Wattage Cottage Episode 6: This Season on Zwift and So Much Zwifter Data

We've got a big show today Cottage Crew, Zwift just dropped its fall this season road map, and there is a lot to get through. There's new roads in Watopia, a smarter smart bike, and your first look at a real wearable integration. But here's the twist. We've got a guest at the table who knows none of this, zero prep, zero briefing. It's finding out live, same as you, let's get into it. This is Wattage Cottage, Episode 6. Welcome back to Wattage Cottage. I'm Dave Tull, joined as always by Eric Schlange, Zwift Insider, and the birthday boy today, Shane Miller, otherwise known as GP Lama. I should add that Eric Schlange is otherwise known as Zwift Insider as well. It's so good to have you guys both back. We've got a special guest today. I'm super stoked about that. First off, Shane, birthday Disneyland, it sounds like you're living a 12 year old American boys dream. Who said I went to, actually, I put it on Strava, didn't I? Yes, yes. Yeah, just loving my time over here in the States, so I'm doing a bit of visiting of certain companies that we might have to talk about that in the next episode, so let's tease that already. But lots coming up in this episode, yeah, loving my time over here, but it's just a little warm outside. So, typically, I'm inside this time of year because it's so cold, 42 degrees, guys, can you do the calculations for me? What's that in units over here for temperature? 100 and 4, you nailed it. That's what it is. It is burning outside, so I'm actually coming, I'm tuning in from Zwift HQ. I mean, a little private pod here, so I can say what I like, they can't hear me. But yeah, I've got myself a little cool spot here, and yeah, just about to fly home tonight. All right. Well, and actually, we timed this really, really well with the embargo, just so people will be able to track it back. It's September 9th when we're recording here today. Long Beach has had some crazy weather, so chains, got right in the mix here in America over the last week. He was in my neck of the woods here in Colorado for a little bit, so yeah, been great to have you here, Shane. Now, other side of the coin here, Eric, looks like you guys are having a blast. I know that Ryan is with you, so let's introduce Ryan. He's sitting right next to you there in California. This is really Zwift community live and in full effect, where you guys have made a real friendship. And this is awesome. Over the last year or so, these are these with community live, didn't hurt. So all right. Let's just jump right in. Eric, how's Ryan doing there in California? How are you doing? I'm doing great. So yeah, Ryan and I, we kind of knew each other through Zwift for several months. We'd interacted. We'd ridden together all that sort of thing, but it was in Mallorca that we actually met in person and rode together first there. And we made plans there for him to come to NorCal and hang out and ride California road. So he's been here for six days, I think now. We've ridden five of those days and covered a little over 400 kilometers. We figured out today in those five days. And we've got more to go. We've got our big event that we have left is the mammoth grand fondue this Saturday. But he gets to ride in the Redwood tomorrow, so that's going to be fun. Ryan, how's it going for you? I'm having a great time. I mean, look, guys, it really tells you the story. I haven't got to say much. I don't give you much of a snopsis when I tell you 400 and 10 kilometers in five days. So my legs are feeling it. Eric is taking it in his stride. I fell into a false sense of security in New Yorker because Eric was obviously on a go slow in New Yorker. I'm getting to see the real Mr Zwifting Sider out in NorCal here. He is. He's powerful and strong. He took me to a bit of a smash fest, a bit of a fight night last night. We did a group ride and it was eventful to say the least. But I want to say a big thank you to Eric and his wife Monica for being very hospitable. You know, looking after me, it's been fantastic five days. And when I return home, boy, oh boy, am I going to win every single Zwift race that I enter into? You're basically doing an altitude camp with good friends right now, Ryan, more or less. So all right. Well, as you can tell, today we're doing something a little bit different. Joining us is Ryan, as you just heard, he's going to play the role. And I hope we can get you back to do this a lot more, Ryan. I know that's a big ask, but I'll put that on Eric's plate. Be every man's lifter. And here's the twist, Ryan has no idea what we're about to cover. I hope that Eric didn't spill the beans every new feature, every announcement. He's hearing it for the first time live, same as a lot of you are out there. So Ryan, we got you right in the hot seat there, welcome. But that said, let's just jump right in, guys. This season on Zwift, the roadmap was just launched. We're going to work through the headlines here one at a time. And after each one will go to Ryan for his gut reaction, first up. And this one's live today, the Zwift ride V2. First time I ever heard of, we were talking about this shame. First time I ever really learned about the Zwift ride was on your channel there. And yeah, this is the next wave of the ride. A smart bike gets redesigned. It's more compact frame. I saw Eric on Zwift inside or talking about that this morning. Now fits riders from four foot 10 up to six foot six. That is a lot of range, adjustable cranks in the five lengths, 160 to 175 millimeters there, wider handlebar tops and a new seat post. I think this might be the most important new feature that lets you get further forward and positioning on the bike is so big to people. So price hold steady at just under $1,300, let's be fair. It's $12,99,99. If you already own a ride, the cranks and seat post will be sold separately as accessories. Okay, guys, I have laid it out. Ryan, you go for it first. What do you think you do on a ride, don't you? I do, yes. I'm a keen obviously Zwifter. I use the ride during the winter months. I use it every single day and I've used it throughout the summer months as part of my training. I will say for full transparency, I found out about the Zwift ride version two when I arrived here in NorCal with Eric, because Eric was sent one by Zwift. So we have had a chance to have a play with it, we've set it up, we've had a look at it. I mean, look, for me, the reality is I have my partner Tracy, she is, I think we described it as vertically challenged, is how it was the way in which we described it because I would like to be able to return home. So, but she will definitely benefit from the ability to be able to reduce the height on there. I think the main changes for me were the bear claw cranks, the fact that you haven't got a buyer separate accessory, there's options there for everybody, but it's fully adjustable. I think it's a bike fit change. So is it an upgrade? I think the conclusion we came to, and I'm not sure if I'm jumping the gun here, the conclusion we came to is, it's not so much of an upgrade as a reaction to a lot of feedback that Zwift have taken on board, and it's good to see that they've listened and they've made the changes, and if you're somebody who really wants to dial in that bike fit, then the version two gives you a lot more, much, much wider range. What do you take, Eric? I think kind of the way I'm looking at it is it's, it's only upgrades, it's only improvements to what the original Zwift ride was, and the price hasn't changed, so it's, to me it's all good news, there's more adjustability for every rider, so you've just got more range and more options, so crank length is a big one, that was a really common request, saddle, setback is another really common request, so it's just, it's more customizable, so a wider range of riders will be happy with it, and the price hasn't changed, so pretty hard to complain with what they're offering here, which was already a super competitive, no super price competitive package for an indoor all-in-one package. Oh, guys, can we be any more positive about this, let's go hard, let's go hard on what they've missed, there's two things they have missed on this, but first of all, I'm just having a bit of