If you asked a random sample of people what the first thing that comes to mind is when you mention the weather in these sceptered isles I’m 99% sure the answer would be rain. There’s no getting away from the fact that if you live in the UK and you ride a bike then you inevitably also own probably a fairly wide selection of rain repelling apparel. Climate change is a hot topic right now, but the what Global warming seems to have done to the UK climate is just make it pretty shite all year round. These days the summers are damp, the autumns wet and the winters just miserable.

I could go on waxing long and lyrically about the perils of riding a bike in the UK winter, the dodging of the puddles, playing guess the depth of the pothole, the eternal battle to stop rivulets of water getting past the Velcro fastenings of expansive Gortex jackets but I’m sure you get the idea.

Now there are those brave, hardy and masochistic souls who seem to revel in riding in whatever conditions the weather Gods throw at them all year round. The worse the conditions the happier they seem to be and happily bolt mudguards and lights to their bikes and ride on regardless, indeed many of them have dedicated winter bikes equipped with heavy duty tyres, massive mudguards and various home brewed contraptions (usually made from old inner tubes) designed to try and keep water out of the bikes bearings. I salute these folks I really do, but I’m just not one of them.

Many years ago I made peace with the fact that I’m very much a fair weather cyclist at heart. I’ll just about tolerate a wet ride in the summer months when a packable light rain jacket will get me through, but when its dark by mid afternoon and I need enough layers to rival a polar bear then I’m sorry but I’m out. This is why for the last few years I’ve been an enthusiastic adopter of indoor cycling and more specifically Zwift. Now I’ve written several articles / posts over the years about Zwift and riding and racing on it so I won’t rehash that all here, if you scroll down far enough or search the site its still all there in its badly proof read entirety.

This year as winter reaches out its clammy cold tentacles to grasp us I’ve made a significant up grade to my winter riding game. You see when I mentioned to Mrs DecliningCyclist that the road bike would soon be taking up its winter quarters bolted to the turbo trainer in our back room she didn’t react to the news with much enthusiasm, and to be honest I could see her point. The road bike plus the trainer plus the laptop table plus the cooling fan plus all the associated cables do take up a fair bit of floor space and its not really visually adding to the ambiance of the room, and because I’m a lazy sod I never take the bike off the trainer till its well into spring and its safe to venture out again.

After discussing the options and looking at some online reviews this rather large box appeared

And after a moderate amount of unboxing and screwing together we had this:

which let me do this:

There’s plenty of very comprehensive online reviews and test’s of the new Zwift Ride that do a much better job of explaining how it works etc than I could do so I’ll just expand a bit on why I spent a chunk of cash on it and the reasons I think its better than the traditional bolt the bike to the trainer route.

Well first off it definitely takes up a lot less space and looks at least to my eyes significantly neater than having my whole road bike sans its back wheel taking up the corner of the room for half the year. Secondly the Zwift hub single cog which forms the heart of the system is a lot quieter in use than the previous set up, its not silent but the nosiest thing now is the fan blowing air over my sweating bulk. My favourite thing is probably the Zwift Play controllers built into the handlebars, no more reaching precariously for my laptop keyboard if I want to use a power up in the crucial moment of a race and having all the buttons to hand really encourages you to use the inbuilt functionality in Zwift because it makes it so easy. Finally it’s going to really reduce the wear and tear on my road bike over the winter. I was always a little concerned about the static forces a really big sprint on Zwift put through my front wheel and felt equally guilty about the amount of highly corrosive sweat constantly dripping onto my headset and stem. This year instead of spending the winter clamped to the trainer then being chucked straight back into outdoor action come the spring I’m going to take the chance to really give my long suffering Sabbath some much needed attention. Its long overdue a full strip down and rebuild and once that’s done it can sit nice a warm in the garage waiting for the daffodils to announce its time to ride outside again.

Anyway, enough typing, its time to ride – I’ve already discovered my FTP is woeful even by my lowish standards, and now I have a little bit more time (changed jobs again, back at home full time plus more days off 🙂 I’m determined to complete the Zwift 12 week training plan for increasing anybody’s FTP – that should make for an interesting assessment in a few weeks time so stay tuned for that one. I’ll see you somewhere on the roads of Watopia …….