Category: Zwift

cycling · fitness · Zwift

Sam says goodbye to her Zwift streak and makes plans for the new year

Sam BLeave a comment

I was excited to make it to Week 7 of a Zwift streak. It hasn’t been the best fall for me in terms of fitness. I am committed to making Zone 2 rides a regular thing, but it’s hard to stay motivated in Zwift without the tough workouts, which I enjoy, or the team racing. I miss them both.

My fitness week starts with the Herd’s Monday Morning Coffee Crew ride. It’s an early start, 5:55 am, but it’s a short ride, just 45 minutes. I also try to ride Wednesday and Friday mornings with the Herd at 7 am, if my schedule allows. On the weekends, there’s the Thundering Turtles, my favourite group ride on Zwift, also put on by the Herd. The Herd is fast becoming my Zwift community of choice.

I’ve been happy to make it to a 7 week streak. But now it’s the holidays, and I’m away the week between Christmas and New Years. I’m going to lose my streak. BAH!

And then, I read about streak extenders in this article– All About Week Streaks on Zwift | Zwift Insider.

“Zwift knows that riders may be unable to ride for a week or more, though, due to vacation, injury, or other factors. So in April 2025 they introduced Streak Savers to the game. These are automatically used to extend your streak if you have a week with no qualifying activities.”

Woohoo!

So maybe my streak is safe after all?

Sadly no. You only get the streak extender after your streak is 12 weeks long. No streak extenders for a mere 7 week streak.

Fine, I’ll start again in the new year. A new year, a new Zwift streak!

Oh and the article helped solve a mystery for me. I’ve been wondering why some riders in Zwift have squirrels in their back jersey pockets. I want a squirrel in my back pocket too. I mean, I’ve got the flame socks now. Why can’t I get a squirrel?

Turns out I can. I just need to have a 24 week streak.

The squirrels are streak flair.

So now I have another goal. First, I want a 12 week streak so I can get a streak extender. Second, I want a 24 week streak so I can have my own Pocket Scotty. Wish me luck!

Here’s Pocket Scotty. Good news–he’s weightless. Pocket Scotty won’t slow you down going up hill.

cycling · fitness · walking · yoga · Zwift

On lambs and lions and research leave: Sam is checking in for March 2025

Sam B
Lamb

🐑 Well, it feels like the world is falling apart. There’s a fascist coup underway in the United States,  the country with which we share the world’s longest undefended border. And Trump et al are talking about taking over Canada, either by force or by crushing us economically. We’re all worried about external influence on our upcoming election.  So there’s that. I’ve written a bit about the mess we’re in here and here.

🐑 I am currently on research leave from my big job. I spent the first half of the month of March in Dunedin, New Zealand where it’s autumn and still warm-ish. I was a visitor in Philosophy at the University of Otago.

🐑 The second half of March is back in Ontario where it’s spring (but not really yet). Here, I’m a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.

Centre for Ethics
CN tower as seen from Centre for Ethics
Sam selfie

🐑 The good news is that it’s now light for more than twelve hours a day here.

View of the Toronto skyline at dusk, with the CN Tower visible and a calm lake in the foreground.

🦁 I’m at 95 workouts so far in the 2025 workout counting group, on track for 400 workouts this year.

🦁 I’m way way behind on my reading goals. I’m in the middle of about six different books and I can’t seem to finish any of them. But I am reading lots of non-fiction while on my research leave, so there’s that.

🦁 I sensibly dropped my cycling distance goal down from 5000 km a year to 3000. Here’s the plan: “A more reasonable goal for me I think is 50 km a week when I’m in Zwift mode and say 75 km a week in the summer months. Let’s say summer is 12 weeks,  so that’s 900 km. The other 40 weeks,  I’ll aim for 50 km, and that’s 2000 km. If I add and then round up,  it’s 3000 km.”

