Not sure why this one is plural. I don’t think I pedalled far enough to hit up more than one city.
I was looking to do at least 40 to 45 minutes today and I managed to hit that, which was in large part thanks to the map or the route itself.
I did this ride on my old gaming PC, so I was using MyWhoosh Go equivalent. I wouldn’t say the graphics looked that bad, to be honest. It’s certainly not on par with how it looks on the gaming computer, but I definitely got some good frame rates today. Overall, this map seemed quite well optimised.
One thing I find quite challenging with MyWhoosh is figuring out who is a real rider and who is a bot. There was one guy on there who definitely wasn’t a bot because his name said “John Not a Bot” or something similar. However, many times I was riding with people who seemed like real riders, only for them to suddenly disappear.
I’m not entirely sure what went wrong with the route today, but early on in the ride, I got a little message in the top left corner telling me a climb was starting. However, when I reached the start point, or when the countdown hit zero, there was no climb. Later on, there was a significant climb on this route, which I believe was the Mount Pleasant climb. In total, it was about 100 metres or more of climbing.
Even though I’m doing this at 0% trainer resistance, I still tried my best to put in a solid effort on the hard climb. I feel like I did okay. I couldn’t really push more than about 3 watts per kilo, which is definitely lower than where I used to be, but it feels like something is coming back.
This route is actually pretty challenging. There’s one big climb, followed by a descent, and then another short but still intense little riser. After that, it gets flat for quite a long time before you head under the sea, which is one of the most Watopia-like sections of MyWhoosh that I’ve come across. Coming out of the undersea section, there’s a long and gradual climb that is really taxing. Again, I’m at 0% resistance, but I tried my best on that climb and ended up getting dropped. At that point, I was convinced the person in front of me was real, but I think they were actually a bot.
The final thing I want to mention today is the big selling point of software like MyWoosh and Zwift—they encourage you to keep going when you’d otherwise want to stop. As I said, I’d set myself the challenge of 45 minutes, and anything over that was a bonus. When I hit 45 minutes, I was still on the climb out of the undersea section, and I wanted to finish the entire lap. I had about 15% of the lap left, roughly 3 or 4 km, so I pushed on and completed the full route. Maybe it was just to earn the virtual badge, as pointless as that is, but it did add an extra 8 minutes to my ride.
I’m pretty grateful for that because if I had been relying on my Garmin head unit or something similar, I probably would have stopped at 45 minutes. I was quite tired, sweaty, and a bit of a mess by then, but I managed to push through.
The last thing I did after today’s ride was spend some of the accumulated gold coins, or whatever they are—the MyWhoosh currency—on some new kit. I did think about saving up for a top-end bike, but then I decided, nah, I’ll treat myself to a jersey, a hat, and some sunglasses. Maybe that will help me stand out compared to the rest of the bots in the game—or maybe not. The bots definitely seem stronger than I am!
So that’s it for my weekly riding. Tomorrow’s going to be a walk, and I’m quite looking forward to that. As weird as it sounds, I’m kind of hoping it’s raining. I enjoy walking in the rain—under the umbrella, of course—but I haven’t checked the forecast, so who knows. After that, it’ll be a rest day on Monday and back on the bike on Tuesday for more MyWhoosh.