fun, and I will get to those, to answer this truthfully low, yes, as Ryan said, it addresses all the issues that I've seen online about it, and again, more people on bikes or more options for more people, fantastic, that's great. The fact that the saddle option or the seatpost with the adjustable four-and-aft is backwards compatible with the existing ride and available aftermarket shortly, that's a win, so people don't have to replace the entire bike, what else, the fatter bars for the handlebars, the first thing I did for my bike is switch those bars out for a flat top bars, which are aerobiles. We're looking back to the Those two things they missed on this one. The Zwift Fried Frames still doesn't fit my tax Neo3M, so they didn't widen those chain stays. They kept those the same, but that's the only trainer I think it doesn't fit. And given the price tag of the 3M, I didn't think I'm the only one who actually owns one. And the oval rails on sales, so if you want to put a carbon rail saddle on one of these, I think you might be in for a hard time, they didn't upgrade that. But again, if you want to put a carbon rail saddle on an indoor bike, yeah, it might be time to go out and ride bikes out to us, I think, but anyway, they're two things that I think they could have just refined, but other than that, oh, good news. Same price, slight modifications, and the bear claw is going to come in handy as well. But at a personal level, I'm the most normal rider out there these days, so everything fits me. I won't be making any adjustments or I'm not doing any upgrades. I did see a mention in the press release from Zwift that the new saddle clamp is compatible with carbon seat rails. Oh, I saw it. Yeah, I didn't actually dig in and look. I double checked, so I don't know if that's actually true, but they did actually mention that specifically, which I found interesting. Oh, we're going to have to fact check because I fact check this morning, I'll ask somebody else this time. Yeah, I actually did check and I was surprised. It wouldn't surprise me if my information is wrong and I'm happy to be wrong, I'd love to be because, look, even though it's putting a carbon rail saddle on an end of bike, who's going to be doing that? But look, we're upgrading things these days and you can get some pretty cheap saddles off out of the express, so yeah, look, I'm going to get back to you on that one, Eric. I hope you're right. I really do. All right, well, cool. I'm always curious, Eric, how many units with so there's no real way of knowing that. I mean, I saw on Swift Insider, people refer to it as the highly popular and the beloved. If you had to guess, how many do you think are out there in the world right now? But they made more than 50,000 of them. Yes. So, if I had to guess, I would say they sold 75 to 100,000 units. Wow. What do you think, Shane, on that? I feel like Eric's going to be really on the pulse of that more than anyone we could possibly find. Those numbers sound realistic to me. Look, when I'm on Swift These days, the rider list has, if you've got steering or you've got a set of play controllers or the rider, I think it's the same icon. There's a lot. There's a lot of those, especially the time of day that I'm on. So that wouldn't surprise me, knowing that there's no way to track this from our point of view anyway. And every, it's cross-compatible with every trainer. So you don't have to buy just the ride with the kicker core or the Swift Hub. It is cross-compatible with a ton of other trainers out there. So it wouldn't surprise me if those numbers are ballpark correct. I'd love it to be twice that, though. Let's get people on it. The bike actually solves a lot of problems, especially taking things on, taking things off and dirty bikes indoors and out. It's a good problem, so that everyone's, I guess, also finding out is a young one. I'd love to see how many sales they unlock making it available to vertically challenge people, too. I mean, that's a real market, and that's, you know, both genders as well, and young people, too, something to think about there. So, okay, guys, October 26th, that's not that far off, and Watopia's going to get bigger. Swift is adding around 18 kilometers of new road. That's not a ton, but it's significant. That's going to connect Jarvis to the jungle. It's inspired by one of my favorite places on the planet, Catalina Island. There's a flat bypass that's going to take you around the Epic KOM for anybody who wants to skip the climb. Two? Two? Crit style circuits. So that's cool for our ZRL fans out there. They're built specifically for racing. It launches alongside stage four of the Tour of Watopia, which is going to be running this year from October 5th through November 22nd. As always, I learned these kind of things from Eric. Double XP will be offered. So Ryan, what do you think? Well, I think for me, I've been on, as I say, I've been doing my training on Swift, but I haven't done a lot of racing. So I'm not seeing a ton of, I'm not experiencing the new expansions because I know there's been quite a few over the last few months. So I'm looking forward for the winter months, getting stuck into Swift again. These new maps are going to be exciting, and yeah, I love it. I'm somebody who enjoys the new scenery. So yeah, looking forward to it. Have you ever heard of Catalina Island before? I feel like that's sort of a regional thing in the States. Yeah, I've never come across it before. Tell me more, Dave. Yeah, I mean, it's, boy, Eric might know more than I, but it's accessible. Obviously you can helicopter take a plane over, but mostly people take a boat over from Orange County. Sort of like I think Dana point, you take a boat over. It's about an hour, hour and a half on that boat. And then the island itself has almost no automobiles. It's not completely car free, but if you want to get a car and you live there, it's like an 18 year wait to get a permit for it. So they really limit cars and it is, there's buffalo herd there. It's very throwbacky, the guy who owned the Chicago Cubs and made the wrinkly gum brand. He owned that entire island and tried to turn it into a bit of a utopia out there. Eric, do I get that right? You know more about Catalina Island than I do. By far, Dave, I've still never been there. I've just seen it from the mainland and I know that people ride bikes around there. I don't know that it's, yeah, I don't know that it's like serious road bike training sort of territory. For sure, like, you know, commuter, just a way to get around, it's really popular. Casual cycling. Yeah, it's perfect for what we're doing. It very limited roads there. It's never been developed. There's only a couple thousand people. It's really, really unique in America to have something like that, for sure. Obviously, California makes a lot of sense in an expansion within Zwift. Why have they gone for Catalina Island? Vibe would be my guest in that, you know, that's one of the things I love the most about Zwift. And to a different place, you don't think about politics or anything else. And Catalina Island, as Eric mentioned, fantastic place to ride your bike. It has, I bet you, when we see that release, that there's a herd of buffalo that you see when you're riding. And that's fun to look at. So, so fun vibe. Does that track? Yeah, for sure. So, Eric, what are your, what are your thoughts on, on what's happening there? 18 kilometers of stacks up against the existing, like right now, how many kilometers total are there on Watopia? I realize I'm putting you on the spot. So I did a little poking around because I knew I needed to figure that out. There's a 450 kilometers currently, right at 450 on all of Zwift. So that means 18 kilometers would be a 4% increase. In Watopia, guess how many are in Watopia? Well, I'll give you guys a prize, whoever's closest. 94 kilometers. 44? Dave, what do you say? 140. Ooh, Dave's very close. 