- Whoa doggy.
It's officially winter out there, trainiacs.
Lucky me so this winter
I am going to try quite a few new things for running.
Now the bulk of the triathlon running training
is gonna be kinda the same but I'm just gonna
be incorporating little tweaks on it,
little bit of water running, maybe a little bit
of cross country skiing, maybe a little bit of
Zwift running.
So to give you a little bit of the scoop on
how to Zwift run today, you're going to talk about
my setup for Zwift running, which largely just
involves the stride running power meter attached
to whatever shoes I'm running in and we're gonna
talk about some of the options for how you to
can get Zwift running, it's pretty easy.
Let's go!
(upbeat music)
Whoa, just a 5K run, 4K,
80 percent we want of the run
under my recovery heart rate target so under 140
and then we finished off with the last kilometer
20 percent at high intensity so that was
at nine miles an hour.
I'm not fit for this kind of stuff.
Whoa!
So let me go change out of my blouse
and then I'll explain Zwift running.
I was talking to the people at Zwift
earlier in the week and apparently of everyone
in their office that did their half marathon
training program, every single one set a PR
so there's something to it.
Sometimes you just need to declare a weekend,
pajamas, hoodie and ugly hair so wearing a hat kind of day.
But I'm an adult so I can do that.
So Zwift running, is it as game changing as Zwift cycling?
No, I would certainly say not but I think
it's got the potential.
So how it works, here, I'll show ya.
You've got ride and then you just switch it to run
and over on run you need to have a sensor that
communicates with Zwift from something that gives
it the data of how fast you are actually running.
Now currently, the sensors that do end up working
with Zwift tend to be primarily foot pods.
If you're just looking at getting into Zwift,
there's the milestone pod, which is the cheapest
at 30 dollars but it only covers speed and distance,
there's also the polar stride sensor at 125 dollars,
which is actually more accurate than this,
the Garmin 935 but again, it only covers speed and distance.
There's also the Garmin foot pod but that is ant plus,
not blue tooth like the other foot pods.
What I use is this, the Stryd power meter and foot pod.
Even though it's the most expensive coming in at 199 dollars
is because it does your speed, it does your distance,
it does your run cadence, all of that but in addition
to that, it also calculates your running power
and when you start going into the Stryd power center,
that starts giving you really tangible metrics that
you can use to help formulate your training.
I'll show you those another day, make sure you're
subscribed for that, I'll dive in to the power center
and how you can end up using Stryd.
(crashing)
I'm back.
And how you can end up using Stryd to analyze
where your weaknesses are in running.
Fellrnr, F-E-L-L-R-N-R did a study to see
how accurate every single device was out there
and this, the Stryd running power meter before
you even calibrate it, is by far the most accurate
measurement data out there but the down side
with Zwift is that Zwift does not pick up power from this
so what I do is I set this up to communicate with Zwift
but at the same time, I'm also running Stryd on my watch
and then when I finish both runs I garbage the Zwift run
and I upload this run so that I get all of my power data
from this to go and analyze it later.
Now you can also get a treadmill that does all
of the data collection for you.
Bowflex, BXT 116, 216 or 226,
any Star Track treadmill with the blue tooth function,
a Life Fitness home treadmill equipped with track connect,
the True Fitness Performance 300
or the TechnoGym My Run treadmill.
If you already have those, you don't need a foot pod
because it will connect to Zwift directly.
Most people don't have any of those because
they're crazy money bags expensive.
So get yourself a foot pod, I like Stryd.
So here's how you get into this.
You've got this screen, go and follow triathlon Taryn
on Zwift running or Zwift riding, same sort of thing,
instead of riding like you normally would,
running is always an option.
If you aren't yet paired, you have to tap
to pair your foot pod.
If you have anything other than the Stryd,
you've gotta go and hit that wrench and you have to
then go and calibrate the foot pod so you set
a running speed, let's say eight point one kilometers
an hour and then you set the treadmill to that
and you run at that speed so the foot pod
and Zwift can start getting a sense of,
alright, when the person is going this speed,
and it's tracking like this, it feels like that,
and this is the data that we're getting,
this is how fast we're going.
You can pair your heart rate, your cadence sensor
should be taken care of by your foot pod
and then you hit okay.
Now you can do training and this is what I talk about
with plans, like the Zwift plan, the three run
13 point one, this is a plan that all the Zwift staff
did and every single one of them ended up PRing
or you can select specific workouts and here's the thing.
The treadmill isn't going to change your speed
or your incline based on the course at all.
From a liability standpoint,
it can't do that like on the bike.
Where as the bike, if you can't keep up to a certain
pace in say ergmode, you just stop.
If you can't keep up to a certain prescribed pace
or a certain prescribed incline on the treadmill,
you get spit off the back and likely get injured
so that's where it's not quite as immersive
as cycling but as you start, let's just walk here,
so there's a bit of a lag between when you actually
start running and when you see the person
on the screen actually moving.
So sometimes it takes just a little bit of a wake up
for Zwift to actually pickup that you are committed
to moving but once you get going,
you see that there are now dedicated running paths
in Zwift in Watopia and New York.
Some of the nice things that I really like
about this setup here is just the display of it.
Up in the top left, you have a display that if you have
a heart rate monitor paired to it,
you can see your heart rate data, you can see your strides
per minute and your pace.
You can also see what heart rate zone you're in
over the course of a five zone system.
Then coming down underneath that, you have your splits,
it's a really nice display just from the standpoint
of getting your training metrics right in front of your face
instead of having to look down at your watch
or look for your pace there,
everything is right on the screen.
Two of the things however, that make it less awesome
than Zwift cycling are like I said,
Zwift doesn't control your treadmill at all,
whereas I think part of the immersion of Zwift
cycling is that the speed and the cadence
and the shifting and the gears and the difficulty
and the resistance that you have to try to maintain
is all dynamic, this is not.
To make it dynamic and follow a workout
that's given to you on screen, you have to manually
change the speed or the incline of your treadmill.
In addition to that, this screen here is very, very
small in comparison to that one right there.
So even though this one's right in front of my face,
it's just, it feels like I'm in the game a lot less.
Do I enjoy it as much as Zwift cycling?
No.
Do I enjoy it more than just treadmilling?
Heck yeah.
At least there are some milestones to hit.
At least there is a little bit of a better interface
than just staring at a blank wall.
So that's Zwift running, all you need is an iPhone,
an iPod, any treadmill, you can use the gym treadmills
but get yourself a foot pod, you can go really, really
cheap and just get yourself up and running
for as little as 30 bucks.
If you want a foot pod and you wanna start collecting
a bunch of run data, go with a stride
and make sure you go and follow me at first name is T,
last name is Riathlon space Taryn on Zwift.
Then, sky's the limit for ya.
Later, trainiacs.