I’ve just had a few days back in the UK but am now back in Doha again. I have to apologise because I slacked off, and didn’t get a single run in during the three days I was home.
That means I’m back on the treadmill because of heat.
Even in the hotel gym it’s not all that cold! I think I lost a gallon of water through sweat!
However, no whinging Mr. W!
While back in the UK I picked up my Zwift Foot Pod! This post may well turn into a big Geek Out from here on.
So a little background: Zwift is an online exercise based ‘game’. I use inverted commas there because it’s far from your typical game.
It has two aspects - cycling and running. You get to take perform your exercise in a selection of realistic locations - quite a lot of real courses now exist, along with Zwift’s own made up island - Watopia. As you’re riding or running along you are with other athletes from around the world. It’s great - it’s like the real world without having to worry about what other people think or say - no concerns about nasty comments, no more ‘ooh they’re staring at me funny’ etc. It brings a social aspect to the training while still keeping some anonymity!
To use it for cycling, you need your standard run of the mill bike, a trainer device which lifts the back wheel and provides scalable resistance, and some way of recording speed. That’s the minimum but you can buy some seriously high end kit to allow you to maximise its realism while in the bike, to the extent that quite a lot of pro cyclists use it as part of their training plans.
Running, however, requires a lot less kit. You just need a big standard treadmill and some way to send your speed information to Zwift. Enter the Zwift Foot Pod. For Thirty of your finest British Pounds you get a little gadget that attaches to the laces on one of your shoes. It then connects to your device via Bluetooth or ANT+. If running Zwift on your Apple iPhone, iPad or Apple TV you’re limited to Bluetooth, but for PCs and Mac Books you can use a USB dongle to allow you to use ANT+. I don’t know how the gadgets connect to Android phones, as, Yes, I’m a Fanboi!
Other footpods work with Zwift, but the Zwift one is the cheapest I could find by quite a bit.
Oh yes, I nearly skipped something there you can run Zwift on your phone, which you likely already take to the treadmill for music or podcasts anyway!
So, you have your pod, paired to your pad, all you need now is a step called calibration, and you’re all set to go - at least in theory! I had to run a firmware update, but that was taken care of within Zwift for me. After that I ran the calibration. Zwift has you specify your ‘normal’ running speed. I had an issue here - the lowest normal speed was faster than my normal speed, but I had a go anyway. Once you specify, Zwift has you set the treadmill to three different speeds and run 40 seconds at each.
For me it was 6.4km/h, 4.9km/h and 7.4 km/h
Two minutes later I was done. All that remained was for me to start a run session within Zwift and I would be ready to pop.
Now, I did run into a small technology barrier relating to Heart Rate Monitors. Apple devices can only communicate over Bluetooth, and my Garmin Heart Rate monitors (which I own three of) nearly all just support Ant+. Options here are - buy a new HRM that supports bluetooth, buy a bridge or use a different device to run Zwift. I’m electing for buying a Bluetooth HRM as I think it’s the cheapest option, and there’s no way I’m balancing my MacBook on the treadmill.
Needless to say that meant I had no HR stats from Zwift today for the run, but I have them from other sources anyway so I’m not too bothered yet.
So off I toddle: left, right, repeat... a lot!
I noticed that because I’m such a slow runner the calibration is a bit off for me - at my warm up pace the treadmill was showing 4.5km/h, but Zwift was showing 3.8. And at my running pace the treadmill was on 5.2 and Zwift showed 6.3. Hopefully once I am able to raise my pace slightly this will become more accurate.
While I was plodding along, I also had my music playing in the background, and the C25K app playing one of the week 9 runs so that I could get my 5min callouts. All three of these were happy pumping audio through to my Bluetooth headphones!
I think I may need to change my username to ‘TechnoGeekRunner’ or something at this rate - I don’t seem to do any exercise without some sort of tech now, but at least it keeps it interesting to me.
Now for the bad part - Zwift is not free.
There is a free trial for seven days, after which it becomes £12.99 per month. For me (doing my exercise in a run, cycle, rest pattern - roughly 20 exercise sessions per month) that works out around 65 pence per run, but if you were to use it 30times per month, that would drop to around 43 pence per run.
I’m just waiting for them to add Swimming (yeah right) so I can do all of my triathlon training in it!
Well that’s enough geeking out for now. Feel free to DM or reply to this if you want more info.
Happy Trails everyone.
although the price seems a bit of a sticky point, maybe I could skip lunch a couple of days lol
Week One Run Two done on a treadmill!!
Treadmill or outside 
Week 3, Run 1
Yikes!!