136. Oh. Yeah. So, so 136, that means 18 kilometers would be a 13% increase in Watopia, which is a decent, that's a decent bump up. I think we all, we all tend to think of, yeah, yeah, I think we all tend to think of the roads in Zwift because we've ridden them so much we think of there being a lot more kilometers than there actually is. So in 18 kilometers, it doesn't sound like a lot, but they're, that's what you're saying that's 20 new routes that are going to be released with it. So there's a lot there. So does this mean that you're going to have to do a Zwift Insider update to your Watopia map? It does. It does. Which is great. That's always good for sales. Thanks, every time they add new roads, Eric is printing money there in actual California proper. So okay, Eric, flat bypass around Epic KOM, what do you think about that? It kind of, I mean, they said the flat bypass around the Epic KOM, but that's not really, that's not really accurate. I think what every Zwifter imagines when they say that is not what it actually is. So it connects, the connecting road goes from Jarvis, the Jarvis Island loop, which is the latest expansion on Watopia, by the way. It connects from that to the jungle, coming in kind of at the north side of the jungle, coming down, basically kind of right by where the sloth actually is in the jungle. It looks like, so that, so you're only bypassing, basically you're bypassing the bottom of the Epic KOM when you ride the Epic KOM reverse, you're bypassing a little bit of that. But you're not bypassing the full Epic KOM at all. But yeah, it's a flat way to get to the jungle, basically, or the Alp, out as with, it's right near the intersection where you'd start the Alp from Jarvis. There's two new crit style circuits as well. This has got to be good for you for your tiny races and any race organizer. Yeah, it's going to be fun, I think, to have some new circuits in Watopia and they talk about, they call them mini paddocks attached to the crit style circuits, I don't know what a mini paddock is. I mean, I guess there's just a little start spawn area, right? I guess, are we, yeah, is that for the the height challenged people, perhaps? I'm not sure. [BLANK_AUDIO] really catering to them. Yeah, we're really really dialing in the game. Zwift is definitely high challenged friendly here in 2026. So all right, Shane, you know, you're right now where you sit, you're only about 50 miles away from Catalina Island. I hope you've looked it up on a map. You could almost swim there, my friend. If I was a swimmer, I probably could. Yes, now I like it and push back into the surf. I don't like swimming out and getting pushed back in with the waves on a surfboard rather than keeping swimming out to some Buffalo Island. Yeah, no, keen to see that. But look, anytime there's expansion on the home, everybody loves, which is Wattopia. There's a lot of eyes and a lot of people out there riding. Do we all remember when they added? I think it was four tiny bypasses to Zwift Wattopia, probably two or three years ago now. They were the smallest ways. It was probably 700 meters of road all up, changed the map entirely, because the amount of loops you could do, the amount of changeups, the amount of bailouts you had, the options you got to choose from, and it sounds like adding another 450,000 route badges with this expansion. So I look forward to just like New York grinding away at those, because every time there's a new route badge, we have to go and get it. Looking forward to it, everyone loves Wattopia expansion and pairing up with the tour of Wattopia with WXP. Yeah, we'll be out there farming XP like we always do. Well, I mean, I want to circle back a little bit here on the new terrain drop. Is this one of the most impactful ways for people returning to Zwift to get you to kickstart again, your Zwift habit? I think something new is handy, something fresh. If you've ridden Tempest Fusion 35,000 times, yeah, the same scenery is always there. It might be your friends doing something different to you, different group of things, but a change of scenery is always good. But for the route badge hunters, I'm guilty. Anytime you put a new route badge, you'll find it. I've got to go and get it. Unless it's PRL full, which is ludicrous. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And I think, yeah, getting people back on something fresh. Also, if you can do it in a group ride setting or one of those big mass starts with the tour of Wattopia, where it doesn't matter if you come first or last, there's always someone to ride with. Yeah, I think it's going to be handy. It's going to be good. Ryan, I know that you thought you were done with this topic, but just really quickly, this is perfect for why Eric proposed having you as the everyman's whifter. When you ride, do you think you look for a new terrain and fun things to look at? Or I admit, I'm kind of the, just get on Tempest Fusion and do the hour. And I appreciate a lot of things about Zwift, but one of them for me is not necessarily exploring on Zwift that much. I love seeing new things, but in all reality, I end up once I've seen it going back to Tempest Fusion again. I know that's not so exciting, but I also don't like Indian food. There's a lot of things about me that aren't exciting. So, Ryan, what kind of rider are you? Do you like to see the new routes? Are you always exploring or do you just want to get your hour and a half done? Neither really. I love Indian food. I can eat that every day. Yeah. And I'm a race up. So I end up, I go on Zwift, I have the best intentions. I want to do zone two. I want to do some structured training, VO2 max, et cetera, et cetera. And I end up 10 minutes later in a pen by accident, and I'm in a crit race. So I was most excited about the new crit race courses. That's what I'm looking for. I don't go bad, chanting. That's not my thing. But I love a different map. I love a different climb. I do like climb in, even though I'm, you know, 80, 89 KG. And yeah, that's me. Okay. Well, this really ties in well. This one's for the structured training crowd. What lock is a new org mode toggle live in October. I really dig this concept. I'm sure there's going to be a segment of Zwifters that do too. Sitting right on the action bar during free ride. So one click locks you onto a target power really simplifies things. Zone two day actually stays a zone two day. Perfect. On a Zwift ride, click or play controller, you can nudge the target power so you can customize it a bit on the fly without touching your bike. Ryan, what lock? It will be good for me because it means I actually stay in zone two, which is a rare thing for me. But I think for me, I've never had a great relationship with org mode. I've always struggled with it. It's something which anyone that's watched my channel and as watched some of my older historical videos will know I haven't had the best of relationships with org mode. So what lock for me? Hopefully might be the solution to my problem. If I can stay in zone two, it has my seal of approval. All right. So Eric, how about you, org mode outside of structured workouts? I think it's cool idea. I think we're going to see a lot of riders using it as a way to do intervals, like kind of add intervals into their free rides because you can kind of enjoy the freedom of doing a free ride on whatever route you want, whatever links you want, but you can add in a bit of structure that makes sure that you hit your training targets. So you could do something like challenge yourself and say, can I hold 110% of my FTP for eight minutes and then just set it and see what happens. I would like, after I saw the concept for lot lock, my mind immediately went to what other, what's similar kind of features could do if dude like a lot ceiling or a lot floor. Like, hey, you got to do this minimum wattage sort of thing or a lot window or heart rate based. What about, what about, hey, keep me below this particular heart rate. Keep me in zone two heart rate. Something like that might be interesting. My last thought on it is, and I'm currently messaging with a prominent race organizer. We're having a debate about whether lot lock should be allowed in racing. He says no. I say yes. I say it's not going to be a help. It's only going to be a hindrance and people will quickly learn that. He says no. I'd be cheating and it's unnatural. So anyway, that's an interesting discussion to have. That's a really interesting point though. I think Shane, you just mentioned something there about rolling starts. If there was could be something that would mean that everyone didn't gun it