Maybe on a hybrid I could look at my monitor while typing, but that seating position makes things quite hard.
Good on ya for trying though! Allez!
One improvement: get a different bike saddle. One that doesn't put pressure on the perineum. There's evidence to suggest extended time spent in a bicycle saddle can cause ED.[1]
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17436...
And overall, being bored is great for the mind, help with creativity, problem solving...
Once you embrace Z2 sessions, they became some sort of meditation, with the endorphins helping after a few hours.
Watching a video or typing stuff will remove all those potential benefits!
Sometimes it's nice to not overthink or try to optimize everything. Just enjoy the moment, enjoy the mental pain.
Staying in a hard VO2 interval or pushing through on those long threshold efforts is an actual mental exercise. Don’t push the belief onto people that staring at a wall in Z2 is giving you some gains. If it works for you then go for it, but it’s a wild mentally that thinks a physically easy ride needs to be hardened up.
Next week plan is to start riding without bibs or a saddle so as to maximize the anguish.
So far I've just been using the (open source!) app Auuki to drive my smart trainer while I stream television. Works great on NixOS. https://auuki.com/
I am curious to hear about what games people are playing while cycling (other than Zwift, of course.)
this is nothing new. Back in the day, the teaching was "ride in the little ring in winter" which was essentially Zone 2
Plus San Milan is tainted by his Saunier Duval years, and Attia is clearly a grifter
Just fucking ride. Most of the time easy, once or twice a week hard
now get off my lawn!
And if you're doing hours of Z2 training, you likely want to be getting more time in a position closer to what you'd be doing in the drops.
FWIW, my go-to is Project Zomboid. A fantastic game!! There are a lot of actions that need a few seconds to complete. It's kinda perfect. I was also combining with an absurd amount of edibles too. Suddenly, I was putting in 4 to 6 hours of zone 2!! The 90 minute sessions suddenly seemed short. (I'm travelling right now, but wow - I'm looking back fondly. Edibles, Zomboid, cycling, and tons and tons of honey tea (ie: dumping honey into tea; consumed about 2 to 4 tablespoons every 30 minutes))
Yeah, programming while at the cycling desk setup just did not work; cadence would drop to just way too low. Haven't had a chance to try that setup for a thing like a standup meeting though, could maybe work for zoom meetings. I feel like 'listening' only would be doable.
It's kind of hard to tell from the photos and videos though which are both at weird angles.
My gym has stationary recumbent bikes -- I wonder if rigging up a keyboard to one of those would be better? If you don't need to put your upper body weight on handlebars, maybe it'll be easier to have a more traditional mouse/keyboard setup.
Won't be as cool though
A properly fitted road bike saddle is sized so all your weight is on your "sit bones", parts of your pelvis around the perineum.
If your saddle is putting pressure on your perineum, that means it's the wrong saddle for you.
The problem is different people have different-sized gaps between their sit bones, so different people need different saddles. They are absolutely not a one-size-fits-all part. A narrow saddle might fit one person (probably a man) just fine, while being too narrow for someone else (possibly a woman, as women tend to have wider sit bones).
If your saddle is causing you pain, you should see your local cycle shop and have them do a proper fitting. Properly-equipped shops will have a device that measures your sit bones so they can recommend a properly-sized saddle for you.
Use your back and shoulder muscles to support your upper body and arms, so that you can ride with elbows bent. If you can bend your elbows, you can avoid pushing on the handlebars for support. That will make for more comfortable wrists with or without a keyboard.
Reference: Sheldon "Ouch!" Brown https://sheldonbrown.com/pain.html#wrists
The whole fun of cycling is to actually ride a bicycle, feel the wind, the road texture, notice the changing seasons in the landscape, rail corners at high speed...trainers annihilate all this and reduce this nice and enjoyable activity to a boring and terrible fitness activity. No screen would change that.
Also, and speaking from experience after having a professional bike fit, a "saddle issue" often is not directly related to the saddle itself. You might be placed too forward and slipping just ever so slightly on the saddle, so you're sitting on the "rod", instead of the back part of the saddle; the saddle might be too high or too low, etc.