🦁 I’m walking lots in Toronto, 10 km one day. I woke up the next day and my legs were sore but it wasn’t my knees. That was a good thing. Public transit, esp. streetcars, make me more likely to attempt big walks since I know that at any time I can change my mind and get a ride. One of those walks, the longest,  involved a meet up with fellow blogger Nicole. It was so nice to see each other in person.  The bloggers don’t often get to do that!

10 km of walking
Scenes from Toronto walking

🦁 Swimming! I struggled to get into the pool for lane swimming/stroke improvement because I’m so not good that it’s not much of a fitness activity but this year I found an answer. I go early for aquafit so aquatfit is the workout and my lane swimming is the warm up. Mallory also had some good tips for me, since she both teaches swimming and she’s a very experienced lifeguard.

🦁 Yoga! Sarah and I have been taking hot yin yoga at the fancy gym and I’ve done some anti-gravity restorative yoga. One of the perks of my more flexible research leave schedule is being able to take group fitness classes during the day. Going back to my regular schedule might be hard but I’m also missing my job so I think it’ll balance out.

🦁 So far I’m still riding indoors since we returned to Canada (after lots and lots of outdoor NZ riding) but that will change in April. I plan to bring my Brompton to Toronto.

How’s your March so far?

Lion

cycling · fitness · Zwift

Sam is not shocked by her Zwift baseline camp report, but will she take their advice?

Sam B

Over the holidays I had fun completing Zwift’s Camp Baseline.

“Uncover your strengths and train smarter in 2025. Over six weeks, challenge yourself with six rides—three workouts and three tests—tailored to transform your riding approach.”

The big incentive to actually finish Camp Baseline was the promise of a personalized assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Everyone who takes part and completes the camp gets an email report.

It wasn’t that detailed and it contained exactly zero surprises. I am not an all rounder, and I’m not that versatile. I have exactly one strength on the bike and it’s sprinting.

Rider strength: Sprinting

That’s been true for a very long time. I’ve won exactly one bike race in my life. It was a road race that concluded on a crit course. Crit courses are generally short and flat. I stuck with the front group to get to the crit course but once we were there, victory was mine. Whee!

An aside: I had to resist the thought that I was cheating. I felt like I won because I was a better sprinter than the people I was riding and racing with and somehow that didn’t seem fair. But cycling is like that.  I had to remind myself. that other people are better climbers. If this race had ended on a hill, as many of them do, I would have come last, or near last.

I loved the sprint segments on the women’s coached training rides with Chris, in London. They were the best bit of the ride. I loved being able to power past some of the people I struggled to keep up with on the ride. Once or twice,  I even powered past Chris but arguably he let me power past.

What’s my weakness? That was also no surprise. It’s endurance.

I struggled to even finish the endurance test in Camp Baseline. It’s 27.7 km (not too long) but it includes The Grade, 3.5 km with an average gradient of 8.6% just a few kms after the start. The Grade is an in game test of FTP (functional threshold power.) The Endurance test itself was based on your best 10 minute power.

I struggle with longer rides on Zwift because of the boredom of indoor riding. They recommended one of their Fondo training programs but, yawn. I would much rather do structured workouts, social group rides, or races. Really I would rather do anything on a bike than ride at a consistent low effort pace,  alone, for hours on end. I would rather climb hills and that’s saying something.

In the spring and summer, I need to ride at least three times a week to build up my distance. When I’m riding regularly, I usually do a couple of fast-ish 40 km rides on weeknights. Then I go for a long ride on the weekend. But that level of commitment is hard to maintain with my big job and all the other summer things I like to do,  like sailing,  canoe camping,  etc. It’s a struggle.

I have thought about aiming for a 200 km ride this summer. That would be my longest ride ever! I once rode 167 km. My bike club was setting out to ride an imperial century, so 100 miles or 160 km. We were so tired that we got lost on our way home into the city. That was in the days before smart bike computers with maps. We had to do the tried and trusted technique of asking for directions at a gas station.

That will tell you it’s been some years since I’ve ridden that far.  My big bike rally days,  which are more recent,  are about 130 km. And part of me does think  why does anyone need to ride further than that?

