Ride On. Indoor Training Made Fun with Zwift

TriDot Podcast Episode 257

Ride On. Indoor Training Made Fun with Zwift

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Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot podcast. Zwift is one of the most popular training platforms amongst triathletes bringing our indoor bike and run sessions to life and now athletes can connect their TriDot account with their Zwift account for a top notch training experience. Thrilling stuff for sure especially for all my Zwifters in the audience. Today we’ll learn all about how Zwift and TriDot athletes can make the most of this brand new connection. Our first guest to help us talk about this is Joseph Battisti, a Global Product Marketing Specialist at Zwift. Joe completed Ironman Arizona in 2022. It was his first full distance Ironman only a year after finishing his first 70.3 in Oceanside. Prior to that he was a dedicated rower competing in multiple division 1 collegiate programs including Oregon State and Santa Clara University. He has a BS in marketing and business analytics from San Jose State University and has been working for Zwift for a year and a half now. Joseph, welcome to the TriDot podcast!

Joseph Battisti: Thank you so much for having me Andrew. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Andrew: Also joining us is five time World Champion Craig Alexander. Craig started his professional triathlon career in 1995 and sealed himself as a legend of the sport with three World Championship wins in Kona, two 70.3 Ironman World Championship titles and 12 Australian Champion titles. Known to the triathlon world as “Crowie” he is the founder and head coach of Sansego Tri Club now in its 10th year which is now powered by TriDot. Craig, welcome back to the show.

Craig Alexander: Hi Andrew. How are you? Excited to be here with you and Joe.

Andrew: Well, I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always we'll roll through our warm up question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with our cool down. Lots of good stuff. Let’s get to it.

Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.

Andrew: I have always wanted to ask this as our TriDot podcast warm up question. I was just waiting for the right episode and here it is. When an athlete fires up Zwift, there is a great catalog of choices for what map and what route they want to ride. Craig, Joseph, I want to know today is what specific route on Zwift is your favorite choice for a ride and what Zwift map is it in? Craig, I know you’ve been a Zwifter for quite some time. Where do you like to ride most on Zwift?

Craig: My personal favorite is Road to Sky. I like the Alp de Zwift. Of course it’s a tough ride, you get a great workout in. It’s got the 22 switchbacks like the Alp d’huez, the real mountain in the south of France. Average grading I think is around 8 or 9%, maxes out at about 10 so it’s a great workout and the Road to Sky route in Watopia is good. You have a little 3 or 4 K leading, get the legs warmed up and then you hit the climb. With our Sansego group, if it’s more of a social ride and we want to have a bit of a chit chat and message each other I tend to pick something a little flatter.

Andrew: Sure.

Craig: Just the Watopia Flat Route or something around London, the greater London looks something like that so, but yeah. My personal favorite is going up the Alp.

Andrew: Yeah that’s a great pick for sure. I need my TriDot workout to be at least two hours if I’m going to tackle any of those really hilly courses because you don’t want to have like a 90 minute workout and you start climbing a mountain and your workout’s done half way up the mountain. You want to finish the mountain so I’ve got to make sure my workout’s long enough to make it all the way up those mountains. But definitely a great pick from you Craig. Joe, over to you. What map and route is your personal favorite in the Zwift catalog?

Joseph: Yeah, no, I’m glad you’re asking. My personal favorite is probably one of the most popular pacer group ride routes out there. It’s the Big Ring and the Southern Coast of Watopia. It’s about 30 miles, 900 feet of elevation, very consistent across the board. It’s super awesome when it comes to pacer group rides. I don’t think I’ve been in a pacer group ride lower than 40 people. So when you’re thinking about the peloton experience inside of Zwift, getting that social atmosphere out of your zone 2, zone 3 maybe, it’s great. I’m a personal fan of that one.

Andrew: Yeah. I’ve never joined one of the pacer rides when you’re in Zwift and you’re riding and all of a sudden the pace group goes by you, you certainly know it. You can’t miss those going by for sure. This answer for me, I really like Watopia as a map. Just all of Watopia is interesting to me. I think the team has done a great job building out that map and adding to it over time. I really like the Road to Ruins and kind of cycling through the jungle in the ruin atmosphere, but I actually pulled up on my Strava account and punched in a couple different things just to kind of review, which route do I actually ride the most? And by far the route that I ride the most is Tick Tock in Watopia. Tick Tock goes through the flat desert of Watopia, right? So it’s a nice flat route for a lot of it and then it dips into the under ocean tunnel for a little bit and as a loop it’s about ten and a half miles. I think it’s 10.6 actually on the dot and so most of my one hour, standard, TriDot workouts in the middle of the week I can do two laps on Tick Tock and basically come around and finish the second lap by the time my workout is done. So I think that’s why it’s just– it’s easy for me to hop on and do. I know I’m going to finish the route twice. My OCD is not going to bother me that I almost finished a route, right? So that’s my answer here. We’re going to throw this question out to you, our audience, like we always do. If you’re a TriDot podcast listener and you’re not on Zwift, this one’s going to be tough for you to answer. You should probably try Zwift if nothing else just to answer this question, but if you are on Zwift and you’re a TriDotter, let us know. I’m going to post this question to the I AM TriDot Facebook group. I’m going to post this question to the TriDot Community Hub and I’m curious to see, of all of the routes in Zwift, which one, which singular one, is your favorite to fire up for a ride? Can’t wait to see what you have to say.

Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…

PRECISION HYDRATION: Before we get too deep into the show, I want to talk about our good friends from Precision Fuel and Hydration. We have spoken to sports scientist, Andy Blow, during several episodes of the podcast to help our listeners nail down their hydration and fueling strategy for training and racing. The big take away from those episodes with Andy is that there simply isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to race  nutrition and that’s why the team at Precision Fuel and Hydration have developed the Fuel Planner. Head over to precisionhydration.com to take the Fuel Planner and get your free, personalized fuel and hydration strategy. The plan provides guidelines for how much carbohydrate, sodium, and fluid you should be aiming to consume so that you know your numbers for your next race. You can then hit those numbers by using the Precision Fuel and Hydration product range which is designed to make it easier for you to keep track of your intake during racing as the carb and sodium content per serving is smack bang on the front of the packaging. It could not be easier or tastier. Just last night, actually, I encouraged my brother who has signed up for his first half marathon to head to the PF&H website and do this himself. So head to the website and as a TriDot listener you can use the code TRIDOT24 to get 10% off your first order of electrolytes and fueling products. That code just updated. So if you’re a longtime listener, for the year 2024 our code is TRIDOT24 at precisionhydration.com.

Andrew: We call TriDot athletes TriDotters and we call Zwift athletes Zwifters. Many triathletes are actually both a TriDotter and a Zwifter and if you are not already a TriDotter and a Zwifter, after today’s conversation you might want to become both as we will learn how the two are working together to help you nail your bike and run training sessions. Joseph, let’s start here today. Just in case any of our listeners are actually unfamiliar with Zwift, maybe they’ve seen the logo, maybe they’ve seen their buddies post about it on social media, maybe they’ve seen a commercial, but they haven’t poked around enough to really know the jist of what Zwift is. Talk us through it. What is Zwift?

Joseph: I really appreciate you starting with this question because there’s many ways that people define Zwift. You know, the average Zwifter would say it’s an indoor virtual world that took inspiration from gaming. My favorite definition was actually the most recent. It came with our Go to Market for our Zwift ride. I think Zwift is the indoor training playground for cyclists, runners, and triathletes. I think this says it perfectly. It’s fun, it’s gamy, it’s animated. When you enter a world and you’re immediately losing sight of those key, rigid metrics that you typically follow in standard training sessions. You know, you’re just following a peloton for the most part and then your watts come after. So I really appreciate that one. If you wanted something more technical, I think Zwift is that holistic outdoor riding experience indoors. So a lot of what we do at Zwift is designed to create whatever activity you do outdoors, indoors. So we try and give as much variety to those Zwifters that have different motivations and ambitions and goals when it comes to training and we try to give them every option to achieve that or to engage. So most importantly it’s just entertaining, but yeah. I would say that really defines it the way that I think is fun. It’s a playground.

Andrew: Now, I joined Zwift actually before I found TriDot. So I’ve actually been a Zwifter longer there than a TriDotter. I started riding on Zwift in 2018. I started training with TriDot at the beginning of 2019, but even being a decently early adopter of Zwift, I guess, I still don’t know the origin story of the company. I don’t know how it got started. All of a sudden– I don’t even remember where I first became aware of Zwift. I just somehow ended up on it and boom, I was training. Joe, how did the company get started and what did the first iteration of Zwift hit the market and look like?

Joseph: That was actually– I’ve had a curiosity for that same, exact question. As a Zwifter when I found the platform organically, I searched the web and I was training staring at a wall essentially like following all these intervals and I searched– I guess I put our ICO to the test in a way where I searched indoor training and entertaining indoor training app or platform. You know, whatever. I ended up coming across a few podcasts that are all very informative, like you know, I think Wade Wallace has one that really talks about Jon Mayfield and Eric Min and had them both in the room where they were talking about the origins, but if I could use that as inspiration for what I’m going to say here, it started with two fanatical cyclists. Two people battling very similar problems where they wanted freedom to ride. They wanted community. They wanted to race with all their mates across the world and they wanted to do it in a way that was fun and a way that was sustainable. So to answer, the beta of Zwift started September of 2014 and I guess it was made to make an indoor training solution, you know, make indoor training fun and see– It started with Jon Mayfield. He was the original coder. He had a history of computer programing. He built it. Eric Min ended up finding him, I believe, on a slow twitch website or forums and it kind of took off from there. They partnered and they saw the vision for it throughout some crazy ambitious values in terms of what the business is worth and from that point, you know– Yeah, actually it’s funny. In our HQ at Long Beach across the wall we have what’s called Jon’s Short Mix and it’s the first workout that he had created by intervals on Zwift and we have it all animated on our wall as inspiration to just always come back to our roots. It is crazy to know that at one point Zwift was a simple workout. It was one and now we’re across multiple worlds with all these different, all these just animated ways to just get your training in. You know, do an FTP test and you’re doing it with fun.

Andrew: Yep. I have never done an FTP test that wasn’t on Zwift and I can’t imagine going outdoors and trying or even trying to hammer inside for 20 minutes without having Zwift in front of me. That would be tough.

Joseph: Yeah, and you know, I mean I came from rowing so like the FTP test was extremely attractive to someone I guess of the sport like mine. You know, I came from 5K test, 2K tests. When I had done it as my first I mean, yeah, it was brutal. It definitely showed me why I loved the sport and then when I did it on Zwift I was like, okay, well now I can actually enjoy this and do it probably more frequently than I was before. So it’s great. Yeah, that’s our origins.

Andrew: I do want to distinguish for long-time listeners of the podcast, core TriDot athletes who have been around for a hot minute, there is a TriDot coach who is a podcast regular, he’s been on dozens of episodes of the TriDot podcast whose name is also John Mayfield. So TriDot has a John Mayfield and Zwift has a Jon Mayfield. Now Craig, I know you use Zwift personally and as a professional triathlete turned triathlon coach, you have seen every way of doing bike training under the sun, right? From just going out and going for your ride to starting to train indoors to now training indoors with all the different ways we have now to train indoors. So just what are your thoughts on the evolution of what bike training was like earlier on in your career versus what it is now and what was your first impression of Zwift when it first hit the market?

