Stockholm Syndrome

My (cycling) lifelong hatred of indoor riding has been replaced with a problem at the other end of the scale: a week into Level Four‘s 6 to 9am freedom to exercise, I find myself heading back to the man-cave (my garage, IRL) for yet more hamster-wheeling. Every day.

IIt wasn’t always like this. I’ve been a serial indoor-trainer buyer for decades. And an equally serial seller of such items, almost invariably in mint condition. My record on a non-smart trainer is probably 45 minutes. There was just no way I could ever get to an hour; boredom and pain and claustrophobia won, every time. That changed when the kind fellas at Wattbike dropped off the new Atom for review, and I pulled the trigger on my $15-a-month Zwift membership. It wasn’t quite love at first pedal stroke, but from the outset, an hour on the bike was more than survivable.

The Atom is a thing of beauty, arguably the leader of the pack if you’re looking for an indoor set-up that doesn’t use your regular bike. It has normal road handlebars, complete with tribars, and a normal saddle that’s remarkably comfy, in the circumstances (though my first tip is still to swap that out with a spare of your regular bike’s saddle).

Saddle height, fore-aft seat position, cockpit length and bar height are all millimetre-adjustable, so getting your torture machine set up exactly like your regular bike is perfectly feasible. The only iffy bit is the 170mm cranks (you aren’t able to swap them out), but to be honest, I never yearned for more length.

Download the Wattbike companion app, switch the Atom on (a longer power cable would have been nice), and you’re ready to go. It really is that simple. You can ride it as-is, using the app on your phone and its plethora of workout options.

Or you can hop onto Zwift through your phone, tablet or computer (you might need an ANT+ dongle for some laptops). And for me, this is where the magic happens.

I started on Zwift as a reluctant solo rider, exploring the various worlds; Watopia is an imaginary paradise, complete with a 100%-faithful Alpe d’huez replica, sloths hanging off lianas, and a Jurassic park.

Then there are the event-driven arenas, which showcase the Yorkshire, Richmond and Innsbruck world championship courses, London’s Olympic routes, and finally – and most fun, in some ways – New York’s Central Park. Each has its attractions, and you quickly learn how to find a flat, fast ride or a hurty, hilly one.

Zwift controls the Wattbike, so when the gradient increases, so does the power you need to put in to keep your speed up. You can draft other riders, just like IRL (as the cool kids say), and save up to 25% power on the flats – less on the climbs.

It’s as close to riding outside as you’re likely to find, with one major difference – you never freewheel. Ever. No little rests as you hop on a wheel, no long recovery drags like you’d expect on a rolling route IRL.

More glaring than the other post-ride stats on Strava (yup, Zwift and Strava are good friends) is a box that reads ‘Pedalling Time’. In a moment of madness one Saturday in April, I set out to see how far I could ride the poor Atom before I could stand it no more – the 45-minute dumb-trainer test, if you will.

Twelve hours and 400km was the answer (please don’t judge); and in that time, the numbers tell me, I didn’t pedal for a grand total of eight minutes.

This has two effects: number one, you get an hour’s workout out of an hour (much like running), whereas we’re used to crooking the books a little on the road, and only actually working out around two-thirds of the time we’re moving.

Secondly, boy does indoor cycling destroy your contact points. Feet and hands protest only after a few hours, so for most, that isn’t even a factor. But your arse rebels from twenty minutes in, and doesn’t shut up until you stop. I haven’t used this much bum cream since… ever. And I haven’t managed to acquire a saddle sore like this in 20 years. (Normal folk, fear not – 12 hours will do that to ya. Another good reason not to.)

It took me a fortnight to venture into the events side of Zwift. (I’m not sure what made it so daunting; quite possibly just Ludditism.) My first foray was a local race series, organised by my neighbour up the road. But I managed to un-invite myself by mistake as we started, and missed it. (Yep, Ludditism.)

So I hopped into another event, an all-comers group ride organised by Team NTT: 600-odd riders spinning around the Desert Flats of Watopia, the pros chirping each other, the guests asking for and receiving on-the-fly advice… it was the most fun I’d had in weeks, and the hour was over before it started hurting.

And so began the addiction. Logging on to Zwiftpower.com lets you choose your next event or race, and there’s always something to challenge.

I’ve ridden the Alp du Zwift a few times now, raced Cervélo gravel bikes through the jungle, tried to follow Ashleigh Moolman-pasio up a climb, and chatted to a chap in Alaska who can only ride outdoors three months of the year. He racks up 20 000km a year on Zwift; without it, who knows how few he would do before going totally bonkers.

So. Why haven’t

I ventured outside yet? I’m not totally sure, to be honest.

In part, it’s that Iwanttokeepmy social distancing protocols, and the volume of people in my 5km radius is high. And, I suspect, because I don’t want to get up and ride in the dark, both because my duvet is warm, and because I do worry about safety in the early morning – my regular riding used to be in the middle of the day, when traffic is a bit more sensible.

Mostly, though, it’s because my illicit love affair, fostered in captivity in my garage, isn’t quite over yet. Good morning, Stockholm

– and thank you.

...it was the most fun I’ d had in weeks, and the hour was over before it started hurting.