Right then, back on the bike for the first time in about 5 weeks. I was a bit sceptical going into this one, unsure of how I’d feel, but it actually turned out alright. I managed to get in 35 minutes, with a couple of fairly intensive efforts. That said, my fitness has definitely fallen off a cliff—though that’s to be expected.
Prior to my accident, I stopped riding on Zwift. It wasn’t just because of the price increase; I was spending more and more time outdoors, and Zwift just didn’t seem as valuable to me anymore.
Plus, I’m starting to think MyWhoosh is better in many ways, though the downside is there aren’t nearly as many riders online at any given time.
One thing I’ve been wanting to try with MyWhoosh is running it on my gaming PC.
I typically run all my cycling software on a standalone ‘gaming’ PC, but it’s quite an old setup. The graphics card is a GTX 970, which is really outdated now.
My modern gaming PC has an RTX 4060—not exactly top-end, but it should handle cycling “games” just fine.
And as it turns out, it definitely did.
The only downside is that the frame rate seems to be locked at 30fps in MyWhoosh, which is a bit disappointing. However, I didn’t notice any negative performance issues due to that frame rate cap.
What I definitely noticed was how much nicer MyWhoosh HD looks compared to MyWhoosh Go, or just the standard MyWhoosh. They really have some branding issues if you ask me, but that’s a different topic. Visually, it looks just like the teaser videos—smooth and great-looking. Honestly, it blows Zwift out of the water graphically. It kinda reminds of how good GTA V Bike looked.
That said, there are a few bugs. One that really annoyed me was how it kept looking like I was standing up or getting out of the saddle during minor efforts. I know Zwift had this issue a while back and solved it, so I’m not sure why it’s happening here, but it did occur a lot.
I don’t think the screenshots I’ve taken really do it justice, partly because I had to crop them massively. I’m running it at 4K, so the screenshots are huge—not just in image size but also in file size. This blog already takes up around 500GB to back up with seven days of rolling backups. I won’t get into the technicals of that, but adding massive images is a no-go for me, so I had to crop them down quite a bit. Even so, I still think it looks really, really nice, even from the smaller screenshots.
Anyway, this wasn’t supposed to be a review of MyWhoosh—I was just really pleasantly surprised at how good it is now, especially when running it on a proper gaming PC. I wish I’d tried it sooner.
You can even steer using the keyboard, which is miles better than Zwift.
You really should give it a go. I’m not a paid shill, I promise.
Back On The Fitness Ramp
From a fitness point of view, I have to admit that I found this ride a bit of a struggle, which I kind of expected. I deliberately avoided doing a structured workout because I knew I’d struggle with it. Instead, I spent about 50% of the ride doing some fairly easy pedalling.
I pushed myself a bit with one effort at around 2.6 watts per kilo, which I found challenging. Then I did a couple of minutes at just over 3 watts per kilo, which was probably a bit silly. I was just testing how I’d cope, and as I said earlier, my fitness is pretty much through the floor right now. It’s going to be a long build back up, but honestly, I’m looking forward to it.
I went into the ride planning to do just 20 minutes, but I ended up doing 35. I didn’t want to push it to a full hour or something ridiculous in case I overdid it and regretted it later.
I think I’m going to go for a walk in the morning as well, just to slowly build my fitness back up. But yeah, it could be worse. Hopefully, things are starting to turn a corner. I would’ve been back indoors by this time of year anyway, so maybe this has just forced my hand a bit.
With how good MyWhoosh is looking, I’m feeling a bit more positive about being back on the turbo full time. I still can’t push it too much, though, as there’s obviously still pain in my shoulder, which is going to take a while to heal. Fortunately, I don’t have to put too much pressure on the bars. There’s no way I could ride outdoors at this point, so yeah.
Sorry, no Strava link today. It’s down as I write this, and it doesn’t look like it’s coming back on any time soon.
Good to see you back in action!
I’m finding that having multiple platforms helps prevent me getting too stale on the indoor training, particularly over the winter. That’s getting a bit expensive, especially as they all raise their prices. On that score, MyWhoosh scores pretty well as its currently free to use.
Thanks 🙂 MyWhoosh is easily the best Zwift contender I’ve used. Lots of pros, quite a few cons, I just hope it sticks around long enough to get traction outside over on this side of the world.