I'm excited to see what The Sufferfest can deliver with increased scale and financial security. Best of luck with it, but please don't mess up the integration with my Hammer.

Don't worry -- you'll still be able to do Nine Hammers (and everything else SUF) on your Hammer!

---

David McQuillen
Founder & CEO of The Sufferfest

That’s where we’re different. I personally can’t stand Zwift. I’ve honestly tried to give it a go, twice, and it’s just not for me. However, I love TrainerRoad (but not the podcast) and can’t imagine riding the trainer without it.

IMO the big picture here is Peloton. Look, let’s be honest: the Peloton bike isn’t special. In fact, compared to the latest Kickr/Kickr Climb/Headwind combo it is abysmal. I’m sure the people at Wahoo saw the money that was being thrown at Peloton and said “we can do better.” Don’t be surprised if a “subscription” model of the Kickr appears in the future: rather than buying a trainer and subscribing to software, subscribe to both for $50/month or something like that.

I don’t think anyone will buy Zwift but you could see Zwift buy a hardware company like Elite.

you love TR but not the podcast. markrebuck loves the podcast but not TR. if i was eharmony i would not pair you two up.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

have you used a Peloton for a bunch of workouts? I think it is pretty awesome. The bike itself is solid... better than my TT bike on my Neo 2. And the total experience is top notch. Anyone else have content of that quality? No. That would take multiple sound stages and a bunch of pros and quality leaders. I prefer my Neo 2 and TrainerRoad, but the Peloton is far from abysmal.

How’s the power data from that Peloton? Erg? Tilt? Variable fan speed? Structured workout plans to target specific fitness goals?

I’ve used the Peloton at my club (country club). The Q factor is gross and otherwise it feels like a very normal spin bike.

Have you checked out our content lately? It's not spin class instructors facing a camera, but it is stuff like on-bike camera footage from the World Tour via Velon:

---

David McQuillen
Founder & CEO of The Sufferfest

its a totally different product. It is great at what it does. I rode one for a while and never noticed Q factor. Definitely not gross. It is not an ERG trainer. It is a killer spin platform with world-class content. Did you ride workouts with the cheerleaders or CVDV and Hincapie? The pro workouts are tough. I prefer TR for its structured workouts, but those are not for everyone. Many (most?) others like the rah-rah of Zwift and Peloton.I haven’t seen your content lately, but that is awesome. I do not like Zwift’s gamification, but the live stuff is fantastic.

Instead of Zwift making its own hardware, my reaction was the reverse. Why would Wahoo keep its Zwift integration tight now? They say in their release they will, but it seems counterintuitive to me.

I know it's a different product and I know it's not an erg trainer. That's my point. Wahoo has superior hardware. Sufferfest is like an "on the road" version of Peloton from a production standpoint but with the bonus being that they didn't use unlicensed music... like Peloton:

https://www.cnet.com/...er-unlicensed-music/

So now Wahoo has awesome hardware and they bought a nice toe-hold in content and content delivery. Their next move will likely be to grow and refine said platform, integrate some of their tech into all-in-one spin bike, go out and raise money, and then launch a multi-tiered subscription service. E.G:

• BYO bike + trainer: $15/mo
• BYO bike, rent trainer: $40/mo
• BYO bike, rent premium trainer: $60/mo
• Buy an all in one bike: $15/mo

Something like that. I think Whaoo's move is smart. It may be innocuous but I suspect they have quite a bit more going on behind the scenes than they're letting on.

Considering they don't integrate control of varia radar...I wouldn't be surprised and I guess that means buy now or a Tac-x?

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I use all 3 - depending on my mood and what i want from the ride.

If i'm serious training then of course i'll use TR. With banging music going i don't need anything more than the simplicity of the moving bars. If i'm just tooling around to ride for fun but don't want to go outside in the weather or i'm housebound with the kids then i'll use Zwift. If i want a killer, fun blast then i'll do a Suf workout.

Don't change TR- I feel a real warmth towards the product and the podcast and the Jon,Nate,Chad,Pete team. It's part of the furniture of my riding life and my commutes in the car. It's made me fast and it's well priced.

I appreciate the passion you show for your company, but I do want to point out one mistake in your article. You say the Kickr was the worlds first smart trainer, but the Computrainer built the first smart trainer a couple of decades earlier. IIRC I believe the Kickr was the first direct drive smart trainer, but I'm sure someone else will correct me if I'm wrong.

This is me exactly. I worry about the day TR gets sold and things change.

Me three.

TR is great just the way it is from a training perspective.

Would love to have my SBR data on the calendar and TSS trends for all 3 sports but besides that the functionality is great.

Podcast is also a favourite part of my week and even my partner, who prior to hearing the TR podcast had little interest in cycling, loves knocking out 2 sweet spot sessions every week and is seeing the rewards.