Anyway,  still considering the big ride as a goal even though I know it’s not the big ride that’ll be hard.  What’s hard is making the time to train so that it’s doable.

It’ll certainly help if we decide to do a leg of the bike rally and some of the days of Pedaling for Parkinsons.

Looking forward to riding lots in New Zealand in the coming months. Yes, I will work on my endurance but there might also be some sprinting involved. For sure there’ll be hills!

cycling · fitness · Zwift

Sam’s new Christmassy Zwift set up and her Zwift recommendations

Sam B
Zwift in the living room

The big change in my Zwift life these days is my move to the shared family living room. I could practically be Santa and stuff stockings while riding my bike on the trainer.

Previously Sarah and I had a back room Zwift set up, from the early pandemic days of Zwifting, but we’ve recently had an adult child move back home for a stretch while they’re in school,  and another adult child come back for a few months between jobs.

That’s a lot of people in a small house.

In response to the space crunch, Sarah’s moved her trainer to the basement and I’m set up for Zwifting in front of the fireplace.

Thanks Sarah for setting my bike and trainer and big screen all up and making it possible.  Thank you everyone else in the family for your support of my living room Zwift activity.

It’s like having a pit squad for dropped towels and turning up the fan.  Lol.

This year we don’t even have a full size Christmas tree since the bike, the trainer, and the screen are using valuable floor space.

But it didn’t occur to me in all the squishing in to give up Zwift.  It’s a big part of my life. In terms of motivation,  it helps that my knees feel their best when I ride everyday.

This fall I’ve gotten back into racing a little bit.  I’ve been racing with a women’s team for a change. I’ve joined ZSUN, Sarah’s club,  and a women’s D team that’s part of ZSUN. They’re lovely folks and I appreciate so much the work that goes into organizing.  Thanks Chantal.

ZSUN racing

Miss my TFC fellas but as I’m just getting back into racing,  I can’t quite keep up with them yet.

I’ve settled into a pattern with Zwift right now and there’s really three things that I’m doing regularly.  I’m doing easy going group rides. I’m doing workouts.  And I’m racing, and that includes doing course ride overs with my team in advance of the actual races.

There are a lot of group rides and workouts on Zwift. Want some advice about where to get started?

Here’s mine.

Group Ride

Regular blog readers know that I love the Herd and their very punny rides. My favorite is the Thundering Turtles but there are others.

I also like the Herd’s Monday Morning Coffee Crew.   It’s a great community and I love that they do what they say they’re going to do.

A few years ago I blogged about my favorite group rides on Zwift and though it needs updating it still mostly holds.

Workouts

My new favorite Zwift workouts are the Baseline Camp series. You can read more about it here.

“Uncover your strengths and train
smarter in 2025. Over six weeks,
challenge yourself with six rides—three
workouts and three tests—tailored to
transform your riding approach.”

Endurance,  attacking,  versatility and sprinting

The workouts are challenging but not impossible and I like benchmarking and testing part of it.

Here’s the attacking test and my results.

Baseline strength report

Big Challenge

I’ve never done the Rapha 500 but every year I’m tempted.

“500 kms. Eight days. 24 – 31 December. A tradition like no other.”

It used to be an outdoor thing but now you can complete the challenge on Zwift.

“For your indoor rides, we’re serving up a calendar full of group rides to help you crush kilometers with friends worldwide. Choose your speed with five subcategories, each led by a RoboPacer.

Need a dependable wheel to follow on your journey to 500 kilometers? RoboPacers to the rescue. Join any Pacer Group on a free ride to help you go the distance and ride at a speed that suits you, with loads of RoboPacers to choose from!

Complete any Rapha Festive 500 event on Zwift, and you’ll unlock the in-game Rapha Festive 500 kit for 2025. Don’t miss out on your only chance to unlock this exclusive kit”

You can plan it out here.

Here’s my Merry Zwiftmas room!

Rest day after double trouble day
cycling · fitness · rest · weight lifting · Zwift

Rest day after double trouble day

Sam B

Yesterday was a big stressful work day–you don’t need to know the details. It was also a big stressful family day–again, no details needed.

