Not So Zwift

When I left the cozy confines of St. Petersburg, Florida, and moved to the frozen tundra of Chattanooga, I had an epiphany. Not the kind where Jesus descends in a shaft of heavenly light and shows you how to heal lepers. This epiphany came after several months of lying to myself—imagining that I could ride my bike throughout the winter and that the mountains weren’t really as high as everyone, including surveyors, cartographers, and the mountains themselves, claimed they were.

As fall rolled into winter, and winter became increasingly belligerent and haughty, I began to understand why people didn’t ride their bicycles up there that time of year: Every one of them was smarter than I was and possessed a working knowledge of what dying from exposure meant.

I lasted until the beginning of January before realizing there was a limit to how many layers of clothing I could wear and still mount a bicycle without the assistance of a crane. I also discovered that a balaclava restricted my airflow while constantly reminding me that my breath smelled like something had crawled into my mouth and filed for permanent residency.

Most disturbingly, cycling sunglasses did absolutely nothing to keep my eyeballs from freezing inside my skull.

Apparently, that feature costs extra.

I finally stomped what remained of my self-respect into the frozen earth and accepted that I needed some type of indoor cycling equipment. I plunked down $1,200 at the altar of the god Amazon and bought a NordicTrack S22i preloaded with iFIT—the lowercase spelling of which immediately suggested it was young, hip, and preparing to make me feel inadequate.

I used the holy hell out of that bike. I also developed a close personal relationship with George Hincapie, although only one of us was aware of it. We rode together regularly. He encouraged me, challenged me, and shared stories about his life. I sweated all over the floor and occasionally swore at him.

It was beautiful.

Eventually, though, one ride began to look suspiciously like every other ride. I also started developing an unhealthy hatred for cheerful people in exercise videos—people I had never met and who had done nothing wrong except smile while climbing a grade that was causing my internal organs to shut down.

Secretly, I wanted a smart trainer that I could connect to my QR PRfour triathlon bike.

I had heard a lot about the Zwift app, so I checked to see which trainers were compatible with it. After a little research, I settled on the Elite Direto XR Interactive Smart Trainer. Apparently, the manufacturer couldn’t find another word containing the letter C, so it dropped the one from Directo to keep the entire title from looking inconsistent.

The trainer is amazing. If you buy one, get the direct-drive model. Evidently, the letter C was acceptable this time because it was buried safely in the middle of a sentence.

I set everything up, attached the bike, connected the trainer and controller to the Zwift app, and pedaled off into an exciting new dimension of cycling.

Or was it a new dementia?

Programs like this should not be sold to the chronically obsessed without a waiting period, a psychological evaluation, and written permission from a responsible adult.

Once I had the Direto set up, I attached the controller or shift buttons to the handlebars--upsidedown. I then opened the Zwift app on my Android phone and cast it to my television. Zwift greeted me with a cute woodland scene, a snappy musical sequence—if you consider It’s a Small World snappy—and an assortment of buttons for connecting all the electronic paraphernalia: power source, heart-rate monitor, controller, and whatever other devices NASA requires before launch.

It isn’t that different from the startup checklist for a jumbo jet, except a jumbo jet has fewer ways to publicly humiliate you.

Beneath those buttons are two tabs: Let’s Go and Just Watch. I have no idea why anyone would go through all that pre-party ceremony just to watch the avatars of complete strangers abuse themselves in Cartoon Land, but apparently someone identified a need for it.

Perhaps it’s for people who find regular television too relaxing.

When you begin a ride, you experience what we in Air Traffic Control used to call information overload. When U.S. technology in ATC finally began catching up with the rest of the world, the IT people who designed it realized they could put TONS of information into a radar data block. Eventually, they crammed so much crap in there that the data block had to “time-share,” flashing back and forth to show everything it could do.

Call sign, destination, altitude, and airspeed were great additions to the old TPX tags. (Using TPX was a salute to my ATC peeps. Everyone else may take a brief coffee break.)

Unfortunately, the data block eventually began time-sharing those details with other information. In a job measured in milliseconds, searching for an airspeed while the tag tells you when the captain last had a bowel movement can feel like an eternity.

Zwift is a lot like that.

When I began writing this tome, I planned to make fun of how much information appears on the screen. I had to research it first because, even after hundreds of hours riding in the app, I still have no idea what most of it means.