Or watching Mike Cotty's ass for an hour.

i will also have to agree with this.

i like the simplicity of TR and i have enjoyed seeing the company grow with new features and content over time. with a forum and podcasts, it feels more like a community than just another training platform. they have a great team that really listens and responds to their customers. it gives me what i need, nothing more or less.

I'm just hoping that one day before I'm dead, I can do it using an Android device 🤔

I am a fan of TR and SF. My current subscription is to TR as I am training for a specific event, but after that I could see having the SF as I think the videos are pretty fun.
I also can see a TSaaS plan coming very soon. The cost of the trainer is still a major hurdle to many.
$100 1 time start fee
$20/month for the trainer and SF
after 30 months you can either buy out your trainer and get a discounted SF rate, or send back your old one and get the latest model.
In the above model Wahoo ends up with $700 which I am sure would cover them nicely, and they could sell the old model as a refurb for another $300 or $400.
Stop paying? Some sort of wifi check every x days to make sure your subscription is paid and if not the trainer becomes "dumb" and stuck in the lowest or highest resistance setting.


I do think TR and SF have done a great job of creating a community for their platforms, and even though Zwift has the most users, I am not sure they have done this as much. Zwift has a lot of users because they have a lot of users. I liken it to Facebook VS Google+. The reason FB won, was not that it was such a better of a platform, but that there is no point of being on a social network if you are the only one. Imagine if Wahoo rolled out some form of virtual racing or group rides and made it free if you had a Kickr. I think a lot of people would move it, which in turn would make a lot of people would move to it.

Ha Ha - watching stage 2 of the Tour de France yesterday I said to my wife, "Team Time Trial would be deadly in real life, but boy would it be a fun indoor workout". Opened this thread and Sufferfest has that workout.

Is this a sentence?:
"Multiplayer is where the action is these, so (for one example) were Tour of Sufferlandria morph into multiplayer (I have no evidence that it will) I for one would not consider change to be unwelcome." And if so, what doesn't it not mean?


I assume it means that The Tour of Sufferlandria should become a multiplayer 'game' and if it does, it'd be better for Wahoo and Sufferfest users.


Perhaps the other article is better ;-)

perhaps the other article is better. mine was hastily crafted ;-(

a year ago, maybe 18mo ago, something like that, i think zwift badly wanted what TR and Sufferfest had. TR was (among slowtwitchers at least) the clear favorite, because people wanted structured training. zwift offered a multiplayer experience, but that was perceived as confined to racing or group rides.

i think the landscape is different today. zwift has done a pretty good job of becoming a structured training platform, but it's gone beyond that via the multiplayer experience. when i lead our structured training workout this afternoon, it's a *pro* version of the *gym* version that peloton offers. i think that if TR had its way, it would appreciate adding multiplayer to its suite of experiences. TR had something zwift wanted. zwift has something TR wants. i think. i don't know. but this is my guess. if you like TR's podcast, and you like TR's structured training, then a multiplayer TR experience gets you both, sort of, in one experience.

now, speaking for myself, it's a lot easier to schedule and curate structured training events, weekly events, on zwift than it is to schedule rides or races because you only need 1 ride leader for a structured training event. the big problem with group rides of various levels is that you all love you some zwift! but you won't volunteer to lead any rides. this is a pervasive zwiftwide problem. zwift exposes the narcissistic bent for which we are well known, and one thing about zwift: it does not like unmanaged group events.

so, all the gravity is pulling us toward more structured training events on zwift. you'll see more of these on slowtwitch. and i think the multiplayer dimension to structured training will place pressure on TR and sufferfest (and the other similar platforms), and it would not surprise me if these platforms are investigating this now.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Yes & No, I think 'structured training' & 'multiplayer experience' is hard to combine effectively.

If we ignore what's probably a larger market of spin classes / peloton / general fitness then following a structured plan targeting a specific event will have you doing ride's that are different to others. I'm not simply talking about scaling based on FTP/4DP etc... but different interval lengths & structures.

You could have multiplayer rides that go off every hour from a suite of workouts, but at the moment I see ~1000 people on Zwift, so you couldn't have many workouts active at a time before it would be tricky to have enough people signed up for it.

Personally I run TrainerRoad for the workout & Zwift at the same time for some motivation, whilst it might be a little more entertaining to ride with a group rather than catch random riders it also means I have to be ready at a certain time, whilst that's not super tricky it does decrease the flexibility.

I totally agree, and I think this is missing from much of the discussion. Nearly every time Zwift and TR are mentioned for structured training, it is of the form "Zwift sucks, TR rules!". But Zwift really is a decent/approachable structured training platform. The folks who think TR has some kind of uncrossable moat around their secret training sauce are... probably a bit optimistic.

The things that make TR awesome could be done in Zwift, sometimes easily (e.g. the specific workouts). The things that make Zwift awesome can't be done in TR, at all.

---

-Mark Rebuck, http://www.markrebuck.com/