But amid all the work and family stuff, it was also both personal training day and Zwift race day. In time, that’s one hour at 7 am and nearly two hours at 7 pm (race plus warm up and cool down).

The morning involved leg presses and walking lunges, shoulder presses and chest flies, and a bunch of other lifting too. The evening was a warm-up on the bike, followed by a TTT, which was two laps of Tick Tock. (I love Team Time Trials. See why at the end!)

So today I am a little bit sleepy and a little bit sore (but not in a bad way, more like I can tell I used my muscles way.)

Do I need a rest?

What does Strava say?

So Strava says yes.

And I feel like yes.

So today is definitely a rest day.

Here’s what a TTT looks like. This is the five of us starting off, all together but not yet in a nice line.

And I did choose this second image because I was happy with my watts climbing out of the tunnel! I don’t like hills but I enjoy short punchy climbs.

Right and if you’re interested in racing on Zwift, TTTs are a great place to start.

What Sam loves about team time trialing. You might like it too!
cycling · fitness · Zwift

It’s the Season of Red!

Sam B

How it began: I wrote yesterday about getting started again on Zwift after three months of casually riding outside. The summer included my birthday weekend 60 km, the Pedaling for Parkinson’s Ride, also a some car camping with bike rides (Awenda and Pinery), and a memorial ride for Jeff Otto, a significant member of the Friends for Life Bike Rally who died on the first day of this year’s ride to Montreal. I also pretty consistently rode to work and to physio but it was all pretty low key day-to-day riding.

So yesterday was my return to Zwift.

Here’s my smiling face, my big screen Zwift set-up, and my knees. (Check out how well the knee surgery scars have healed!)

How it went: Bah, I made it just 10 km at race pace! I was a bit disappointed but in thinking about I haven’t been aiming for speed in awhile. Also, it’s the start of the school year and I’m extra busy. Finally, I did have personal training the morning of the race. So that’s an hour of lifting weights at 7 in the morning and then a bike race at 730 at night. I have some work ahead of me getting back to bike fitness and speed. On the upside, my knees felt great.

Check out the red:

You can see it was hard. The red is high end power.

Zwift Power Zone Colors Explained

  • Zone 1 (Grey, Recovery): below 60%
  • Zone 2 (Blue, Endurance): 60-75%
  • Zone 3 (Green, Tempo): 76-89%
  • Zone 4 (Yellow, Threshold): 90-104%
  • Zone 5 (Orange, VO2 Max): 105-118%
  • Zone 6 (Red, Anaerobic): above 118%

It got me thinking about fall and the colour of leaves.

Red leaves. Photo from Unsplash.

So it’s time for me to start on a Zwift training plan. Likely I’ll start with one of the FTP builder programs, which I’ll do along with the weekly ZRL races. Wish me luck!

cycling · fitness · racing · Zwift

Welcome back to Zwift and the ZRL!

Sam B

It’s fall.

And you know what that means.  Yes,  back to school.  Yes, red leaves and shorter days. But also for some of us it’s back to indoor bike riding and racing.

It’s not too cold to ride outside,  obviously,  but we’re running out of after work light.

So I’ve taken the Zwift bike down off the wall, and set it up in front of the big screen,  ready for an autumn of Zwifting.

Each summer I say I’ll occasionally ride indoors on Zwift and I decide not to put my membership on hold. But the truth is it’s too warm in the evenings even with a fan to ride inside during the summer months.

Here are my last Zwift rides in early June.

So it’s been three months.

What’s new in the bike room?

Boo!

We’re cat sitting one the adult kid’s cats for a bit. Boo hangs out in our back room for snuggles, TV watching, and now indoor bike racing.

But it wasn’t Boo who shredded the mat under my bike. That was the previous visiting cats, Moon and Louie.

So Sunday night we had to do a race to secure our category in Zwift. That’s to make sure we’re still D riders. What’s the worry? Sandbagging! Winning by racing in a lower category so you’ll be sure to win.

