Strava started out as this cool KOM/training social media, but even when the KOMs essentially dried up, it’s still going strong and evolving into a more comprehensive social training platform.
So here in a few months when the Sun stays out longer, it doesn’t take an hour to suit up for battle, and you aren’t weighing freezing to death with death by trainer… where does Zwift continue to go?
My personal thoughts:
It still offers an invaluable option to working professionals, who maybe due to location, family constraints, or varying work hours can’t train consistently before or after work.
It offers the ability to “race” against others during the week if you either don’t have or can’t get to the nearest Weekday Worlds Ride. (hoping the mass start race feature is as awesome as the free ride).
There will still be days where it pours its ass off and you will want a fun trainer option. I remember back in June of last year there was a huge storm every day after work, but I had broken my trainer mindset from the winter so riding the trainer was mentally daunting.
Perhaps a recorded option for day-of bike races. The Euro races tend to finish around 10-11 am EST, it would be really cool if it was a thing where after 5 pm, a simulation ride of the AI players was already available and you could jump into the race anywhere you wanted with as many friends as you wanted to try and ride in it. For this they might need some sort of ride generating engine where they could feed in course profiles (similar to pro cycling manager) and then just capture the highlights.
It will be interesting to see where things go though. Based on the interviews with the leadership at Zwift, they are working toward making a product that really makes you reconsider riding outside. Not in a bad way, but just making an indoor platform that is so good, it makes you seriously stop and think.
I live in FL and have the benefit of year round riding outside. The trainer still gets some significant use on conference calls as well as those times that riding is not safe. Having something that makes the training interactive is perfect for me. I can only watch a video so many times before I start to lose interest. I believe I will see the human to AI mix shift from winter to summer and that will drive the need for a different kind of interaction with the platform,
I live in NC and realistically can ride most of the year without too much trouble. Even at that, my trainer gets used year-round. During the warmer months I still use the trainer for most interval workouts. Zwift will continue to be used for that in addition to days when weather or schedule just don’t cooperate.
I’m lucky that I live in a place where I can ride year outdoor year round and I still log a significant amount of time on the trainer. It just maximizes the ROI for me. Zwift and all its possibilities makes this an even better outlet.
For me i work shift pattern 12 hours, 4 on 4 off which makes riding and racing somewhat difficult.
I find my shifts make it difficult to race consistently, once a week for a few weeks in a row is about the norm. I will be using Zwift to plug those gaps when i ant race and keep my race legs from one week to the next.
Right now, Zwift adds a layer of interest to indoor trainer sessions. Indoor trainers are immensely boring, Yet one solid thing about the indoor trainer; when you have a very specific set of intervals, you can hit those numbers as you need to, without the disruption of hills/wind. When you need some saddle time without the rigid interval sessions, some fun can be had fighting it out for the KOM/Green jerseys. My couple sessions so far were those. Mostly easy spins, checking it out, with a few light it up moments. My TSS didn’t get out of control for the session, and I wasn’t bored to death by the monotony of the trainer wheel hum.
I would love to see some features where I could preset my interval targets; time and power numbers, and let the system count them down for me, give some visual and audio feedback.
Blending the training features of TrainerRoads with the virtual interaction of Zwift. Making the training aspect more interesting is of supreme value to me.
I have stretches where my travel for work has a huge impact on my training. Knowing I can add some interest to my “hotel room” intervals, makes the effort of dragging a load of equipment around much more worth it.
I can see pulling the trainer and the laptop out on the deck this June for some Zwift.
Mass start events. These will likely do the trick for me for some summer Zwifting - maybe even for 3 weeks straight in July…
Well run club events. If I could hook up with other folks who seemed to be playing by the same rules and there was some sort club league or club tour, this would probably get me out for some summer Zwift as well.
In the absence of organized events, my Zwift outings will get pretty infrequent once the weather turns.
Like most people, when the weather gets nice I’m more than happy to get back outdoors (a recent tongue-in-cheeck #nozwift hashtag on instagram this weekend) but I make a goal to ride the trainer at least four hours each month even in the summer.
What might really help is to have some event rides in the Summer to look forward to. I’m hoping there are enough people in South America in my time zone that are riding during their winter too. Not sure how big of a market there is in the south.