Ride Five — Four Seasons and a Volcano

Fifty-seven minutes yesterday got me 12.84km. Fifty-seven minutes today got me 25.07km. I never left the house.

Ride five of the Cycle the Month Challenge for Prostate Cancer UK was my first indoor ride — 25.07km, 57 minutes and 21 seconds, 84m of climbing, riding Watopia’s Big Flat 8 on Zwift with the Cog v2 on my Wahoo Kickr Core. I’d been curious about it for a while. I hadn’t expected to enjoy it as much as I did, and I definitely hadn’t expected it to be harder.

Four Seasons and a Volcano

The first surprise was that it isn’t a static picture of a road. In under an hour I rode through what felt like four different seasons, the landscape changing around me as the route wound on, and then straight through the middle of a volcano — which is not a sentence I’ve ever been able to write about a ride through the countryside.

I know exactly how silly it is to be moved by scenery that doesn’t exist. But it kept me looking up, kept me interested in what was round the next bend, and an hour went by a lot faster than an hour on a static bike in a gym ever has.

Harder Than the Road

The second surprise was the effort.

Out on the road there are natural breaks whether you plan them or not — junctions, traffic, a descent where you stop pedalling and just roll, a moment where you sit up. None of that exists indoors. There’s nothing to stop for and nowhere to freewheel to, so I found myself pushing constantly, the whole way, without ever really deciding to.

The numbers show it. My outdoor rides this month have sat around 20km/h; this one came out closer to 26, and it wasn’t because I’m suddenly stronger. It’s because I never stopped turning the pedals. An hour of genuinely continuous effort is a different thing from an hour out on the lanes, and my legs knew about it afterwards.

The Trainer Doing the Work

What sold it to me was the way the trainer responded to the terrain.

When the road tilted up, the resistance came with it — not as a setting I’d chosen, but as something that simply happened underneath me, the way a hill does. When it dropped away again, it eased off and the pedals lightened. That small thing is what makes the whole illusion hold together. You stop watching a screen and start riding the road on it.

A Peloton That Isn’t There

The bit I really didn’t see coming was the company.

There were thousands of other riders out on the same course, and a steady stream of encouragement coming from people I will never meet, in countries I’ve never been to, who had no particular reason to bother. It is a virtual community, and it is still a community — the same nod you’d get from a cyclist coming the other way on a lane, just at a scale no lane could manage.

For a month-long challenge, that matters more than I would have guessed. There will be days this month when the weather makes the decision for me, or the light goes before I’m free. Now I know there’s a version of the ride that doesn’t care about either, with a few thousand people already out on it.

Every kilometre this month, indoors or out, is raising money for Prostate Cancer UK — funding research, raising awareness and supporting men and families dealing with a disease that affects far too many people. The volcano was free; the donations are the bit that actually helps.

Five rides down. And no more excuses about the weather.