I tried Zwift for the first time a few years ago and quickly abandoned it after a few spins around Watopia. It felt a little too aimless, like a worse version of off-season solo park laps: how long am I supposed to ride? Where is the end? And why is there still a random dude sitting on my wheel? I didn’t really get the appeal, so I defaulted back to TrainerRoad to get me through the winters, calmed by its stark blue lines, structured simplicity and slight mean-coach vibes.

Several hundred years ago when the lockdown began, the Lucarelli & Castaldi Cup race which is normally held in Prospect Park moved to Zwift. A good chunk of the team were already Zwift regulars and planned to sign up, so through a combination of peer pressure and a psychological inability to say no to a competition, I signed up too. I was a bit surprised to find out that aside from the terribly confusing UX, I actually kind of liked Zwift this time around. Races and events and team zwooms and #EveryZwiftRouteTBD gave me some structure and a semblance of social interaction during a strange and isolating time. It also helped that unlike my first experience trying Zwift, when I had no fans, no power meter, and a half-broken trainer, I finally had a pretty cozy indoor setup:

After a few solid months of Zwifting, summer arrived and it became too hot to ride inside even with all the windows open and the fans on high. Then time happened, it was cold again, and riding outdoors seemed less attractive. I could have hopped back on the trainer and finished off my few remaining routes, but of course I’d left the longest for last. So I caved in to the Zwift marketing materials and signed up for Zwift Academy 2020. Quarantine has been one long exercise in tricking myself to stay motivated, finding new things to keep myself going, then abandoning those things when they’re no longer working. Zwift Academy, with its eight-week timeframe and flexible schedule of workouts and races, seemed like just enough structure to feel motivating but not overwhelming.

Zwift Academy describes itself “as a talent identification program that sends amateur riders to the pro circuit.” The top five women finalists compete for a pro contract with Canyon-SRAM, while the top five men have a chance to win a spot on Alpecin-Fenix. Like the majority of the nearly 125,000 riders who entered the Academy this year, I am nowhere near strong enough to be in the running for a pro contract. For context, the women finalists this year have an FTP around 5 w/kg, while mine has barely cracked 4 w/kg in the best of times (and these are far from the best of times). But that wasn’t really the point -- I thought it would be fun to get back into training, try some races again and see how far I could push myself. And apart from a few minor complaints, I did end up enjoying it!

Zwift is very enthusiastic in its mid-workout messaging

The general outline of the program was eight workouts designed to test everything from your max one-minute power output to your hour-long endurance, and four group rides which could consist of races or the confusingly named “segment group rides.”

The cons:

Zwift only released the schedule of segment group rides and races a week at a time, which made it very difficult to know if you’d missed your one chance for a particular event. They ended up repeating all the events in the last week of the program, but it was impossible to know that upfront.
The segment group rides. These were described as “not races,” but there were two or three pre-determined segments where you should go all out. Confusingly, there was no indication during the event that a segment was one of the targeted segments -- you were ostensibly supposed to know by reading the event description beforehand. That, combined with the fact that segment starts in general aren’t always obvious (is Volcano the same thing as Volcano KOM?), made these events less than ideal.
The UI/UX (sorry, I had to). This one isn’t specific to Zwift Academy, but after using Zwift regularly for nearly a year, I still find its design very unintuitive. The first time I tried to load a ZA workout, it was tough to find, and I would occasionally have trouble joining events.

The pros:

The social aspect was fun and motivating. I ended up riding with some of the same women throughout the program and we had a great time commiserating about everyone’s favorite topic: Zwift’s very bad user experience. I also found it really helpful to have others around on some of the longer climbs -- I’m a terrible time trialist, but I do really well when I have a carrot to chase.
Signing up for ZA came with a free month of Today’s Plan access, which allowed me to view my progress and power output compared to all other Academy participants. I don’t think I’d sign up for Today’s Plan once the trial ends (I already have TrainingPeaks and it’s too similar), but it was super interesting to view my strengths and weaknesses in the context of riders overall and in the context of just my rides (I learned that my one-minute sprint is much more consistent and relatively more powerful than my shorter sprint, which is the opposite of how I’ve always viewed my strengths).
I like checking off boxes, so it was very satisfying to complete the workouts and group rides and see my progress bar inch closer to the finish. What can I say, gamification works on me!

Overall, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Zwift Academy! The workouts are still available, so I may revisit them in my quest to find my next motivating bike activity.