Craig: That’s a great question. You know, I think I always trained indoors because it’s got a lot of benefits and just listening to Joe’s story, I actually met Joe and Eric in Kona in 2015. So I was on the platform early days, coincided with a time in my career when I had kids, I had a little less time, I wanted to get maximum bang for my buck with my training and as I said it was always a part of my weekly routine, at least one or two sessions a week because I think it enabled me to eliminate a lot of the problems with some sessions such as weather or traffic, traffic lights, those sorts of things that can negatively impact your training and really just let you focus on the purpose of the session to keep things, the targets and things you’re trying to accomplish with each session. We used to have the saying, I don’t know if there’s any truth to this, with my training group we used to feel an hour indoor training was worth 90 minutes outdoor.

Andrew: Wow.

Craig: Because there’s no coasting, there’s no freewheeling, there’s no– It’s very intentional. You get on and you know what you’re going to do. Like Joe, I used to just get on and stare at a brick wall. I’d have some music on. So I think– I loved when I met Joe and Eric the whole idea of it. I think they solved the problem that every endurance athlete had is, it sort of plays on the psychology of distraction a little bit. You’re in there, you’re engaged in what’s going on in the platform, your avatar is out there racing other avatars in the group and you’re getting the work done. So I think that was always– and it just enables you to train in a very sustainable and consistent way and that’s what you’re trying to do with your training. So for me it’s been the big advancement in indoor training. I think the first thing that came along was we started being able to track our metrics a little more; heart rate, power, and so we were trying to train to those things, but how do you make it more social? How do you make it more community based? How do you make it more engaging and entertaining? And one thing I did notice on Zwift was the way it paired with your smart trainer, it was the most closely simulated to outdoor training that I had ever experienced. I mean, I think that was for a couple of reasons. I guess the advent of the Zwift platform and also the evolution of smart trainers you were just able to get more of an outdoor riding experience and simulation indoors. So that was never the case early on when I was training indoors particularly on the indoor trainers of the day. It just never felt quite the same so with that transfer of training effect and specificity it just became so easy to train effectively indoors. But yeah, I think the evolution of the smart trainers and then the Zwift platform for me is what really made it turn a page and make it just so effective.

Andrew: Now this might be the media professional in me wanting to know this, but I’m sure some of our listeners and folks who have been on Zwift for a while have probably wondered this as well. When I’m riding, Joe, I’m always wondering, like when your team adds a new world, right and I’m experiencing it for the very first time. I’m looking at just the animation. I’m looking at the road. I’m looking at the cyclists going by and the neon lights and all the different things that are on the screen keeping me entertained and distracted and I see my interval pattern up in the left hand corner so I know what interval is coming next. What goes on behind the scenes with your team, the animators, the coders, etcetera, the artists, to kind of bring the world of Zwift to life in front of us?

Joseph: Yeah, that’s a great question and I will say with full transparency, I connected with our game team and our engineers before this podcast to really understand the talking points of this.

Andrew: Because Joe doesn’t do this. Yeah, Joe is in marketing. He’s not in–

Joseph: Yes.

Andrew: He’s not a graphic artist.

Joseph: You’re right. You’re right. I test the product, I use the product. I find the value and I try to resonate in communications with people that don’t know Zwift and people that do use the platform. But when it comes to the animation process and the avatars and how everything works dynamically, I want to simplify this in almost just four words. We and our game team and our engineers and our coders, they make things to be believable. So as we begin to develop this platform, that is first and foremost what they answer or I guess they approach every problem with. Is this a believable addition to the game? You know, when a bird flies off the fence and you’re rounding a corner and you see it out in the distance flying into the sky, is it believable? You know, that’s the question that they always answer and they always ask when they’re making all of these features. I guess, going into the animation process I want to give kudos to all of those teams because everything is handcrafted. There is no AI that’s developing anything in the world. They’re going into these development builds and creating it by hand, iterating on it months after months before they feel like it’s in a confident state to be presented to Zwifters who may or may not enjoy it, but most of the time do enjoy it of course.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: So in another way, what’s the carrot down the road is another way to ask this, right? You know, when they build routes and taking lefts and rights, what can we include in that world? So that’s the animation process. We want to create environments that people want to be in. We want them to be attractive even if we take people through a grungy and swampy, dark place we want to put a picnic table there where they end up seeing light in that and that part of the world and that we give you multiple worlds to choose from and to change your environment at any point of your week when you want to train. Some people do prioritize Watopia of course as I do, unless for the Tour de France of course. But some people love the climb portal and they love the geometry, the shapes that we bring into that space. It’s all distracting. So they really just want to take their mind off of the miles. We want to take their mind off of, I guess, sometimes the monotony of training and just doing what you need to do to achieve your goals. So they want to make it fun. Now when it comes to the avatars, this was really interesting and this is what I gathered from the team itself is we model all of our avatars based on real riders. So at that early stage of wanting to develop or, I guess, enhance our avatar’s dynamics, we have a 360 degree frame of a real rider that we model after and then we choose whether, again, is it believable. So that question is always asked in that process. Now, I guess, in avatar or interacting with your avatar there’s nothing that’s course specific or world specific that we add to the avatars. So there’s no behavior that we code in game that crosses certain stage or race; your avatar is going to sprint out of the saddle. It’s all based on that user and how they’re manipulating those metrics to then ignite the code that makes them sprint or that makes them super tuck or that makes them wave or ride on, you know.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: It’s a full interaction of that user. So I wanted to get that across because it is– You know, you don’t know until you know. It is a game and some people may have those speculations where they’re rounding a corner and they’re like, “Oh, well they probably coded the avatar to lean that way.” I mean, yes, but it is all based on your metrics. We aren’t going to tell you to super tuck unless you’re not pedaling and if you’re max sprinting of course we’re going to throw flames behind that wheel. You know. So it’s great. I mean, I really enjoyed asking that question to our team. I really appreciate you asking because as a product marketer it is really interesting to know how we interact with our world in Zwift and I think it’s important for Zwifters to know that we think of them in every decision that we make and again, that question is always asked of whether a thing is believable or not.

