shakes.

So, driven by necessity, I turned to the world of smart trainers which seemed to offer all the blood, sweat and tears of a real ride from the discomfort of your spare bedroom, garage or, in my case, studio.

When I was at school my PE teacher wrote on my annual report that: “Gerard seems reluctant to engage in exercise” and that there was “room for improvement”. So, in his deeply irritating memory, I renamed the studio my room for improvement, the place where I reluctantly engage in exercise.

It didn’t take me long to choose from the long list of torture devices on the market.

The Wahoo system seemed to be the most expensive and even incorporated an elevating platform under the front wheel to simulate angle changes when going up hills, something I’d definitely

prefer to avoid. I eventually opted for the new Tacx flux S, which saves money by dropping any unnecessary letters, and seemed to offer the best return for cash, coming in at £500 for the stand-alone device – the equivalent of an eight-month gym membership.

The trainer came with a free month trial of both Zwift and its own Tacx Training platform – so I tried both.

Removing the back wheel of my bike and hooking it on to the trainer was simple enough, but moving the thing around afterwards proved to be a work-out in itself, as there’s no way of lifting the unit. The addition of a simple handle would have made all the difference. Designers huh?

I started with Zwift. The set-up was far from straightforward, and I spent a long time talking to an apathetic guy on a webchat trying to fathom why the app didn’t connect via Bluetooth, as advertised. Eventually, through research, and trial by disgruntlement, I discovered that there was an additional “bridge” app that you could install on your phone, which would then talk to your computer, in my case an Apple Mac and an iPhone. Sorted at last, bring on the pain…

Entering the Zwift environment was like something from the 1982 film Tron, where, as a bewildered victim, I was digitised and reconstructed inside a nightmarish metaverse flooded with thousands of avatars, all spinning through a bizarre virtual landscape with virtual volcanoes, virtual roads, virtual buildings… and virtually nothing of real interest.

I imagine a game-adjusted competitor would feel at home in this CGI madhouse, but I just found it annoying and more alien than… actual aliens.

Joining the merry and overcrowded throng, I soon earned an orange helmet (well done) the significance of which was utterly lost on me. I also received many condescending thumbs-up gestures, at least I think they were thumbs, from other users as they sped past, which I interpreted as “what are you

doing here you silly bugger, this place is for fun, fast people?”. There was clearly an undisclosed agenda way above my grade about which I doubt I could care less. Zwift might be fast, Zwift might be fun, but Zwift is as close to synthesising cycling as Tigger is to being a Bengal tiger.

Evidently many people love Zwift, but try as I might, even with the joyful prospect of cycling with virtual friends all pumping away in the sweaty privacy of their own homes, for me it was a weird, disappointing and empty experience, devoid of all but the motion of turning the pedals. I used it for a week then bounced.

The next free trial was with Tacx Training, a downloadable desktop application better suited to the Mac environment (also available on PC). This is a very different approach and I applaud the company (Garmin) who designed it.

It hooked up via Bluetooth instantly and recognised both the trainer and my Wahoo heart rate monitor. A simple calibration test and some details about my age and weight (which I will keep to myself) and I was ready to go.

On the desktop I was presented with dozens of real-life video streams (or downloads) that some real-life person had recorded in real-time, with real people and real traffic. There’s a topographical contour trace across the bottom of the screen and as you approach a hill you are given a quick run-down of how steep and how long it is together with a continuous read-out of the power and speed you are achieving – just like on your real bike, only far more detailed and without swallowing flies.

You choose from many beautiful locations, like the Amalfi coast or stages of L’Eroica, mountain stages from the TdF and even some routes in the Lake District (a bit too gritty for me yet). I understand that you can upload your own GPS routes and ride them on a 2D map – but I’m yet to try this as I’m still enjoying watching the real world, especially some of the outrageous Italian motorists as they scream past frustrated at their inability to virtually run me down, even if it does make me flinch. New rides are added all the time so there is an element of novelty as well.

During your ride you will see perhaps another 20+ participants as markers grinding their way along the bottom of the screen, so you don’t have to suffer alone. Or if you download the video, you can do it all by yourself and feel a bit more adequate. As yet the software doesn’t support group rides with friends, but it is planned. The other good things are that it costs less than £9 a month, and the sun is always shining.

All your rides are recorded on your dashboard and you can take tests to establish your FTP (Functional Threshold Power) if you really have to.

If you don’t know what FTP is then good for you, but it’s a measure of your sustainable power output over a given time (usually watts/hour). 200-watts is above average, but a pro will double that at least – yawn. If you can manage to stay awake long enough you can divide your weight in kilos into the FTP watts to give your power/weight ratio. So, if you weigh 70kg and your power output is 210-watts then you are a 3… In my dreams.

The feel of the ride is quite similar, if not slightly harder than the real thing and the top-range systems even include road texture feedback, so it gets a step closer to reality, but nowhere near the degraded road surfaces in God’s county of Gloucestershire as there isn’t a “hitting a gert big pot-hole” simulator.

So far I have done about 1200 kilometres, and although it is demanding, I’m not yet discouraged, in fact I genuinely look forward to the sessions and feel I’m making some progress. The only small niggle is that freewheeling downhill requires you to keep the pedals moving gently even if you back off the power. If you stop pedalling the ride will eventually pause. This might not be the case on more expensive models.

I found that it’s a good idea to work-out near an open a window, turn off the heating, have a large water bottle to hand, put the rig on a waterproof mat, get a big fan and an even bigger towel as you will sweat to a ridiculous extent, unless you are Prince Andrew… So, what’s the verdict? I’m pleased with Tacx Training and will stay with it – but, speaking for myself, I find that I’m stressed by the endless feedback data which mostly serves to spoil the ride experience and create performance anxiety. Long-distance cycling is about sustainable output over much longer times and distances and includes another kind of FTP – Feeling The Pleasure, something that is frequently overlooked and difficult to plot on a spread sheet.

My own love of cycling was born along the beautiful leafy lanes of Warwickshire when I was 14, riding my classic 531 Carlton – which I still have. A sandwich and a packet of Spangles in the saddlebag behind me and the long days of summer ahead. The only tech I had back then was a mechanical mileometer which clicked away the distance on my front wheel and occasionally removed a spoke or two.

Today, in contrast, many riders seem focused on power, performance and personal bests. Strava and the like, promote this competitive spirit and seem intent on turning everyone into magnificent, muscled machines. Nothing wrong with that I guess, but I’ve been riding bikes for more than 40 years and I love it still, and I have never come even close to magnificent… or even muscled for that matter.

I mention this because, of late, several cycling friends have confided in me that they have “fallen out of love” with cycling. I wonder if there is a connection between their preoccupation with fitness stats, together with almost obsessional quantifying and recording of activity, sustained by slick apps, smart tech and online comparisons, while they overlook the joy of simply riding, for no other reason than the transient pleasure of being alive.

Indoor trainers have a real function and are clever pieces of kit. However, I won’t be trading my road bike for the synthetic just yet.

But… take a look at my new Apple Watch. Wow. It gives me my calorie usage, records my walking, running, cycling, standing, heart rate, ECG, breathing, oxygen saturation, Vo2 and sleep patterns – as well as all my personality defects to 3 decimal places – dazzling, eh?

Yes, I really have got an Apple Watch. Good grief, what a loser…