off the start line and there could be an actual leading, that would help. Absolutely. My thoughts. Yeah. My thoughts exactly. How many times have you gotten as a race? And it's gone from the gun and you're, I'm in the third pack. Hang on. We're still in the lead in zone. The race hasn't even started. If you missed the start, good luck to you. Let's say you cap every race. It's say 150 watts, 200 watts. Maybe I mean, a rubber band could do the same thing like that as well. But put a power regulator on everyone. Be the Tour de France or ASO who was in the red car at the start there. You can't go further than this. You can't go in the system. You can't and then when it's go time, it's go time. At least you can have a. Yes, absolutely. That would be brilliant. But look, this isn't the first. So training picks virtual has what's called cruise control. So again, I wouldn't say is with a copying this feature because look, it's like saying if someone reinvented the wheel, no, the wheels of the round, round thing to use for bicycle wheels and bike frames, everyone can produce a bike frame. This is just giving people more tools to use. And I think it's been requested since day zero once. If there is, I mean, request, if you dig back through the logs on this one and the forum posts, this idea's been around for a very, very long time. But I tell you what, I think it is very, very cool for exactly what I do. And I may have been using it. I eat different platform. Just cruising along, you can just lock it to say 150 and I just cruise. I can get some emails down. I can look around and I haven't dropped down to say 130 or 80 watts or I'm not going part. It is just the best regulator out there in free ride. You don't have to do a custom workout to do a custom workout. And you can just sort of up it and down it as you feel. I'd use it every ride, absolutely. So I want it on a quick key as well. I don't want it on just the action bar. I want a quick key on my handlebars because it is very, very handy for what I do. And I could see people using it for any number of reasons. Let's just say you've said a, a time up, the great at, let's say 300, you did 300 bottom to top and that's all you had. Imagine the next day on your recover, good protein shake, good rest. Next day you come back, you go, I'm going to set that to 305. In the next day, go on the next week, maybe 310, really push yourself. So it'll give you a bit of pacing, but also just that little carrot just in front of you. You can do that in Erg with it's hard to set up a custom workout. You don't have the length, but with this you can set dynamic watts, you can go up and down, or you can lock it in. And the time frame, you can enable it or disable it. I think it's super cool. We've discussed in one of our earlier podcasts, some ideas for workout mode. This is a slight move towards more tools in workout mode. I'd like to see a lot more too, but I love it. I love this concept. So basic, but I think it's going to be very, very popular, very much like pace partners. I mean, such a simple concept, but a game change it for so many people on Zwift. On the racing side, two big pieces, Zwift Racing, a new always on series across time, trials, crits, epic formats, powered by Dura Ace kicks off this month. I love that partnership. And Zwift Racing League returns in September too with a new on ramp called Road to Zwift Racing League for people who've never raised before. Plus a new format called Race of Truth. It's a mass start, no draft, pure points racing. Again, Shane was just saying simple, always seems to be good, do you like it simple? This way Ryan. I do bring it on racing, this is why I'm here, this is why I was on Zwift in the first place, it's why I stick around, I love racing. I haven't delved into the world of ZRL, I have dabbled in it, I did do a few races when I was not last year the year before, but it's never been something which I've managed to get my teeth stuck into, so maybe this year is it, I just need to find a team to do it with, but yeah, no, it's, I love the idea of the race of truth, I did my first ever shingle like this, I did my first ever outside IRL TT race a few, two weeks ago and I loved every single second of it, it also exposed me in every single way possible and I'm now looking at skin suits and I'm looking at TT bars, yeah, I've fully covered in a rabbit hole, oh yeah, shoot up everything, I'm even, I'm even contemplating shaving my legs. You're all in my friend, I'm curious, you know, you can go back to our previous episode, there's only a couple episodes ago that we had Ryan on for the first time and we documented your really inspiring story, when did you first in that story, I mean, it was kind of about weight loss before racing for sure, when did racing start for you, how far along were you? Oh, it was completely on Zwift, I joined Zwift and for some reason in my head, when I first went on to Zwift, I did a, I did an FTP and it was, you know, very low and I got it in my head that Zwift was about racing, I never, I never did a workout, I never did a free ride, my first ever post FTP effort, the day after was a race and I loved every second of it, I was hooked, so yeah, when I go on, yeah, when I go on Zwift, I have to make a conscious decision not to race, it's an effort and the thing I do when I'm not racing, I just ride up out to Zwift because I think out to Zwift is the best fitness test on an indoor trainer. And to be honest, Ryan, you're racing yourself when you're doing that because you're doing a personal time trial, I think in your head, you're looking at the times that you've ridden before and I think that's great though, I fully appreciate that mindset, Eric, I'm always curious what gets people in Zwift and I would think that Ryan's story is pretty unique to tell you the truth. I don't think most people are racing forward when they approach it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, but let's just jump right into what we've got going on, always on racing versus scheduled events, what problem, this solves road to ZRL as an on ramp, let's just talk about your thoughts about really the big picture of Zwift racing. A big picture with this announcement at least, I think, I mean, two kind of areas of comment, the first would be that I don't, I don't really have anything to say about Zwift racing, that what they're, the big change that Zwift racing is making is they're combining their standard, their Z racing series, they're adding the crit and time trial and epic, which are longer races formats to it. So there's basically kind of four different styles of races that Zwift is organizing themselves and that are on all the time. I don't really have a comment about that, I think, I think it makes sense that they sort of bundle them under one banner, but don't really have anything else to say about that. I think it's good to have racing content on the platform. I do have a few thoughts about the Zwift racing league changes, those would be, I think there's three things really worth calling out with Zwift racing league as this first round of the new season begins and the first is that steering is now enabled for all races, which has never happened before in ZRL and breaking is enabled for the team time trials. And that's a really big deal because people who don't have steering, they're going to be at a disadvantage in some other races, at least, depending on the course. I'm really looking forward to racing a team time trial with steering. I think that's going to be really interesting and I've, I've wanted to do that actually for years. Now, I want to experience that, that's cool. Second thing, second call out is this is the first time that we're getting XP bonuses for doing ZRL races, but here's the thing nobody's talking about is that the XP is given at the lap banner in whatever race we're doing and there's two things about that that are worth noting that one is there are hidden lap banners on some maps that nobody knows about, but when you go through them, you will get 250 XP. So, so there's a lot of extra XP that's going to be given out and also some of the races are multi lap, like we're racing in Innsbruck, I think a four lap race, which means a thousand XP bonus just for doing the race. So there's a