Last month, I provided a brief overview of Wahoo X and how SYSTM, RGT, and ELEMNT work together. This moth, I’ll be taking a deeper dive into those many features.
Today, I’m exploring how adding a narrative element to your indoor rides can help the time pass on the bike while watching some compelling content. Here in the Northeastern U.S., we’ve been forced indoors a few times this summer due to weather or air quality (the Canadians have been exporting a great deal of rancid smoke from forest fires the past month or so). On those days, it can be hard to get excited about riding indoors, especially when you are out of the routine of doing so.
Within the SYSTM application, there are two channels devoted to narrative content. Each video features a workout that you can complete while watching the videos. For some of them the workout is structured around the narrative content, but you can choose whether or not to hit the target wattage of the workout. Turning off ERG mode is easy and gives you the freedom to ride your own ride.
Inspiration Channel
The Inspiration Channel is great for one-off rides because the videos are self-contained, single episodes. You get a compelling narrative as short as 20 minutes or less and as long as just short of two hours.
Now that we’ve received the disappointing news that Cavendish had to abandon his last Tour de France and will not break the record for most stage wins, it’s a good time to celebrate his career by looking back at when he was practically unbeatable. The Chasing Legends workout lasts 1:35 and recounts the 2009 Tour de France when Renshaw and Cavendish were an unbeatable duo in the bunch sprint stages on Team Columbia-HTC.
There are other video workouts focused on the Tour de France, including the Wolfpack Insider that takes you behind the scenes and inside the team bus of Deceuninck-Quick Step during the 2019 Tour de France. Peeking inside the pressure cooker of this legacy team never gets old, as you can feel the high expectations Patrick Lefevere is communicating to his riders.
And, if you’ve had your fill with grand tour content, there’s plenty of stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary rides, challenging themselves and offering inspiration to those of us watching while sitting on our trainers.
A Week With Channel
The “A Week With” Channel is better for when you have several days that you will be riding indoors because the videos are episodes of a series. Each series takes you into the life of an inspirational athlete who shares with you a week of their workouts, including yoga and strength workouts off the bike.
The week with Ian Boswell series offers a nice balance of highlights from his past career on the World Tour, including all three grand tours and his current career as a pro gravel racer and co-owner of a B&B in Vermont. The series is partly Ian’s personal story, partly a look around in his current life, and partly some insight into his current training regimen. There are a lot of interesting details to pick up on with the way he is balancing his new life after retiring from the World Tour.
Other series include a week with Neal Henderson, head of sports science for Wahoo Fitness; Phil Gaimon, former pro cyclist and current Strava KOM hunter; and the UCI Centre with episodes devoted to different disciplines such as track, road, bmx, and mountain bike.
Mix these videos in with whatever show you may be binge watching on the trainer. The episodic structure of these series may be what some people need to throw a leg over the bike on those days when you really don’t feel like it.
Setting Adjustments
When you start one of these workouts, you have the option of streaming or downloading the video content. The nice part about downloading the video content is the ability to complete the workout without internet access. The workout will be saved with the SYSTM application and synched once you reconnect.
There are other options to consider to customize your experience. If you are not concerned with the workout, you can turn off the metrics. Also, you may want to turn off the sound effects. The workouts include the sound of a vehicle revving up and braking as the workout ramps up or down the power targets. I find these pretty annoying in relationship to the audio of the video narrative, so I turn off the sound effects. Beyond that, I tend to use the default settings.
Next time you find yourself indoors, give one of the Wahoo X channels a shot. There is the possibility that you could work through all of the content they have available on these channels, but Wahoo is promising there is more to come.