Andrew: Yeah, and again, kudos to your team. I think one thing that’s really cool– there’s the believability, right, there’s the rider looking like me, acting like me, there’s the realism of the world, but at the same time there’s a very distinct style within Zwift to the animation and the way the brand is able to have that realism and maintain that realism, but then throw in fun things like flames coming off from your back tire or on April Fool’s everybody logs on and everybody is riding a three wheeled tricycle around on April Fool’s Day. There’s that element of fun and quirkyness that is very beautifully matched with the realism of the world. I think it really draws you in. It brings out the personality of the brand and attaches you to the brand. Craig, I’m curious from your standpoint because I know personally anytime– You can see somebody else’s username when you’re going by them on Zwift or they’re going by you and you can see what riders are around you. So a lot of TriDot athletes will have the word TriDot in their handle and so you know when a TriDotter is going by you and you can wave or interact or whatever and you can find your friends. But you can also find out when you go by a professional triathlete and for me whenever it happens I take a screenshot and I have kind of like this little collection of famous riders that I’ve gone by. I’ve got a screenshot of Mark Cavendish passing me. I’ve got a screenshot of Jan Frodeno going by me. I’ve got a screenshot of Lionel Sanders going by me. I don’t have one going by Craig Alexander, but have you found, Craig, as you’re riding on Zwift, do people pick up the pace a little bit when Craig Alexander goes by them?

Craig: That’s another thing that simulates riding out on the road, the ego. Yeah for sure. I think it’s cool. I think that’s one of the great things about riding in there and about the Zwift community. I know when Joelle Thomas was in there I would always jump in and join a ride or different people. I think it’s one of the things Zwift has done really well is bring together the cycling and tri community, all levels of it. You know, it’s not unusual to see the little green jerseys or the pros in game and it’s very cool. But yeah, sometimes when you’re doing a workout and you get through– It exactly like on the road. When you’re doing the efforts no one wants to join, but when you’re in your recovery and everyone is zooming past you, you think “Well I’m just resting here guys.” But it’s great. I think that’s one of the really great things for me about the Zwift experience is just riding with people and friends that are not in your neighborhood, all over the world and that’s one of the things we do with Sansego is we mobilize our community and do regular rides together and I think it’s always everybody talks about who they’ve seen in Zwift and who has gone by. I think it’s one of the very cool things about the whole platform.

Andrew: Yeah we also do a TriDot community ride on Saturdays. We’ve done that for years and shoutout to TriDot coach, TriDot ambassador Lauren LeBlanc. She organizes the group ride every single Saturday and we’ll see now with our integration with Zwift, with our partnership, what that becomes to. Do we end up adding more weekly rides with different coaches and personalities? Do we add some chats on there, some video chats? I’m not sure. Sky’s the limit for what we might do in the future. But Craig, I’m curious as a coach, just to kind of back up a step. You mentioned this a little bit ago how in your personal career you found training on Zwift to be so effective, right? There was your quote that “60 minutes on Zwift is worth 90 minutes outside.” For the athletes that you work with now and as your Sansego coaches are working with athletes, walk us through the biology of this. Like, what do you feel makes such a big difference being indoors on your trainer executing your workout versus going outside? What’s the difference you find? What’s the advantage to executing your workout on Zwift versus executing it in another way?

Craig: Well of course you can execute great sessions outdoors, but for me the overarching principle of a great training plan is consistency, sustainability, adherence to the plan and I think indoor training can really help you with those things. You know, most athletes didn’t have the privilege and the ability to train any time of the day like I did and like professional athletes do. Often it’s dark outside. You know, you can be in the middle of winter, locked down, you can’t even get outside. So it gives you the ability to adhere to your training plan and maintain that consistency. Even when I was training outdoors I found in some of my hardest sessions, and this was me personally, I’d be going so hard that it was hard to also concentrate on traffic and traffic lights…

Andrew: Yeah so true.

Craig: …and those safety things. I always had these thoughts that if I was doing this session indoors, particularly if it was a VO2 max or a threshold session, I could actually squeeze a little bit more out of myself because I wouldn’t be concerned or distracted by these things which naturally take your focus and attention away from your breathing, your pedaling mechanics, all of those things that help you. Those performance metrics that you’re really concentrating on to get the most out of your session. And again, technology, once I got a power meter and a bike computer, I’d go for rides and come home and you’d look at the data and think, “Jeez, there was a lot of time where I stopped at traffic lights and...”

Andrew: Yeah.

Craig: Then that’s where that whole idea of one hour indoor– You know, sometimes you’re outdoors you’re going down a hill, you’re dead pedaling a little bit or coasting and then you get to traffic lights. When you’re indoors you’re always sort of powering up. Even if you’re in zone 1 or zone 2 you’re pedaling, you’re having to generate that momentum yourself. So for me there are benefits. Again, I mentioned before sort of the evolution of smart trainers and the progression of those. When you pair that with these platforms now, the indoor experience just simulates outdoor training more than it ever has. So I think what I see with the athletes that we work with and even when we go and run our training camps, we still run some indoor sessions at our camps.

Andrew: Oh wow.