Tonight, we race for real as the ZRL series begins. I’m racing with a ZSUN team (rather than TFC) because ZSUN has a women’s D team.

We’re ZSUNna.

Tonight’s race is a 24 km team trial in France.

Wish us luck!

body image · cycling · fitness · Zwift

The Curious Case of Zwift’s Avatar Sizing: Small, Medium, and ‘Where’s My Large?’

Sam B

I’ve complained here before about not being able to have an avatar that looks like me, size-wise, in Zwift. In Zwift, your avatar is highly customizable but features such as size used to depend on your IRL weight. How’s that work? See here.

But Zwift announced a big change on February 13th. You can now choose your own size. If you don’t make a choice it will still work as above, based on the rider’s actual BMI.

Yet, I still can’t choose my size since in Zwift it’s still true that men can be small, medium, or large and women can only be small or medium.

That’s me in the bright pink cycling cap, above.

Her size has bothered me for awhile.

See Meet virtual Sam: Avatars, gender, and identity: “My avatar has grey blonde hair that’s about the length of my actual hair. She’s got an athletic build, solid, and I like that. This is the first time I think I’ve created an avatar who sort of looks like me…I have one complaint about my Zwift avatar. She’s medium sized person and I’m a large sized person. That’s odd because avatar size is based on your actual kg. It turns out that in Zwift women only come in two sizes regardless of how much we weigh. We’re either small or medium. Men come in three sizes, small medium or large. Here’s an explanation of avatar sizes. So when Sarah and I ride together in Zwift we’re the same medium size. That’s weird because IRL she’s medium and I’m big.”

I’ve had more to say here about the missing, larger, athletic women’s bodies: On representation and why diversity matters, and Where are the muscular, larger women’s bodies?. See also Strong women’s bodies and representation. It’s a bit of theme for me.

So when I first saw the story. “Zwift has big news: Choose any avatar,” I got excited. But no. Not yet.

“We are evaluating the timing for adding a larger feminine body shape in the future to be more inclusive and fix this imbalance.”

Is it just about the timing, really? I wondered if Zwift wasn’t sure what a large athletic woman’s body looks like.  The larger men’s bodies in Zwift all look like beefy football players. That’s true even if the 250 lb male cyclist doesn’t look like a football player.  I can’t imagine anyone objects.

I was imagining the larger women’s bodies also looking athletic.

Like this,

Or this,

But maybe they’re worrying that some women will complain about the new, brawnier avatars.

Me,  I’m just looking forward to looking like a bigger rider, so when I fly by people downhill in Zwift, as I do in real life,  people will know it’s because I’m larger.

Now they also say that “Every person on our platform should be able to represent themselves as they feel they are. This is one step towards making Zwift a more inclusive space as we continue to build a platform where everyone feels represented.” So maybe there’s hope.

Here’s some more images of me, in Zwift, again with the pink hat.

Thanks Microsoft Copilot for the blog title! (I hate writing titles. Copilot is great at suggesting a half dozen, or more,  to choose between. )

cycling · fitness · Zwift

Sam is getting back to fitness basics on her bike

Sam B1 Comment

Immediately after my knee surgeries my bike focus was mostly about mobility–half pedal rotations, and then full pedal rotations, and getting on and off the bike and unclipping and clipping in with ease. That’s the thing that mattered most.

Next, I worked on being able to ride my bike for 30 minutes, and then 40 minutes, and then an hour at a time. There are lots of slower paced, friendly and supportive, group rides on Zwift. I love the Monday Morning Coffee Club and of course, The Thundering Turtles.

Finally, these past few weeks I’ve started working on bike fitness again. I’ve moved from mobility to casual riding for endurance to actually training. I’ve strapped my heart rate monitor back on. I’m tackling the easiest of the Zwift training plans. The one I’ve started is called “Back to Fitness.” I’m on Week 3.

The two day a week training plan leaves me some days free from group rides which I’ve also been enjoying. But just riding, in a group or with a pace partner, lacks structure. I realized getting fit again will require both time on the bike and some structured training.

