It’s taken four weeks, but I can finally ride without my lungs hacking me to a halt if the temperature drops a bit. So this morning, after Sunday’s successful “test ride,” I woke up looking forward to getting out on real roads, not putting my bike on a trainer. Unfortunately, Kevin was having trouble with dizziness and balance (a side-effect of his epilepsy meds, which shows up once in a while), and riding alone this morning didn’t seem like a whole lot of fun.

So.. back to the train & Zwift. Someday I’ll figure out why I get about 30% less wattage on Zwift than I do in the real world. I chose a 26.4 mile course that included a fair amount of climbing, hoping that I could match the mileage I would have gotten on the “real” road, but not quite the same amount of climbing.

The lack of power when I’m on a trainer. It’s a real thing. The power measurement from my Speedplay pedals matches the claimed output of my Tacx trainer almost perfectly. So that 30% loss of power… it’s all me. Some of it is undoubtedly rooted in the differences between standing (not sitting on the saddle) while climbing a hill on a real bike vs a trainer. On the trainer, things just don’t move quite the right way. I can climb out of the saddle for an hour without much trouble.. on a real bike, on a real hill. On a trainer, I can only do it for a pretty brief period of time.

Watching the miles ridden so far/miles to go screens was pretty depressing, neither number changing as quickly as it seem they should. I started wondering if I’d be able to finish in time to get to work. But I never ran out of steam, just kept plugging away, focusing on how long I would have been out on my bike on real roads… about this long. I could do it. I did do it.

Best of all, Sunday actually did represent the turning point for the bug that got me (and my wife). Sunday I couldn’t develop much power, but Monday night, returning from work, I saw some decent numbers. And this morning, I really didn’t have any “extra” breathing issues at all.