HOW TO RIDE OFF ROAD... IN YOUR GARAGE
Your local singletrack just got a lot closer to home!
your efforts on the pedals and let you ride faster or slower. The new steering block lets roadies take up different positions on the road, and crucially it lets mountain bikers steer their way down some singletrack.
READY PLAYER 1
There’s only one trail to ride on Zwift, called Repack Ridge it’s an eight-10 minute section of singletrack in Titan’s Grove, which is pretty easy to find. Once there, the usual Zwift experience starts to change. It feels as though you are in a special place, a secret beta zone for offroaders only, an exclusive club. Start off and there’s a nice two-foot wide section of singletrack laid out in front of me. I have no idea what I’m doing but it’s very easy to steer and I see that I’m being ranked on how well I’m keeping to the path. The movement feels natural after about 30 seconds and the experience is so different to any Zwift ride I’ve had before.
The scenery is moving quickly as the changes in pitch come thick and fast. I’m concentrating on the trail more than my legs so I glance at the power meter – I’m somewhere around 300 watts. How did that happen? I’m also grinning and giggling that Zwift could be so much fun. This is a mountain bike track in its purest form. It’s got killer steep sections to power up which are punctuated with different changes in pitch and downhills where you can coast to recover and concentrate on steering. It also very cleverly changes the angle of view as you descend to reveal a more overhead angle which is better to predict the corners as you speed through the singletrack. This feels far more like a mountain bike ride in terms of the cardio workout – revving hard then backing off – and in no time at all I’ve finished the singletrack. It’s an intense eight minutes but the time has flown by. It’s a carefully constructed trail, albeit too short. It’ll be interesting to see how any new and longer trails develop – too many turns over a longer distance and it’ll probably feel like sensory overload. Too few and it won’t feel like an MTB ride, although some fire roads would probably provide some welcome rest.
RELOAD
A few days later I returned to Zwift to try out some of its dedicated training plans. This is the other area where Zwift can really adapt to a mountain biker’s needs. The singletrack is great to replicate a ride and many people spend hours in Zwift just pedalling around (probably with an eye on the KOM leaderboards), but the training plans offer a mountain biker a more specific plan to simulate what we endure as riders.
It’s very rare that on a mountain bike ride I sit at a specific wattage for any length of time. A ride has huge fluctuations in power requirements depending on the terrain, and not necessarily influenced by who I’m riding with. It might be that you need to put in a burst of power to get through a rooty section or turn into a hairpin on a trail centre ascent. This means you need to be able to put in micro bursts of power and a training plan should be good at providing these. I’m not a trainer but I would assume that most trainers would suggest a good mix of rides is essential to provide good gains. Sitting at 280 watts for two lots of 20 minutes is probably great if you want to get better at time trials but maybe not if you want to make the most of an epic day out in the South Wales hills.
A lot of the training plans in Zwift are geared around training for the Absa Cape Epic, a huge endurance event with big, long, hard days in the saddle. These are great workouts for endurance, but for me I wanted to see how I could train to improve my recovery between all those small bursts of power I need out on the trail.
I also feel that mountain bikers have very different cadence demands based on the terrain and the grip levels you are afforded. From maintaining a smooth low cadence on a super-steep climb, to traction in mud or loose gravel, to pedalling at maximum cadence to get through rocky slabs – the solution was Zwift’s Dirt Destroyer sessions, they target different skills but one thing they all have in common is you are constantly changing your effort. They feel more like a mountain bike ride and in no way resembled some of the old school road TT efforts I’ve done before.
GAME OVER
The steering block I used is £75, but there are other ways to get the effect, the most basic way is to run the companion app on your phone, mount it on your handlebars and then the accelerometers within the device record your steering movements. Pretty simple and quite effective. That said, the Sterzo steerer is a better way to do it, primarily because I use my phone to run Zwift itself, and it won’t do both.
The steering aspect of Zwift makes it for me, it’s crucial to my enjoyment of it as a mountain bike training tool. It’s a fun addition and does immerse you in the game further, as you can choose who to follow and keep on their wheel or simply hit apexes in corners rather than relying on the Zwift default route.
I was sceptical at first but after a few rides it became second nature. So much so I thought it might be a bit of a gimmick, so I did a ride without it and instantly missed the enjoyment factor.
If you have ever thought of dabbling with Zwift or currently use it but haven’t explored the mountain bike elements, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by what’s available. Even if you are not focussed on getting fitter and simply want to keep active and keep some winter weight off, the mtb rides provide a familiar feel to the riding we all love most and should equip you better for outdoor rides. Just don’t tell any of your friends you’re training.