The industry will keep shoving down your throat their new "advancements" every year, but at the end of the day, bikes hasn't changed a lot, and the common knowledge will remain the same.
so less pressure on your wrists while typing would be quite the core workout over an extended period of time.
https://memalign.github.io/p/airdesk.html
It’s been life-changing!
Student of the Talmud asks the rebbe: "Rebbe, am I allowed to smoke cigarettes while I study the Talmud ?" The Rebbe categorically says "no, it would be highly offensive to smoke while studying the Talmud". Student then asked: "Am I allowed to study the Talmud while I am smoking a cigarette?" Rebbe: "Well.."
I'd be outside if I could. I live somewhere where weather happens, and I'm not biking 3 hours a day in -10C and nasty salt muck.
Most folks aren't really familiar with what training for competitive cycling (or structured training in general) looks like.
There are large, month-scale blocks where you're simply building aerobic capacity by cycling at low-ish intensity. Heart rate is somewhere between 115 and 145 for me personally during these efforts. 15 hour (or more!) weeks are not uncommon.
Nils van der Poel was doing something like 6-hour blocks of zone 2 during his base season as an Olympic speed skater.
When outdoor riding is available, it's preferable, but indoor trainer sessions are basically always more time efficient for a given training load. You make consistent power, there aren't street lights or flat tires. If you run out of carb mix you go to the kitchen and fetch more. In winter, it's the only reasonable option. Going for a ride in -15C and salt slush is fine for a commute (crazy, I know), but doing it for 15 hours a week, probably in the dark, is not reasonable. Indoor is the only practical option to get this training load in winter.
Most people just watch TV or use Zwift (social riding simulator) during these blocks. I'm not much of a TV guy, and to be honest, I find a good technical problem to be great distraction from the drudgery of Zone 2.
Note for OP: I've actually considered using a split keyboard in a very similar way to this. I run aero bars on my bikes for ultra-distance events, and I have them on the trainer right now. At some point I would like to mount a split keyboard to the aero extensions themselves - this would take all the load off the wrists. It is also possible to use the aero bar armrests without the extensions and to be able to type this way. If I end up prototyping this I will shoot you an email.
This is just asking for wrist problems. I hope they find the better position they seek. Maybe use that core more and keep the wrists up as much as possible.
If you have to "be at work" (such as in a remote job) why not get some free exercise at the same time?
> My target developed during the summer of 2021 to reach 33h of cycling weekly. I would aim to do three 7h bike rides and two 6h rides. If I would’ve been able to run, which I wasn’t due to injury, I would have lowered the hours a little and settled for 25h weekly (or approx. 30h if I would’ve combined running and cycling).
33h at 240 watts, about 28k calories/week!
It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in endurance sports, highly recommended: https://www.howtoskate.se/
In Calgary where the weather sucks.
Think I was doing about 1200km per month.
Just a filthy casual cyclist tho.
Or to tie this into running, too, the same thing Maffetone & Friel also espouse.
Hard intervals a few days a week with one or two long rides every week or two are more than enough to race at the cat 1 level (assuming above average VO2 max and if you don't have that no amount of z2 is going to make you competitive anyway). At my peak, my threshold was around 5 W/Kg, ~10 W/Kg for 1 minute and 20+ W/Kg for 5 seconds. My biggest week of training was less than 20 hours and I averaged around 10 hours per week for the years I was racing.
However, this is all beside the point - whether it makes sense or not, there are a lot of folks doing polarized plans that involve a lot of Z2, so the desire to be able to type while on the trainer isn't unreasonable.
I clamped a piece of wood to the desk's edge to have something to push against, as having a point of stability is nice. You can see the back of the treadmill's control panel - I took a regular treadmill, dismantled it, and mounted the panel to my adjustable desk. The treadmill is propped up on blocks to get a ~12% incline; my usual pace is around 3.1-3.4mph, depending on the season/humidity. Sweat... is significant. I usually have a towel under my wrists to uh... collect the arm-runnage >_>
I'm using ball transfer units for the trackball. They're nice, but (as with all trackballs) you should clean the BTUs if you want to keep the smooth flicking. I use a 4k tv as my monitor, so flicking from one corner of the screen to the laptop screen all the way on the other side is really nice.