Craig: Because I think you get– It’s just a great way of getting information across and pointing at things, pedaling technique and things that we’re really thinking about as coaches that we want the athlete to be thinking about. So there’s just a real benefit to it. And when you factor in that most people work 9 to 5 and have family commitments and they might not be getting on the bike until the evening or early in the morning, I mean, again I always come back to what are the things that enable us as athletes to maintain a really high adherence to our training plan and that consistency over time sort of overrides most things. For me that’s the key sort of element of any successful training plan is that ability to maintain your consistency. I think indoor training gives you the ability to do that because of its time effectiveness, because of its convenience. It’s still knocking it out of the park with the physicality that’s involved in training as well.

Andrew: Yeah, TriDot athletes will know that when you finish your TriDot workout, TriDot gives you your TrainX score which is your training execution. It’s 0 to 100 of how well did you execute the workout? How well did you do the intervals the way you were supposed to do them? For a long time it was a running joke that if an athlete scored a 100 on a workout it was such a rare thing, right, to execute your workout picture perfectly that they would call it a unicorn. Now we actually have a unicorn badge pop up in the ap, it’s a fun little touch, and the reality of the matter is for the bike sessions in particular, if you are executing your bike session on Zwift on your trainer in ERG mode, it is actually easy to get a 100 because it just helps you execute the workout that picture perfectly. Joe, I’m curious as your team is talking with athletes, is there anything Craig hasn’t covered that you would express in terms of what makes riding on Zwift such an effective way to get your workout done?

Joseph: Yeah, now we’re getting into the topics I love, which is training. It’s exactly why I pursued Ironman. I love the process. I love the journey. The first thing that stuck to me in the process of training was enjoy the journey and you’ll get to the destination.

Andrew: Wow.

Joseph: That completely eliminated doubt in my mind to do what I thought was a very unachievable thing which is go and do an Ironman in the course of a year. That was my goal when I finished college rowing. When we interact with our community and when we build the platform, design the software, integrate with partners like TriDot, we’re constantly thinking about what our strengths are as a platform and I think Craig actually hit on them really well. But I would actually expand on that and I call them three tenets. Let’s call it convenience, effectiveness, and efficiency. So we spoke on efficiency. An indoor ride is like 90 minutes outdoors. The convenience we hit on as well and the effectiveness is what we’re doing and what we can talk about a little bit later when it comes to integrating partners like TriDot. We want people to achieve any goal they set out for themselves and we want to answer to the training promise first and foremost which is: Why does someone decide to train? They have a goal in mind whether it’s something so ambitious as a world title or if it is an Ironman or if it is every six months a check in on themselves. Am I healthy? Do I have a good mindset, really? So we’re constantly thinking of those things. I really wanted to expand them just into three words. What I love about Zwift is not only are we a platform, but we are a verb. We are Zwifting and what we say Zwifting is training. So whenever you’re hopping onto the platform, at least for me knowing this, it’s like I’m hopping onto Zwift and that means I’m hopping onto training. So there’s a few different philosophies we can really pick at here, but I think ultimately in my most marketable way possible, the best training plan is the one you’ll actually do and what can we do to answer to that promise of getting someone through what is kind of a grueling journey at some points. It’s filled with doubt. You’re achieving something that you want to do to grow yourself and to really push yourself to new limits. We want to be that platform that motivates you and really empowers you to know that you can do it. It doesn’t need to be boring. You don’t need to stare at a brick wall like me and Craig. You go and stare at cobbles in a world and pick your route and optimize your training. So we’re getting into the good stuff. I’m really excited. There’s a lot of points I want to hit on, but I feel like Craig hit it really on the head and I wanted to expand on those three as tenets of themselves which is Zwift and indoor training go hand in hand. They are both convenient. They’re effective if you can make them effective by collaborating and integrating the right partners. And it’s efficient. You know, you’re getting more pedal strokes in and you’re avoiding all of those external factors that you would otherwise get on the road.

Andrew: Very recently, Joe, you guys announced that you would be incorporating a few new training partners into Zwift and TriDot is actually the very first new integration as part of that initiative for Zwift. Why was this the right time to kind of open up Zwift to partnering with other entities and why was TriDot the first training ap added into the Zwift mix?

Joseph: Yeah, so I first want to give a kudos to TriDot because it is not easy to get an API out and functional in a successful state. I know that firsthand being on the product side working with the product engineers and to start with a partner like TriDot was to get what was the hardest form of an API underway.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: So getting the cycling, getting the running functionally– I guess to be able to functionally support both. So that’s first and foremost. Kudos to the team. I worked super closely with the engineers on the TriDot side as well as the marketing teams of course. But TriDot was the greatest partner for this to start with because again we believe we have a promise to Zwifters and to prospects who come onto our platform as well as yours which is getting them fitter. Like, ultimately everyone wants better fitness and they want to feel good and to have those subsequent effects of greater fitness which is more confidence, higher self-esteem, I guess better training, better performance. To simplify that we want to open up our platform and we want to be the destination for training. So partnering with TriDot was getting that first, that hardest integration underway. Scaling that across partners is certainly a lot of work for our teams and we’re patient with them in that process of getting those, but it is great that we get the best audience in the platform first. I mean, we’re talking to triathletes here.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: So those that love to train.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: Including myself. I mean it’s a masochistic thing. You’re like happy to get on the trainer and spend 90 minutes, do those VO2 workouts. So if I could answer it simply, yeah, we love it. We think your platform has a lot of potential and there’s a lot of people that are getting now the benefits of what this integration looks like between both platforms.

Andrew: Yeah, I know on our side we just love working with people. We love partnering with cool tech and obviously the arena you provide to athletes to train and the way you empower athletes to do their training effectively. Yeah, it was very exciting for our brand. When they first announced that that integration was starting to be worked on, you know the software team kind of let everybody know, hey we’re talking to Zwift. I mean, half of our staff at least if not all of our staff that are active triathletes are also Zwifters. So it was a very exciting day when that was first announced for us. Craig, for you, I mean you’ve been using Zwift for quite a long time. Sansego, your coaches and athletes are now on board with TriDot. How excited were you when you heard that the two parties were going to be working together?

