Brrr, That Looks Cold

It seems like every time I do a workout on MyWhoosh, I always end up doing the Endurance 8 workout. I go into it thinking, “I’ve never done this one before,” only to look back at my blog history and realise it’s the only one I’ve ever done.

This has been my first structured workout since coming back from injury. I was looking for something fairly low intensity, and I think this one ticked the right boxes. As regular readers will know, I have ongoing issues with power discrepancies between what’s reported from my pedals and what comes from the trainer. Today, I decided to base the workout on the power reported by the trainer but adjusted my FTP within MyWhoosh to minimise the difference between the two.

Although I’ve done this workout before, I’ve never ridden on the MyWhoosh World map. So, today was a new experience for me—and a good one. I used my older gaming computer, so I had to run it at lower graphics settings. Even so, the visuals were impressive, easily comparable to any Zwift map. I’d love to see how it looks on my proper gaming computer because I bet it would look fantastic.

I have to admit, when I set off on this route, I was a little sceptical. It starts in an ice world, which I suppose makes sense given that the route is called Arctic Trail. The route spans at least 24 kilometres, though I’m not exactly sure how long the full lap is. It has over 200 meters of climbing, but since I was doing this as a workout with 0% trainer intensity, I didn’t really feel any of that.

The route offers a much more varied experience than the name suggests. While it starts in the Arctic, it certainly doesn’t stay there, and by the end, you’re far from those icy landscapes.

I don’t want this to turn into too much of a map review, but I will say that once you exit the Arctic, the route definitely ventures into computer game territory. There are floating islands and magical elements that, in many ways, remind me of Avatar. After the Arctic section, you find yourself on a beach route, then into a funky futuristic city, which looks really cool. From there, you enter a temple area, which leads into a forest filled with massive mushrooms and other fantastical elements.

I can see this being quite divisive. I know a lot of purist cyclists prefer more realistic environments and might not enjoy these kinds of features. Personally, I think it’s great. You should embrace the game side of it, and in my opinion, MyWhoosh does this far better than any other online cycling platform.

Towards the end of the ride, I started thinking about compiling a page where I list all the things I believe MyWoosh could improve—whether they’re bugs or just quality of life enhancements. I don’t know of any single place where that sort of feedback is gathered, and I’m not really sure how to report these things to the MyWoosh support team. I think there are a lot of easy wins they could implement to make the product even better.

As for the workout itself, I’d say it was probably the right intensity for where I’m at right now. I didn’t come off feeling exhausted, and I didn’t need to do any out-of-the-saddle efforts that would put unnecessary pressure on my arm. I stayed fairly comfortable throughout but still felt like I had done enough by the end.

I think this workout came in at around the low to mid 40s in terms of TSS. I’ll probably look for a similar workout tomorrow. One thing I was thinking during the ride is that the calorie burn could have been higher if I’d done this as a free ride. That’s partly because I would have tackled the hill sections at a higher pace or intensity compared to the structured workout. But honestly, being kept in check isn’t such a bad thing.

Overall, a good start to the week, and I’ll see you again tomorrow.