I decided to switch to MyWhoosh this winter, after Zwift increased their prices during the summer. I used Zwift last winter and thought it was pretty decent.
About me:
in fair weather, I’m a decent rec road rider, and also do the rec gravel and ‘mild’ intermediate gravel rides. Last time I measured (end of March 2024) my FTP was 228W. I’m hovering around 90kg.
My indoor season started in mid October, but the shifters on my used Wahoo Kickr bike v1 died after the 1st ride this fall. Took a couple weeks to get a replacement from wahoo (no charge). I started riding indoors in early November.
MyWhoosh has gone through at least 2 updates since November. They have added more bot rides, with less of a jump between categories. I get a good sweat on 1.8W/kg ride if I concentrate on the ride (ie don’t fall off because I’m also watching a show on Netflix), but their next category up was 2.3W/kg. This jump was a 28% increase in power, which was too much for this old guy.
In mid December, I weight doped a bit. I got some flack on a facebook group I’m on for weight doping in bot rides, but I would weight dope the 2.3W/kg ride to 78kg to get a real world power ratio of 2.0W/kg. I did this to get to a different map. It seemed for months, it was the same map for the 1.8W/kg ride. Once the map rotation changed, I would weight dope my 1.8W/kg rides by increasing my weight to 98 kg to get a 2.0W/kg ride. My data gets transferred over to Strava automatically when you complete the ride. (There is the option to not upload to Strava, but if u don’t record it, it didnt happen)
I also tried a few 30 minute workouts in ERG mode based on a FTP of 220W. They have all been short HIIT rides with 30 seconds on (z6) followed by 15 seconds off (z2) x 5 cycles. Having not done a ERG workout since last winter, I lost the battle on the 4th cycle (slowed down too much to push out the 290W requested by the bike). I have successfully completed a handful of workouts since.
I usually do the bot rides and workouts while listening to podcasts or stream a show. (I get a better workout while listening to podcasts, when watching a show, sometimes I loose the bots).
There are not as many people on MyWhoosh. I have not participated in any group rides, as any that I am interested in have already started when I log in, or are several hours away from starting. I am not interested in racing regularly (or ever). I did a couple cat D races in Zwift last year, but I was wiped for days after the effort.
Maps. There are a lot of maps/worlds in MyWhoosh. I have only tried a few routes so far. 95% of my rides have been the bot style rides. I do not know if they have an online repository of what the different routes look like. I would like to know which ones have more hills. (I can tell you that the 1.5 and 1.8W/kg bot rides seem to pick fairly flat routes). Zwift definitely has more info online on maps and routes etc.
Computer.
I run MW on a PC. Actually a 8(?) yr old gaming laptop with a 2gb graphics card and an i7 mobile processor. MW has a standard version and a HD version. I can run the standard version well enough. I also have a gaming PC with a ryzen 7 5700x and a rtx 3070 graphics card. It is not in the same room as my indoor bike. I have seen posts on the MW facebook group about low FPS even on very powerful hardware. If you are into FPS while indoor cycling, then MW will likely frustrate you.
I have not lost any rides due to crashes. There was a time when I was getting a lot of error codes after shutting down the game from the unreal engine that it uses to render the worlds, but it never caused a crash while in a ride. Knock on wood, I have not had a crash for a few weeks.
Indoor plans for the rest of the winter.
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Ride on the trainer at least 3-4x weekly. I play pickleball on Sunday evenings, and alpine ski at Blue once a week if conditions are good.
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Devise my own Netflix workout plan and test it out in ERG mode. Mostly zone 2 or 3, with occasional ramp up and down in intensity. Enough to get me through an episode of a show. I started “The Blacklist” a few weeks back, and it has potential. There is a way to make your own workout. I will have to learn how to do that. Then I can mindlessly pedal and burn calories and watch a show at the same time.
