A cycling desk / Zwifting with a split keyboard

I love Zwifting, but the idea of riding in that position while also trying to concentrate seems really stressful :)

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!

I hooked up a shelf over the handlebars of an indoor trainer. With regards to stressful, I found anytime I had to concentrate on something - the pedaling would drop off. The cycling while computing was best for movies or video games (particularly RPG's being the best)

Yeah, I've found the same problem (with a standing desk): as soon as I need to concentrate I stop maintaining my cadence. Maybe it's something I could train myself out of but I haven't been worried about it; cycling is my "productive" thing, I don't need to double it.

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.)

Appreciate the aauki shout-out! :)

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.

Yeah, I don't think I could do zone 2. Zone 1, yeah.

I don't have this setup myself, but I imagine Caves of Qud would work great. Its turn based so you don't have the problem of needing perfect control, in fact sometimes I need a good minute or so to think about my next move. I can easily sink hours into it anyway, might be worth me looking into

I've tried taking meetings while on the bike and as soon as my HR gets above about 105 it becomes noticeable to the other party that I'm clearly doing something exertive. And even though my RHR is about 48-50, riding at 105bpm doesn't even get me into z2 so it's literally just "junk miles"... so I stopped. The joint risk of embarrassing myself + not actually being useful exercise was too much to justify it.

Frankly, I don't see how anyone could really do z2 while fully concentrating on something else (work). z2 isn't "hard", but it's definitely more effort than just spinning.