It's Zwift Baby!!! — Sergeant Red Beard

I really dislike riding on the trainer. So much so that on those days when I do manage to throw my leg over it, I always end up cutting the ride short. In the past I’ve likened it to a medieval stretch rack. With winter here and colder weather coming I knew that I was going to have to commit to a significant amount of time on the trainer this off-season. To make the whole experience more tenable; a dedicated space and something to keep me engaged in the rides was necessary. Enter Zwift and the return of the bike room.

The bike room needed to accomplish several things:

Give me a dedicated room for the trainer.
A place to store the bikes in an orderly manner.
An area to setup a mat for yoga sessions and resistance workouts.

I’ll spare you the step-by-step process and get right to the after photos.

My Kinetic Road Machine trainer has served me well since I bought it in 2011. I could’ve made it work on Zwift for cheap if I bought a traxle for my Ocoee Baseline and a power sensor, but I really wanted a trainer that automatically adjusted the resistance. I thought about retrofitting the trainer with a Smart Power Unit, but that presented me with two problems:

It cost almost as much as a new trainer.
I’d still need a rear wheel and cassette for the Baseline.

After much rumination I ended up with an Elite Suito. It adjusts resistance automatically, uses the thru-axle that came on my Basline instead of a traxle, was much less expensive then other comparable trainers, easy to move around, and got excellent reviews online.

Next up was actually figuring out how to best display and run Zwift. Working in IT and being a techy guy had given me a few ideas, but then I realized that I already had everything I needed:

A 6th Gen iPad
Series 3 Apple Watch
Fire TV Stick
AirPin app for Fire TV
32 inch television
Zwift Mobile Companion App
iPhone XR

The iPad connects to the trainer via Bluetooth and runs Zwift itself. AirPin Pro is installed on the Fire TV Stick and allows me to cast the iPad to the television. The Zwift Mobile Companion App installed on my iPhone sends my heart rate data to Zwift from the Apple Watch. It all seems a bit complicated and there are easier ways to do this, but once you get it working the first time its easy to setup afterwards. There’s a little lag between the iPad and TV display, but nothing that kills the experience.

I’ve got in two rides on this setup and I gotta be honest…its much more fun then I anticipated. Sunday morning was a shakedown/recovery ride. This morning I tried one of the Zwift workouts and it hurt me something fierce. It’s not as good as riding outside, but man its a damn site better then riding the trainer while watching Heroes Season 1 like I’d been doing. I need to make some adjustments to the setup though. First, I need a fan in the worst way. Second, figuring out a way to get the iPad higher would allow me to make route adjustments without having to pick it up. Third, the Zwift Companion App displays workouts in an easier to see format then on Zwift itself, so I may look into a handlebar phone mount. Lastly, and perhaps most important, Cal’s going to need a dog bed for the bike room…..