Craig: Really excited. I mean I think a lot of our athletes use Zwift so they want to be able to import the sessions from TriDot from their training plan and it’s just very easy to do it now. It’s very easy. Again, it just speaks to all the things we’ve been talking about; convenience, ease of training, being able to quickly import that session so it’s there when you log onto Zwift it’s in your menu and you can just select your session and do it. I think, just again, it removes all the obstacles and challenges that the athletes we work with that they face. One of the big obstacles they face is time. Having time– and it’s just yeah. I think it’s just a combination and an integration of two great platforms. I know a lot of our athletes, all our Sansego athletes, are transitioning across to TriDot and most of them are already on Zwift so it’s just a perfect marriage from our perspective.

Andrew: Yeah there were loads in our social media communities, loads of positive comments of people who were like, “Finally! I’ve been waiting for this! This is awesome!” And Joe, athletes have always– just to be clear– athletes have always been able to do their TriDot workouts on Zwift. Just previously you either had to build your workout by hand which is the route that I took personally. I learned how to do it. It was pretty quick and easy to your team’s credit. Or you can manually push your workout. So you would export a .zwo file. You would drag that and drop it into the correct folder on Zwift. So there were workarounds to execute your TriDot workout on Zwift. It just wasn’t this direct integration and there wasn’t a possibility for new fun stuff in the future between the brands. So, talk to us about how the integration works now. After connecting a TriDot and a Zwift account, what will an athlete now see when they fire up Zwift to do their workout?

Joseph: Yeah, yeah. That’s a great question. So how the integration works, we wanted to make it simple, but to understand first and foremost, it will start on the TriDot side. So you log into TriDot, you’re a member, you go into your settings and you connect Zwift through that connected integration page. That will initiate the API. In this case I think the easiest way to treat Zwift is just like a head unit just like you would outdoors. You know, you’re pushing your workout to that head unit and you’re “coming into Zwift” and you’re executing that workout. So you have that integration. You come onto the Zwift site, go into your profile and you connect it. That will then send all that activity data back to TriDot so TriDot can do their predictive, adaptive, and AI capable training technology, kind of training status and you’re getting your desired effect and what you can see to execute that workout in our home screen is if you’re on the day within 30 minutes of that workout, TriDot has engineered that if you had pushed that workout it will start to show in your “For You” row in the home screen.

Andrew: Okay.

Joseph: Within 30 minutes of that scheduled workout and if you don’t see it, you’re looking ahead and you just want to see what your week looks like, you go into our custom workout folder and you click the TriDot folder that’s sitting there and you can see all the workouts that you’ve pushed for the entire week. Then, you know, you go into game, you have your workout scheduled, you pick your world, you see everyone, maybe pick your kit, design your avatar…

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: …get on the Tron bike and you take off.

Andrew: I do have the Tron bike. Craig, do you have the Tron bike?

Craig: I don’t. I don’t.

Andrew: Really?!

Craig: Well when you unlock different levels I try to keep things low key. Out on the road I’m low key and in Zwift I’m low key as well. I don’t mind the flames and some of the neon lights. I keep things like–

Andrew: The one problem, Joe, about having the Tron bike is that it’s hard to– I mean I have probably 16 other bikes in my catalog and I just have to ride on the Tron one to show off the fact that I have it, right? It’s a problem. I can’t not use it. The only reason I’ll pick a TT bike if I’m doing like a specific race getting ready session and I don’t want the drafting capabilities, I’ll pick a TT bike, but other than that I have to pick the Tron bike, right?

Joseph: Yeah, I don’t think I switched my Tron bike aside from just changing the color of it for months.

Andrew: Yeah. There you go. There you go.

Craig: That’s like having a bullseye on your back in game though.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: Everyone wants to pass you on the Tron bike.

Andrew: So Joe, a lot of out athletes listening if they’re already on Zwift, they figured out their set up, they’ve got their bike on a smart trainer or a dumb trainer of some sort, they’ve made the connection happen, but just for the corner of our audience who maybe isn’t currently on Zwift, what does an athlete need in terms of tech, in terms of gear, equipment, dongles, whatever to get on Zwift and do the training?

Joseph: Yeah, yeah. We as a platform are still always considering awareness for new prospects. You know, there’s always new cyclists coming into this sport. We want to empower them of course. We want to motivate them. To start to get your indoor training setup or your indoor training experience going, I mean start with a smart trainer. There’s great brands out there. There’s Wahoo, there’s Jet Black, there’s Elite. Great brands. I mean you could take your pick of course. We of course have a bundled unit with Wahoo now which we’ve just launched our Zwift Ride. So we’ve come out into the industry ready to take on new prospects, new Zwifters and then just simplify that entire process. So you can find those really on anyone’s website I believe, but yeah. Ultimately you really just need a trainer if you already have a bike. If you don’t yet have a bike, maybe go and search for one. Great brands out there as well. But yeah, a smart trainer is going to give you that capability with bluetooth and then the resistance of our world. So we’re changing fluctuating grades and what not inside of Zwift. It’s really just the smart trainer that you’re going to need to get the journey started. Then of course, now that we have these integrations in place and more to come, if you’re one that likes goals and you’re a triathlete listening to this podcast, highly recommend TriDot for sure.

Andrew: Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Joseph: I’ve used it. It helped me with many of my goals. At my recent Ironman at Indian Wells I was exposed to TriDot which was a great experience. I mean following that the predictiveness and the adaptiveness of your training is certainly one to give kudos to because I haven’t seen anything like that.  