There is, for example, something that counts “Drops.” Drops are electronic money you earn by attempting to kill yourself virtually—which is much safer than attempting to kill yourself outdoors, where there are witnesses and paperwork. You are supposedly able to use Drops to buy things that don’t actually exist. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Consequently, I have a queen’s metric boat load of Drops and nowhere to spend them.

I am the Jeff Bezos of imaginary bicycle money.

You also have two menus. Well, technically, you have 11.5 trillion menus, but there are two I almost understand.

The first is fairly simple: You can stop the ride and save it. There are other choices on that menu, but I’m afraid to touch them. One of those buttons could flush every toilet in my house simultaneously, causing serious plumbing issues and forcing me to explain the Zwift app to my insurance company.

The other menu is—well—it’s just nuts.

One button allows you to make a U-turn on the course. I believe that one is officially called the Quitter Button. Another changes your camera angle. You can watch yourself from the front, the rear, quartering front, quartering rear, or from a helicopter. Hell, you can even stand on the virtual sideline and watch yourself cycle past, which is perfect for anyone who has always wanted to be both the athlete and the disappointed spectator.

You can send messages to other riders, take screenshots, record videos, and even teleport to another rider.

Star Trek does cardio, apparently.

There are four or five more buttons on that menu. I think one of them cleans your glasses, but I got tired of writing them all down, so you’ll have to find out for yourself. Just make sure your homeowner’s policy covers accidental button pushing.

Icons also appear at the top of the screen, coming and going according to what the app believes you deserve. There's one that's two pieces of candy corn, one of which is deformed. That’s a Climb Portal. There’s a road-sign-like symbol depicting a hand giving you the ring finger instead of the middle finger, which means someone is doing a workout. There is also a rudimentary uterus indicating that steering is enabled. I don’t understand the connection, but I’m not a gynecologist, an app developer, or a person who should be trusted around complicated machinery.

You have yellow sergeant’s stripes for the leader—the winner—and red sergeant’s stripes for the sweeper—the loser who has apparently been given a colorful consolation prize for bringing up the rear. there is a button with a truck on it. I assume that if you want realism on the open road, you push that button and get run over.  You have a feather button that when pressed allows you to write eightieth century documents, and a fast-moving gumdrop button--I guess for Christmas riding. Many more symbols appear during a ride, but they seem more satanic than helpful.

At the top of the screen is a window telling you how many kilojoules you’ve burned, how many watts you’re producing, your revolutions per minute, what gear you’re in, glaring mistakes in your last tax return, and whether you have made any catastrophic errors in your life that led you to this moment.

There is also a small flame that tells you if you're on fire.

That last one is pretty handy.

Another window contains so much multicolored crap that it looks like the heads-up display of the Space Shuttle. I keep expecting Mission Control to inform me that a tile has fallen off my bicycle and I’ll burn up during reentry.

The amount of data this app produces is mind-numbing and serves primarily as a distraction—something to keep your mind off the fact that you’ve been on a ten-percent climb for the past hour, your legs have filed a formal grievance, and you’re about three pedal strokes away from toppling off the bike and being eaten by the household pets.

There are, however, some genuinely cool things in the animation. When I stand to pedal, my avatar stands. When I crank out huge watts, my avatar drops into an aerodynamic position. Sometimes my avatar takes a drink from its water bottle in an attempt to convince me that it actually is me.

But if Zwift really knew me, it would know that I never hydrate properly and that I always end up cramping in a fetal, crippling agony dance that resembles an exorcism performed during a power outage.

I have learned a lot of useful things on Zwift. I learned how to attack out of a peloton and hold my lead. I learned the proper way to maintain a constant effort on a long climb. And because the sidebar lists real riders along with the flags of their home countries, I have also learned several important lessons about international relations.

Germans always ride in groups, and they’re always faster than everyone else. The Japanese will sneak up behind you, draft for several kilometers, and then tear past near the end of the race as if you’re tied to the ground. The Brits ride with a funny accent, which is particularly impressive considering no one is speaking. And the French like to message one another—constantly, incomprehensibly, and somehow beautifully.

In short, Zwift has taught me about cycling, technology, international culture, and the staggering amount of personal abuse I will tolerate just to avoid admitting that it’s too cold to ride outside.