Zwift indoor virtual reality trainer

I mean, its not really a joke, considering inflation its pretty understandable: £12.99 in 2017 is worth £16.73 in 2024.

In 2017, average price of a loaf of white bread was 99p, now £1.39.

Definitely going to make people who were maybe paying for both trainerroad & Zwift for example pick one.

Difficult to find any painless options. When I had a Wattbike Atom, the Wattbike hub was pretty good, but I see thats gone to a subscription model for £7.99 a month too.

The painful thing is having 2 people in the house wanting to use Zwift, double the pain.
Noticed Rouvy do a duo subscription, which seems like great value in comparison at 19.99 euros a month.

Definitely going to make people who were maybe paying for both trainerroad & Zwift for example pick one.

I’ve paused my Zwift membership. Not outraged at the increase, it just made me reconsider whether using TrainerRoad for all of my actual training, then Zwift for 1 race every 6-8 weeks just when I fancied something punchy but unstructured was worth it. Decided not.

I can always just renew for a month and then cancel again if need be.

Rouvy do a decent group subscription, $325 a year for five separate accounts so you and four mates can do a joint sub for $65 a year each.
It's not as popular as Zwift and doesn't have all the racing etc but it does what it needs to.

We've got multiple users in the house so I just don't think it's worth it personally. Guess I'll see how I feel in November though.

I mean, I can run 5k already! And under 30 mins. I think.

why would you run?

Yeah, I think I've got Zwift for one for month at £12.99 before it goes up after, so smash out some sessions, and then give Rouvy maybe a go.

For the bus
To catch my dog eating poo
To encourage my kids to do something

my dog eating poo

An unusual choice of pet.

Quick technical question. I bought a second hand Tacx Neo years ago for Zwifting. I recently decided the bike attached to it needed new chain and the cassette was also worn. When I tried to replace the cassette (first time I have tried this as I am not skilled in mechanics) it turns out it is Campy on a Tacx Campag free hub. The Shimano cassette doesn’t fit on it.

Now it feels like me options are:

Change the free hub but it seems quite hard and expensive to find a Tacx Shimano free hub.

Can I use just any old Shimano free hub or is there something special about the Tacx version? If I can that’s ideal.

Or, given it never caused me problems before, can I run a new Campag cassette with Shimano group set and chain? Or was I just lucky before?

Thanks!

Are you running 11 speed? If so, you should be okay using a Campag cassette with a Shimano drivetrain. The spacing on 11 speed is near identical between Campag and Shimano, so they are pretty much interchangeable. You might find a couple of shifts are a bit slow, but it’ll work well enough.

On the Zwift alternatives front, I've been using IndieVelo a little bit. It's in beta so it's free atm and aside from the odd strange thing (the average speeds are wild, 36kph from an average power of 160w hahah) it's virtually identical to Zwift. You've got racing, pacing bots, intervals, ERG mode etc.

Thanks. I think it’s 10 speed (there is a chance it’s 9 speed if anything). I should know these things shouldn’t I.

I've been using this recently, well good for free. Any idea how to get w/kg displayed though?!

It's decent isn't it? I think in some ways it's actually a bit more like riding outside than Zwift.

I hadn't noticed it wasn't haha! I reckon it's probably buried in the settings somewhere? Given it lists torque and left-right balance from a power meter, it would be a big oversight if they didn't include that.

Is there anyway when making a custom workout in Zwift using erg mode to set an interval as a target wattage eg 125-150% of FTP?

https://www.zwiftworkout.com/

Can't you just drag the bar to change the height of the interval to the desired percentage of FTP? There is an option to display things as either watts or % of FTP in the bottom left. See at 1:19 in the video below:

https://youtu.be/Apnwg1TAsIU?feature=shared&t=79

Cheers for this. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my previous post. What I was wondering was whether you can set a target percentage window eg 115 - 125% as opposed to a fixed percentage eg 120%. I’m wondering whether the specificity of ERG mode means it’s actually not possible as it holds you to a fixed target wattage, so the way might be to do it with ERG mode off I guess and then you have the possibility of coming in under or over target percentage.

Rejoined Zwift after a 6 moth gap. Used to enjoy the crit races and participate as a C cat. I see they have introduced a new point grading system but the quantity of races and participant in the individual races is greatly reduced. Have people moved on to another platform since the charge increase?

There's a few new apps which are splitting the audience alittle but I think in honesty there's often just too many events at the same time. The other morning I was thinking about racing but there were 10 races starting in the same 15 minute window, each with their 4 or 5 classes. About 5-10 people per class max.

bit late - but erg mode will set it to the middle value of the target range

I think it depends on time and what's on offer. People that want "new kit/badges/etc" often just go for the big shiny thing, the smaller races can either be good or shit. I think 20 in a "race" is good as it feels about the right number. The new categorisation doesn't really affect things (i'm still shit) and really it's just about a way to keep you honest and working at or around threshold with a couple of efforts.

The tour of watopia event has been running recently which hoovers up a huge amount of people. Not unusual to have 500+ in a category band.

I’d recommend joining a WTRL team if you’d like highly competitive regular weekly racing. It’s easily the worst part of my week

Type 2 fun though right?