Andrew: Yeah, thanks for that organic plug there. For a long time I just had my tri bike on a Tacx Flux trainer, smart trainer. So that was how I did my riding. I actually about a year ago upgraded to the Tacx Flux Smart Bike and so my tri bike gets to stay resting against the wall and I’m putting all that abuse on an actual smart bike and shortly after I bought it for the price tag that went along with it, Zwift released the Zwift Ride Smart Bike and my goodness. If you guys had put that out beforehand, I would have been pouncing on that because the  price is amazing. What it does is amazing. Just as a triathlete, as a cyclist, to get off of your own bike and onto a smart bike and to put all that sweat and all that abuse onto the frame of that smart bike and not your actual bike. I think it’s a brilliant release into the market place and definitely something that our athletes should look at. Has that been pretty well received since you guys released it?

Joseph: Yeah, it’s funny. I’m laughing to myself because the amount of head sets I’ve gone through…

Andrew: By sweating on them.

Joseph: …on my bike because of sweat. I’ve gone through headset bearings and headset bolts. I’ve used Tide but sweat just corrodes anything. I actually now have the Zwift Ride and I’ve been experimenting with it for I think three weeks now and it’s a pretty awesome bike. I mean, like bias aside, it is extremely immersive. You know, you take the controllers, you can interact with the game straight from your fingers. You know, there’s no more scrolling on the mouse with your computer and I really do like how silent it is and it’s extremely simple to set up. I mean, we have an entire guide to tell you what you need. I didn’t open it to be completely honest.

Andrew: Sure

Joseph: I just set it up on the ground. It looked very straightforward to me. I do work on actual bikes so it kind of simplified that whole frame. But it’s been well received. People absolutely love it. We are certainly taking all of that feedback into account when we’re looking at what’s to come of this first launch of hardware and I mean I personally, my philosophy is anyone’s a cyclist. I want everyone to feel like one. If you are pedaling, you are a cyclist in my mind and I really hope this Zwift Ride opens the doors to people who may not understand all those technical know-hows of a real bike. You know, cassette, chain, whatever you need. We really just want to simplify it. So I’m hoping more people are coming onto the platform with it, following their goals, doing whatever they need to do, enjoying the experience of having a real community.

Andrew: Yeah and the core of the Zwift experience has long been hopping into the virtual world, knocking out a bike ride whether it’s a workout or just going for a ride. You can do either. But there are, Joe, some really great features I want to touch on for our athletes who maybe again aren’t on Zwift already that we haven’t talked about in depth yet. On Zwift you can join a group ride. We’ve referenced that a little bit. You can run on Zwift now which I think is really super cool. It makes treadmill sessions a whole lot more bearable. You can race on Zwift now and there’s actually racing leagues for racing on Zwift with classifications and all that jazz. Joe, how do each of these experiences within Zwift kind of add to the overall experience for athletes training on Zwift?

Joseph: I want to go back to what I first said and what I first said was we try to recreate your outdoor experience indoors. Now that may be true when it comes to the routes that you choose. You know, you can go up to 100 miles with 12,000 feet gain if you really want or you can just to Tick Tock and do the time trial loop or Champs-Elysees or anything, but we do build on that and our content team works tirelessly to think about what cool experiences we can add to the game as well. Now this is a team I work with very closely as a product marketer, running campaigns and doing all that sorts. Things like the pacer group rides, those are intended to make that menial zone 2, zone 1, zone 5 a social experience. If you haven’t done a pacer group ride, Andrew, I really encourage you to because immediately you’re immersed in a peloton of people and the social atmosphere takes you away from anything rigid that you need to follow with your metrics. I truthfully believe they’re there when you need them. I finish a pacer group ride at 2.1 watts per kilo and my watts are right where they want to be after and I upload my workout. So that’s just one experience. I mean I have “natively” in Zwift heard of people going between the pacer group rides and teleporting so that you can do your intervals. So people will do their– Like they’ll do their zone 1 recovery at 1.4 and then go up to like 3.6 and teleport to another pacer group ride and do 2. Yeah it’s crazy. I mean, people have optimized it more ways than we have.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: But that’s just one experience. Truthfully we do all these to make it fun. So we have the grade, the grade takes a standard FTP test and gives you some buildings and key markers to look at to really get you to that finish line. That’s something that a lot of people are intimidated by.

Andrew: Yeah.

Joseph: Like me, everyone on this call, we may be very open minded to doing an FTP test of sorts or ramp test of sorts because we understand it’s a part of the training process. But for those new Zwifters that really just want fun and fitness, we need to make that experience a little bit more inviting because we do want that data from them. We want to be able to track their progress when it comes to those key moments in cycling. It’s a big part of cycling culture is getting that benchmark FTP. We then can tell them how they’re improving and answer to that training promise again of like not only do we want to make people fitter, and we may have the data to show that on the back end, but we want them to perceive their fitness easily. So that’s kind of our experience. Yeah, we have plenty to come. We have tons of events. We have community leaders like TriDot and all these other ones that are putting on events. We have campaigns. I’m forgetting about the biggest one which is like Tour of Watopia and you get double XP and drops and you can buy things in game. I mean, really, like Zwift is for the structured now with our integrations with awesome platforms and partners and it’s for the unstructured that go out and train for the Saturday group ride. You know, they go out and do their week on Zwift and then they go and do countless miles outdoors because again as Craig said when we speak to the efficiency benefit, they may not know it, but they’re taking more pedal strokes and therefore when they want to go back outdoors, they’re going to get more miles in. So that’s ultimately– If I could sum it up, that’s at least my interpretation of what experiences we bring to game and what value we’re trying to add to someone’s fitness journey, then to achieve their goals really.