lot of XP flowing in ZRL, is the point I'm making there. Is that intentional? No, I don't think it's worth thought through the XP bonus thing at all. That's my guess, but I don't, I don't, I haven't confirmed that. The last thing is the race of truth, I think that's really interesting having basically an individual time trial to start off the round. I have a suspicion that someone in charge of making these decisions decided that they wanted to try to get rid of all the people who sandbag the lower categories and keep their power low. I'm looking at you b racers, who sandbag, who should be a racers. And I asked Martin at WTRL if that's what was going on, if this was just a way to get the sandbaggers to actually put out real power in the first race. He said it was not, but I hope it happens anyway. Well, it's interesting because that's how they're starting their season. The next go round here is with that style of race, which exactly it's, it's the first race of the season. So it would upgrade everybody if they actually put out a max effort. So it's going to be, it's going to be interesting seeing how team strategize are the sandbaggers actually going to say, I'm going to, I'm going to lose this race so that I can remain in this lower category or I'm going to go all out. What a life. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had that problem. The other thing I find fascinating with that though is if you start with the format this way, you can't do a late ad for if a racer misses the first one, then now they've got a critical data point that they're missing. You can't just put them in with the team now, right? So yeah, it makes it, it'll be a nightmare for team organizers if they get, if they get upgraded and can't race in that category anymore. Yeah. Well, I mean, really what it means is there won't be any late ad, I hope, and to that I say good, show up sign up on time and we'll all be fine. Yeah. Sign up for your proper category, sandbaggers. Exactly. All right. Shane, first impression of a draftless, mass start format on Zwift. Yeah. The true colors come out in those kinds of events. I think the Grand Fund of Events do exactly this where you've got a mist, I'm not sure if I'm recalling correctly, but I remember seeing a lot of A's, B's and C's mixed together and we see a lot of C-graders right at the top of that list. I'm like, hang on, what's going, oh, that's what's happening here. So it's a really good filter if people are going to race and there's always this Zwift effect. I mean, if you're in there, who's tanking races? No way. If you're, you know, if this wheel ahead, you're going to chase it down. So I love what they're doing here. We'll see how it works out, but if it can just add a little bit more, it's going to say authenticity to the race. And that's too much of a word to use for that particular, a bit more race of truth. Like, yeah, the truthfulness comes out, I guess. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. But yeah, that's what you guys have already talked about before. First event, just as a bit of a shake down, I'll keep that on closely on that one. I might not be racing. I've got a lot of other things coming up on the calendar moment, but I'll be watching most definitely the question going to be about diluting bigger events by just having racing always available. I think at this point now, that ship sailed in my opinion, Shane, that just having racing out there for the rions of this world, the people that are just hungry for it, I think that we should be serving them, rather than gearing up for, you know, spending months getting ready for something like Swift Games. Let's just open up the floodgate and let it race. What do you think? Yeah. If it's a lower barrier to entry, if it's just a few clicks and you don't have to sign up for this or wait this or have this or do all these double checks to get in the way, if it's just there to click and go, I'm all for it. I'm all for it. There's definitely a room for that high level racing to be there, but for the every person racing, we need more of that, if this is going to provide it, oh good. A few more worth of mentions, Swift Companion gets a home screen refresh in October, splitting your weekly activity into two cleaner screens. The in-game home screen gets its own refresh starting on the 22nd of September and a new progress widget. That's got day tags for planned rides. The drop shop keeps expanding a cone themed triathlon drop in October, then factor bikes and black ink wheels. And this Swift by Penarello paint scheme becomes purchasable and two new halo bikes are coming later this year. It's a lot, one from Survello. one from Canyon. The first new Halo brands sense launch. All right, Ryan, wrap your mind around that. There's two things you said there. The first is the Halo bikes, which is I think a long-awaited update, which keeps people engaged. There's more Halo bikes now than I've ever seen before on Zwift. So everyone's obviously done the work, so it means that they can get stuck into a new set. Which I don't think is a bad thing. I think gamifying it in that way. People like to be completionists, people like to work hard, to unlock new bikes, and yeah, why shouldn't they have some kind of advantage? Because I know these bikes, obviously, a faster or lighter or whatever. So that's good. And second question, I'm just going to ask Eric, so you mentioned the Zwift branded Pillarello. Is that the same as your IRL bike? I believe so. It's from the preview that Zwift released in the press release. It looks like it's that paint scheme. It's a paint scheme that's already in Zwift, but it was only unlocked in a single z-racing series. I remember it was September, but it was like a few years ago in September. You had to race all the races in that month to unlock that particular Pillarello scheme. And I purposely did it. I think that might be the only month I've raced every week for the z-racing series because I wanted my in-game bike to match my real life bike. Eric, I'll let you guess how much if I want to buy that Pillarello scheme. Well, so this is the big question. And here's the thing is Zwift rolled out, purchasable, what they called purchasable paint schemes with Canyon several months ago. And what this was was it was the exact same bike frame that was already in game, the Canyon Airroad, but with a different paint scheme. And when you bought it, you had to buy, you bought the whole bike. You weren't paying just for a paint scheme. So you might think a paint scheme would cost, like in modern day, you might say, well, it would cost, you know, a quarter of the price of the frame, a paint scheme. You're not buying a frame. You're buying a, you know, a color. But what Zwift did is they actually, you have to buy the whole frame. And the thing is, is a lot of riders have already upgraded their current Canyon Airroad. So when they bought the one that they bought the paint scheme that they liked the look of more, the problem is that frame isn't upgraded, which is really in, in my mind, it's an unintuitive mess that Zwift never should have gotten into in the first place. They should have sold just paint schemes that you can add onto your currently upgraded frame and not have to upgrade a paint scheme. Basically, is what you're doing. Super goofy. So all that to say, I have no idea what they're going to charge. And I don't know if they're going to fix that problem before they roll it out. I've told them multiple times I think they should. I think it's way more intuitive. And right now the game works in two different ways. You have some frames that have multiple paint schemes in your garage that are all under the one frame. And then you've got the Canyon mess that's, that is individual bikes. So it's, it's goofy because they're doing it two different ways. And it needs to be cleaned up to be simple. This reeks of the XP problem from a couple years ago about boy, you can pay me now or you can pay me later with these kind of things. And I'm with you on that. So still sticking with you here, Eric, which of these quick hits actually changes day to day usage versus just being cosmetic? Well, the halo bikes definitely do for some riders for the riders who who have the orange stripe next to their name. The