Here’s the description of this plan:

“If it’s been a while since you’ve been on the bike, Zwift has a new training plan to get you rolling again. Back to Fitness is a 12-week training plan for anyone looking to jump back into cycling after some time away from the sport.

Co-written by Olympic gold medalists Dani Rowe and Kristin Armstrong, this plan is perfect for those returning to cycling after injury, pregnancy, seasonal time off, or other reasons for inactivity. It starts out with a set of shorter, lighter-effort workouts and builds throughout the 12 weeks.

“Whether you have had a recent hiatus from riding, you’re coming back from an injury, you’re a new mom or you’re ready for some accountability and fitness gains — Back to Fitness has you covered,” Kristin says. “Our 12-week progressive 2-day per week plan will get you back in no time, taking the guesswork out of your day all in under an hour!”“

Here’s the Over-Unders workout I did on Christmas morning!

So far I like the program a lot. The workouts are under 40 minutes and include a 5 min warm up and cool down. They’re tough but doable which is what I need right now. In just a few weeks, I’ve noticed my power is nudging upwards and my cadence is improving. I like the motivational text. It’s supportive and helpful but not too much.

I’m hoping after this I can start one of the Zwift Build Me Up programs, first the Build Me Up lite, and then the regular Build Me Up training program. My FTP in watts used to be, when I was racing regularly pre-knee surgery 180. Now it’s 117. I’ve got some work ahead of me to rebuild fitness.

(What’s FTP? According to Zwift it’s “FTP stands for Functional Threshold Power and represents the highest wattage number you can expect to average over a long time, usually between 40 minutes to an hour.”)

I’m excited about riding lots outside next summer and I’m looking forward to making progress on bike fitness through the winter.

Wish me luck!

cycling · fitness · Zwift

Sixteen weeks since total knee replacement and Sam is checking in

Sam B4 Comments

I checked in one month after knee replacement surgery.

I checked in at the twelve week mark too. Also here.

Now it’s been sixteen weeks and here’s the tl:dr version: everything is still very much a work in progress, with giant ups and downs, and a ton of physio.

Some days I feel like I don’t really even need the cane. Everything feels great and I’m looking forward to getting my right knee replaced and having all of this behind me. I can feel dancing in my future.

Other days everything hurts–both my left knee that’s recovering from surgery and my right knee that’s waiting for surgery–I can’t walk much without my cane, I can’t ride my bike on the trainer very far or very fast, and I just want to curl up and cry. Sleep can be challenging and I wake up during the night and struggle to get back to sleep. On those days, I can’t believe I’m going to have to go through this again with my right knee.

I need to remind myself that progress isn’t linear. There are ups and downs even if the overall trend is up.

So I am going to share some of the progress I’ve made.

First, this is the first week I’ve met my new distance goal. Yes, I won’t make my goal of 5000 km for the year. And yes, I’ve reduced my weekly distance goal from 150 km to 50 km. But I made it.

Second, I am continuing to pick up speed even if I am nowhere near as fast as I once was.

Third, in physio we are still working on surgery rehab on my left knee but we are also spending some time on my right knee working to get it ready for surgery this spring. It’s getting a brace to help it along until surgery.

Fourth, in physio we’re still finding new things that help. The latest is fancy physio tape. Once on, it stays on through the shower and lasts 2-3 days.

Left knee with total knee replacement scar and snazzy physio tape

Fifth, a work friend is also going to have knee replacement surgery in January and I’m happy to be lending all my stuff to her in between my surgeries–crutches, walker etc. That’s not progress for me but it is a reminder that I no longer need these things.

Sixth, it feels good to be doing personal training as well as physio. Today is both, Meg in the morning at the university gym and Estee in the evening. Sarah put my physio tape on today so this definitely feels like a team effort!

Anyway, wish me luck. It’s a struggle. And I’m hoping I actually get to ride a real bike outside before surgery #2. I’m making big plans for summer 2024.

Sometimes I wonder if my bike is thinking about me too