Andrew: Now Craig, for Sansego coaching you referenced before you guys put on a lot of group rides and you invite your athletes to knock out the workouts together. What does that structure look like for you guys and how often are you doing those rides? What do those hosted groups look like and what feedback do you get from your athletes on what it’s like doing the workout like that versus alone in their pain cave with nobody to talk to?

Craig: We try and do the rides weekly. I usually lead them, so when I’m not traveling I organize them. But you just– what Joe talked about. I think it speaks to the human condition and our psychology. It’s not a one size fits all. Some people like just going to do their own thing. Other people like joining groups. Other people need the capability of meeting their mates in games to do the sessions and I think Zwift enables you to do all those things. So as somebody heading up a company, our main thing with Sansego is putting on training experiences, camps and we’ve got our tri community. We just try to make the training as fun and engaging as possible and lay a platform of consistency and I think Zwift enables you to do that. I think it just– All the things we’ve talked about, the benefits to training, the ease, the convenience, the efficiency, but ultimately it’s still the rider’s choice to do what they want to do and it enables you to do that. Because, when I was an athlete and having worked with athletes, people don’t like having things forced on them. They have a sweet spot of how they like to train and the way they like things. Some people like to do it solo. Some people like the social, the group aspect. Some people like the group aspect when it’s a hard session for the accountability and I think Zwift enables you to check all of those boxes. So that’s what I like. I like the convenience of it and the adaptability of it.

Andrew: Yeah no. Brilliantly said. That’s for sure. Two questions left here in our main set before we move on to our cool down. I wanted to ask this Joe. Just a poke, just a prod and see if there’s anything I can learn from you here. In my six years as a Zwifter I’ve seen new worlds get added to the game, I’ve seen new routes, new features, new hardware, new Zwift experiences, now new Zwift integrations. Is there anything new and upcoming that you can tease for us? What does the future hold for Zwift?

Joseph: That’s a great question. I actually approached this apprehensively because I am working on quite a bit here behind the scenes for Zwifters, but if I can answer or if I could say one thing publicly to those who are listening and to prospects of Zwifters, we’re always taking your feedback in mind. We’re constantly reading forums. We love those who are vocal. We give surveys, we ask, and we try to problem solve for them. It is great to be working for a company that truly cares about someone’s fitness needs and really their goals. With this API in mind and that being a big topic of this podcast, I think that answers a lot of what the future holds for Zwift. TriDot was a great first partner to get this integrated and we’ve done it successfully and we surely plan on iterating on it, enhancing it, and developing it. So what I want to say is that API opens training possibilities across the board. It opens up what data we can track, what partners we bring into platform, what campaigns we end up running. From a marketing perspective it’s the collaboration between your marketing team and mine. So how can we reach new audiences that are still lost and wanting to find those key platforms to train for those goals that they have in mind? I was surely one of those. I went through a handful before I ended up on Zwift and the process was hard because you really want something consistent that works for you and I would say initially I didn’t really know the benefits of indoor training, but as I did it for like eight months heading up into a full distance Ironman, then I’d go out on the weekends and I’d do 100 miles or let’s say I do a full Ironman weekend but Saturday consisted of 100 miles outdoors and I did it at 260 watts and I’m like, that felt way harder than on Zwift than it did outdoors. I kind of going on a spill here, but essentially like in terms of the API, it opens up a lot of possibilities. What I’m across is training and fitness entirely and I really want to– We’re going to be adding very exciting things in the future, near term and long term that are going to help people perceive their fitness on platform in a better way. So I don’t want to give away too much.

Andrew: Sure.

Joseph: There’s a lot coming. There’s a new season that we’re entering which is winter and we love that. We’re going to make this like– We’re going to make Zwift a really cool platform to be on.

Andrew: Noted. Noted. We’ll be on the lookout for some of the things that you’re holding back because there certainly are some things you’re holding back. I have to do the same thing when people ask about TriDot, right? But I had to ask. Had to ask and see what I could get out of you. The last thing I do want to ask you Joe and our long-time TriDot community who have been on Zwift will just love to know this because this is probably the most frequently asked question I see in regard to TriDot and Zwift. Will there now be a TriDot jersey in game for TriDot athletes to wear? Do you know are there plans to add a TriDot jersey to the game?

Joseph: Yeah so I am working with TriDot and we’re doing what we can to get that kit. To get the branding of the club to boast everything that TriDot and Zwift–

Andrew: It’s happening people!

Joseph: It’s going to happen for sure. It’s in the making and we’re going to launch it sometime soon. I don’t want to give away too much. It’s really nice to have surprises. We’re all about rewards.

Andrew: There you go.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.

Andrew: Ending the show as we always do with our Coach Cooldown Tip of the Week where we ask one of our podcast coaches for a training tip. This week while I have Coach Craig Alexander on the show I’m excited to see what wisdom he can share with us today. Coach Craig, maybe we can keep it on our topic today. Is there one coaching tip you can offer our audience just in terms of succeeding in our indoor bike workouts other than doing your TriDot workouts on Zwift?

Craig: That’s a very good question I think. What I was going to say or what I would have normally said is be mindful of how training indoors is different to outdoors and how it impacts your training zones, but TriDot does all of that for you. So I’ll keep it simple and say just get your setup organized. Get a fan in there so you get some convection cooling going on and have your nutrition, particularly if you’re doing a longer ride. And you guys talked about sweating and ruining headsets.

Andrew: Yeah.

Craig: Make sure you’ve got your nutrition and your hydration handy. I’ve got one of those little tables just set up so I don’t have to get off the bike. So I would say, organize your setup before you get on the bike. Get the fan handy and get your nutrition somewhere where you can reach it.

Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to tridot.com and start your free trial today! TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.

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