riders who are on Zwift every day putting in big miles, having more halo bikes is really attractive. But the companion app refresh, things like that are the things that we, that a user would never request, but it actually improves the quality of life for everybody on the platform, no matter, no matter how often you use it. And I think that's going to be really good. That's kind of, they're refreshing it to bring their fitness metrics to the foreground, to make the companion app kind of uniquely Zwift and just to clean it up because the app really looks like they've just, they just keep adding things to the home screen that they think are important. So it's been, it's become a bit of a mess and they're going to make it more intuitive. So I think that'll be a quality of life improvement for everybody. But one of those odd ones where nobody requests it, but everybody enjoys it. Shane, any of these quick hits rank above the headline items for you? Not really. I like to love a little things in there. I want to know more about the progress widgets. I'm looking at my iPhone right here next to me. It's in lock mode, but I have the baseball school sort of widgety thing on the lock screen right next to me. I can see the METS are up 8.0. And it's the bottom of the fourth. Don't have to touch the phone. I've got some good information. How does that relate to the progress widget? I hope what Zwift will be doing is adding to the companion app. A little thing like that that on my lock screen, I can say that I've written only four hours this week or on 50% into my goals for this week without even opening my phone. A little quality of life things like that. I'd like to see. So hopefully that's what I'm interpreting if that will be. As it comes to the rest, the drop shop, I'm locked into upgrading the tron bike. And I'm on the grind. I think I'm halfway through. I've got thousands and thousands of cases to go. So new bikes, new halo, I'm not interested in any of that. I saw something leak. One of the, there was a green halo bike. Someone posted up on Reddit today. It looked horrendous, like all those other bikes they've put as halo bikes. I'm not a fan of those old school roller skate things or weird shaped things. I have no nostalgia for that. Give me the new stuff or give me the upgraded tron bike. So that's one about there. What else we have in that list? There's quite a few things. The Kona thing to try us on drop. We didn't see any tri bars on these Zwift Ride V2 frame. Did we? They're going to have to do something soon. I reckon around Kona. We start seeing elbows put together and arms out front. I reckon we'll see. We've got to see something around these with Ride V2 in real life extensions coming soon. So I think that might not be just a soft forge there. Let's see, let's see. Shane is Zwift leaving money on the table by not creating the ability for the user to purchase stuff on their bike or that kind of thing. It feels like a lot of other video games offer that kind of thing, allowing you to stand out in the Zwift verse really. Is that something that they should look at? No, please no. Please no. Don't do that. No in-game microtransactions. I have a son who wants V bucks all the time because he wants to purchase this or that upgraded in Fortnite and there's a new Lego Fortnite, this, that V bucks, this real cash into funny money. I don't want to say that in Zwift. I'd rather us have to work for the upgrades and I do like that it drops, drops of sweat, drops of sweat. We actually have to work for these things. So do that, do that instead. No microtransactions, thanks. You know, fundamentally I completely agree with Shane, Eric and Ryan. What are your thoughts on that? Buying status on an airline, that kind of thing. So there's two things I just wanted to say before you move on. The first thing is I completely agree with Shane. I've got two teenage daughters, my youngest is all about the V bucks. So there has to be a line drawn and it will get ridiculous. But I would like to be able to customize my avatar. I want my avatar to look like me in real life. I want my bike to look like my bike. Would you pay for that? No. I think we should keep it in the drop. Hard work and graft. But I do think there should be an element of GTA 5 or 6 or whatever the latest one is that they do microtransactions. But they also have in-game purchases that you can make. So however that would look, I think that would be a great idea. But just going back to when you was talking about the companion app, I know this is going slightly off of tangent. But there's one quick request from me and I'm going to use your platform to make it, which is please allow me to reply to people when I do an activity and people leave me a message please with, if you're listening to this, allow me to reply to people because I feel so bad ignoring those that leave me a message on my activities. I want to say thank you. I want to interact. I want to have a chat and I want it to be social because Zwift for me is about the community. That's the main USP and the fact that I can't reply to any. I can leave a message. But the person has to go in and check to see if I've replied. I want it to pop up and say, Ryan replied. Like it doesn't strive. Like it does on any other social media app. I love that. Eric, I'm going to guess that you have heard. I actually, this is the first time I've ever even heard of V bucks. And I'm proud of that. Or I'm happy about that. Your son is, I know, in Europe now going to school. Did he ever ask for V bucks? He didn't ask for V bucks directly, but he definitely asked for real bucks. So he could get V bucks. Yeah. So I agree with you guys. I think I think it's like a good crit race. Keep it in the drops. I love it. I love it. Well said. That should be the title of this episode to tell you the truth. All right. Well, I remember when we were all at Zwift Community Live. I thought it would have been so cool if there was an orange whoop band that you could get. I actually have a whoop now. I love it. I really appreciate what they're all about. So sticking with today's news because one of the announcements sets up our next topic perfectly here. Zwift now has a live integration with whoop. It reads your whoop recovery score on a red low recovery day. It'll automatically scale back your personal recommendations. So you're not digging a deeper hole to tell you the truth. Like you don't want to be later this fall. It goes both ways. Here's Zwift rides and runs. We'll show up inside of the whoop app also. So Eric. Why woop specifically is the first wearable integration? I think it's just because woop is super popular and their metric has a solid reputation. Their recovery score has a good reputation in the industry, so it makes sense to partner with them as kind of the first third party app to feed recovery data in this with system. But I would also say we're definitely going to see similar integrations from other partners soon as well, I've heard some names thrown about. Another good reason to use something like woop is I think to address a common complaint that I've heard from a lot of Zwifters since Zwift started using their fitness metrics and that is that Zwift isn't reading all of our activities into the system. Zwift only reads our rides and only added running a few months ago, but a lot of Zwifters do other things. They swim, they cross-country ski, they row, they go on hikes, they go to the gym. So Zwift sometimes, the companion app will tell you that you're fresh. It thinks that you're fresh, but you may not be because it didn't see the big gym session you did or the swim or the cross-country skiing. So integrating woop and other wearables, I think is one sort of quick solve that Zwift can do to solve that problem without them needing to kind of add every activity into their system and figure out how to quantify that and give you a fitness score. Shane, first wearable integration of significance here, what do you see coming next? I look the popular ones out there and there's a lot of them, the Fitbits, the Garmin with their new Circa, even just Apple Health in general, wherever you're pulling that daughter in from. What we're seeing here, though, is that because due to the lack of standards, or sorry, the amount