This is my second winter season on Zwift, using a Wahoo KICKR SNAP wheel-on trainer. In March of last year when I could start riding outdoors again, I was in the best shape ever - on my usual rides, it felt more like May or June (from a uphill agony/total ride time perspective) than what I usually felt like in March.
On Zwift I rotate through a bunch of different activities, keeps the boredom away:
- Just riding - pick one of the many pre-canned loops and keep riding on it until bored or run out of time
- Group rides - many include audio on Discord or Facebook live
- Workouts - huge choice in the Zwift dropdown menu
- Group workouts - these are new this year and I really enjoy them. Some are just automated, some include actual leaders sending instructions and replying to questions, some also have audio feeds.
- Custom workouts - I created a set of workouts from the "Time Crunched Cyclist" book by Chris Carmichael and mix those in.
- Races - I'm not a racer in the real world but on Zwift I've been doing about 1 a week. I suck, but great high intensity just pedal as hard as you can for 45 - 60 minutes workouts, with the incentive of seeing your placement at the end, matched against others that are similar in weight/power via the race categories.
Since any of those can occur in one of the three "lands" in Zwift and Zwift is regularly added more roads to many of the lands, boredom hasn't been an issue. Probably the biggest negative for me is doing long rides in a trainer is way tougher on my rear end than real road rides - no out of saddle time, the bike is rigidly upright, not getting off to wait out the occasional traffic light, etc.
This week, by mistake, I did my longest ride ever on Zwift - the hilly 30 mile 3 Sisters Loop, took me 2 hours. That was marginally OK - I think to do a three hour ride (the Watopia Pretzel!) at the two hour mark I will pretend I am pulling into a convenience store, get off the bike on the trainer, eat a fig bar, refill my water bottle, stretch and get back on - just like I do at about that mark when I'm biking IRL.