of different standards there are to choose from, every integration is its own individual project. And that's going to be tough on the developers and tough on the daughter integration side of things. So we've got so many silos of the same data from different companies, stored in different ways. All we want to do is just have our digital self or our digital shadow represent what we do, but how it's done and when it's done on certain platforms depends on what company you go with. So as a consumer, things get a little tricky. Let's just say I've got the Fitbit air or when is that going to be degraded? Or do I go and buy a whoop or if I've gone from whoop to the circuit, when's that coming in? I'm still sleeping. I'm still running. I'm still swimming. But now the data's not there. It becomes a little tricky. That's what I don't like. I like open standards easy of use of things. So it's just going to get a bit tricky. Excuse me. I'm going to give you an emotional about that. I'm joking. I will for the developers, though, because my word, it's going to be so hard. Back in the day, we had like connection standards, like think about your app plus smart trainer. There we go. We had app plus FEC. You can use any smart trainer with Swift. But now we've gone. We're announcing. Are these whoop thing? Imagine we're not announcing that you can use this new training with Swift or that new training with Swift. It's not a new feature because there was a standard that could all use for connectivity and data acquisition. So, but I hope it's smooth sailing. But it's going to be a job for these new, and for almost any company. What you're going to have is a partnership data acquisition engineer. I guess it's not a commercial partnership, although that'll be a part of it. You're going to have to keep these things rolling. And let's say, or a ring release a new firmware or we're releasing a new firmware, something breaks. Oh my God. The phone exchange is back in the day with the wires plugging everywhere. Yeah, that's healthy. It's going to be crazy. But hopefully I can take over the coding of all that. I'll see you across. Shane, does this open the door for a whole new kind of company, someone that connects the garments, the Zwift, the Strava, the kind of a data broker, maybe a data intermediary? Yeah. For sure. Maybe even one that would then standardize everything. So let's just say you've got all these different types of brands. They just fit into one type of connectivity service and that that's what you connect to everything else. But guess what? There's probably no money in that that people can extract. So yeah, it's all going to be very commercial. We're seeing a mix now of commercial plus licensing plus. Another thing as well, we haven't even touched on is the data storage in different regions. There's different legislation about what you can store for how long, who has access to that. It gets really tricky really fast, sorry to bring it down a little bit. I think this integration is kind of cool and it's going to be a lot smarter to give you exactly the work that you should be doing. But there's more behind the scenes, lots more. No, I appreciate the reality check with all of that chain for sure. So this now brings us to the main event for this segment GCN put out a video last week. Eric, this is right up your alley using 12 months, a full year of Zwift Rider data, millions of data points to show where you actually rank against other riders your age and gender. It's interesting. Let's talk about that first, Ryan, your thoughts. So 12 months of Zwift Rider data, this is new to me. I haven't heard anything about this. I haven't seen the GCN video. So millions of data points to show where you actually rank against other riders your age and gender. Listen, I'm not somebody who deep dives into data. I've never been somebody who measures himself against other people. I mean, I'm doing a Zwift race, of course I do. But when it actually comes to my progression and why I've achieved, I measure myself against how I did yesterday and last week and last year. So is it going to make any real difference? I need to watch the video before I pass judgment, but probably not. Eric GCN themselves admit they don't know how many of these riders have actually gone all out. It's going to be a little bit of a needle in a haystack. How do you actually pull your own numbers, Zwift Power and that kind of thing? There's a couple of options I wrote an article about this over on Zwift Insider. Probably the most sensible option is to look at your own Zwift dashboard as Zwift.com. They have your best numbers there. If maybe your best numbers are outdoors, then you might look on Strava. Strava, assuming you're feeding all your rides into Strava, you can get that data there as well. Those would be the two spots I would say. I mean, intervals.acu, wherever people are feeding their data, you can get those metrics. But the problem with this is it comes back to what Shane was saying, which is it's only really relevant if it's all put into one data collection, you know, server somewhere and we're able to go on one website and we just feed everything we do outside and inside onto it and we can we collate it because, you know, even earlier, I mean Eric went out through a ride and we both got PRs pop up and we were like, but that was just an easy recovery. But I mean, I was with Eric, so my I probably did set P new PRs to stay in his in his draft, but unless you have a website somewhere that collates everything you do at the gym outside on Zwift and you're able to then look at that information and know it's accurate, all this information, it just becomes you can't see the wood for the trees, I think. No, I agree. It's interesting. I mean, yeah, having a bazillion data points is great, but Shane, you need to know what you're doing with it. You need to have a process to analyze it. Yeah. I mean, bottom 10, average top 10 is this even the most useful way to frame this for viewers. Yes. I guess to sort of move this to another discussion is that all of this is about best performance, PBs, things like that. Look at our natural state is to detrain and to not improve. I want to know what are we doing now to motivate people who are not pushing PBs anymore? I mean, my personal best for one minute wouldn't be the same as 10 years ago. It's going down. Wouldn't be the same as last year either. What do we do to motivate those people? What are we putting in in in game to make the game more incentive? How do I how do I put it here? I'm going that strict. So for right. Yeah. There we go. There we go. I'm going backwards fast, but I want to be rewarded for that. It's probably not the way I'm looking at it. But you're consistently going backwards. Yeah. I guess it's about framing it in different ways. It'll be nice to see within a three month curve, rather than a lot of platforms do that. Give us the last six weeks, give us the last six months, the last 12 months. I think it's more relevant. But how people use that data, there's many different ways to look at that. For me, I look at it with a bit of nostalgia. Oh, I used to be quick. Where is someone might look at it who's getting into cycling? Like, yes, I'm hitting new PBs. Great. Yeah. You can use it in any different ways. But again, as Ryan was saying, as I was saying, it's hard to with it, always data in all these different places. What's our one spot? And for me, and going back to the widgets, I use Strava. I use Strava every, everything feeds into Strava, sometimes private, sometimes public people want people to see it. If I'm hitting 10 hours a week in around 300 Ks, give or take, I'm happy. That's all I track. So it depends how deep in the weeds you want to go with all of this. But again, great to have the option to see. All right. So here's the bigger question. Zwift is sitting on an enormous pile of data. Every ride, every effort from millions of riders, rider rankings is one use for it. But what else do you actually do with that? This has always been a question, my mind, of how you turn that value of data into something. Eric, let's go to you on this personalized training plans or pacing built off of real population data instead of self-selected FTP tests. And let's talk about it. Zwift has a massive amount of data, and Stravelling Garmin have far more, and there are tons of opportunities there, aggregating and analyzing that data would let you know quickly what a writer could expect to improve on and to what level over a given length of time, given their gender, given their age, et cetera. I love the ideas Zwift offering a training plan and saying something like, Eric, there's a 90% possibility that your five minute power will go up by 40 watts if you complete this program. Because that's what we really want to know, right? We want to know if I invest this time in this effort, what's the likely payoff? What can you assure me of? On the recovery side, Zwift could say something like, hey, if you keep your power as own two or below today, and you ride for around an hour, it'll give you an extra 10% on your top end, and tomorrow's race, you've already got scheduled, there are lots of possibilities here. And Zwift could also, they could analyze subscriber behavior patterns and demographics to create better content, better events, better workout plans, et cetera. The stuff that people are going to love and use because they've analyzed it and they figured out what people love and use. It's already happening on some level, I'm sure. But it also seems like something you could always dig deeper into and always improve on. Shane overtraining or injury risk pattern detection at a population level, I like the sound of that, helping keep people aware of what they're doing. Yeah, this is a tough one. You need to feed the system more information at the context of why you're riding. I mean, for example, if I just stop riding Zwift, it doesn't know I'm injured. So you need more context about why things are happening on Zwift. So maybe a little survey being sent out every now and then if you're not riding Zwift or something, we'll get more information on that. But look, the amount of data they have is phenomenal. The amount of fit files that Zwift will have from outdoor rides now too. So to be able to pull that in and then look, to be honest, these new number crunches we call AI, they can do things so fast and things we haven't even thought of yet with this data. So I'm super cool to see where they go with it. I still think even things like time of day because they could say, look, hey, it's 5pm. You know, it's cold outside. So you're unlikely to be indoors for too long. We know you've got a family afford. Again, you've got to feed all this data into it. But more contextual, valuable training sessions, rather than like here, go and do some zone two for three hours. It's like, well, it's 9pm at night. Hang on, I've got time for that. Or maybe go outside, but I'll hang on, it's raining. Yeah, it's just pulling that information in. This is where things are going to go. This is no question about it. The Fitbit already does that. And I knew the other week that I flew three hours. It told me to take it easy and drink more water. Did not even enter. It just knew my GPS location had changed. It assumed I flew because of the time. Little things like that. They seem easy, but they are absolutely what's coming soon. So I can't wait to see where this is all heading. But as I've mentioned before, previously in this episode, about the privacy angle of the data. If it's under 16-year-olds, it's collecting data from them, different regions, where the information is stored, etc. But I can't think of any one feature I want to see. I just can't wait to see where it goes. I've been feeding my nerd data into LLMs, and it's been spitting out information that even I haven't spotted before. And it's going to take my reviews and things in a different direction. I'm talking to John Mayfield here today about that. Actually, here it's with. And he was like, you're doing what with what? Oh, and I sort of explained to him what I'm doing with the Urg Ride Feel things and all this with the data that I have. Do you imagine what you can do with millions of points of data? So, yeah, wait and see, I guess. Let's see what they do with it. But there's some pretty cool stuff coming. So, Ryan, thanks again for joining us here. I want to get your take on that final discussion here. Are you ready to really let Zwift completely into your life and tell you how long and how hard to ride to get a result to win your next Zwift race? Are you committed like this? Absolutely. I think Zwift will be significantly kinder to me than Eric has this week. So, this has been a training camp guys. I came over here for a video creation break and it's ended up. I'm going to go back significantly stronger than I've ever been. So, I'm looking forward to having a break on Zwift if I'm completely honest with you. But guys, I really appreciate you inviting me on. It's a real pleasure. You know, it's great to chat with you guys. I think you're doing a great job here, keeping everyone updated. And most importantly, entertained, because that's what this is about. This is about entertainment, us having fun, keeping fit. So, yeah, thank you. Well, thanks, Ryan. And Ryan, you would know, as well as anyone, how much a comment or a like on social media really makes a huge difference. We would greatly appreciate it. All of us here at Wattage Cottage, if you would do us that favor and more importantly, share the show. If you enjoy it, you know, other people that are into this kind of thing. If you would let them know about Wattage Cottage, it would really help us grow. It's been really fun as we've built. Ryan, you've been a really nice part of that. So, thanks. Quickly, give yourself a plug. How do people find your YouTube show? Thanks, Dave. Let me, let me plug my channel. So, Rowan Condon on YouTube, C-O-N-D-O-N, just put my name in there. And then I'll pop up. Or you could just put Zwift. I come up quite often there as well. So, yeah. Eric, thanks again for your time. Take it easy on Ryan, would you? I will, I will. We're already trimming down tomorrow's ride through the Redwoods. So, it'll be a glorious and zone two zone one excursion. Okay. You're using E-I, Eric Intelligence here. I like hearing that. By the way, I saw the comment on your mustache on social media and I would agree that is really coming in nicely. Ryan, back me up on that. Thank you. 100% is a man's mustache. I will say, only men can really, really appreciate how awesome it is. Oh, a man from 1820, I would say, who was a bear hunter? Yes. So, perfect. Hey, Shane, happy birthday, my friend. Thanks for coming to America. Yeah. Happy birthday. Yeah. What'd you think of Colorado? By the way, Shane, did you enjoy my home state? I absolutely loved it. Let me tell you a funny little story. Even though we've got to go. We've got to go. We're done on time here. But we rode up to Gold Hill, I think it was. And it was a very, it was 2,400 meter. It was high up. It was, I was, and I said to like, Desiap, who was with us in Berlin, I'm like, this is a real town. This is not just a touristy theme park town. This is a, and they've laughed at me. They're like, what are you talking about? It's the first time I've actually been out to one of those real country towns where they're like wooden seatposts and trucks and olds. You know, think of everything that you see at Disney Land that I just saw yesterday. It's real life out there, like that. And not to talk down a little bit, that's just the history of that place out there. It was amazing to ride into. I can't wait to get back out that way. So, I need to see more of the, the country here. It's absolutely amazing. I flew back over the Grand Canyon as well from Denver over North Arizona, was it? I forgot my geography right? Looking down could not believe it. Absolutely amazing scenery. So, I want to get down on the ground down there with the rider bike or not, I'm not sure, maybe a gravel bike. But yeah, just absolutely loving my time here in the States, which is over in about three hours. Actually, I got to catch a plane. We're going to let Shane get to the airport. Good old LAX, I think, is where he'll be flying out of. Guys, it is always a real pleasure. Ryan, thanks again. I hope we can get you back, Eric. You're the man. No doubt about it. Shane, safe travels. Happy birthday to everybody listening. We'll see you next time on Wattage Cottage. [Music]