Riding indoors got turned into something you have to qualify for.
The apps that got here first built their world around one kind of rider: the one with a plan, a block to finish, and a number to hit. Everything outside that got quietly filed as not counting, and not being considered training.
Fair enough. Some people want exactly that, and the people selling it are good at it. We are not trying to take it off anybody.
But a lot of us on a trainer are not building towards anything. We are inside because it goes dark at five, or the roads are sheet ice, or there is one hour between one thing and another, and it is the only hour there is.
A lot of those people looked at indoor cycling and thought: those aren’t my people. They were right about the apps, they are dorky. They were wrong about the work, because time on the bike is time on the bike.
Any ride is a good ride.
That's the whole argument.
You got on. The legs went round. None of that needs to be scored, qualified, or explained to anyone afterwards. It counted while it was happening.
Forty minutes half-watching something on the laptop is a ride. Twenty, because twenty was all there was, is a ride. The bad one you nearly didn’t start is, if anything, the better story.
Who this is for.
Most people here came to cycling sideways. From gravel, from mountain biking, from commuting through one winter and finding they didn’t mind it, from a friend who wouldn’t shut up about it.
The bike is scuffed and loved. The kit doesn’t match, on the days there is kit. FTP is either a number they have forgotten or one they never measured, and so far it has cost us nothing.
When we ride inside it is because outside isn’t happening. Weather, daylight, ice, logistics, a sleeping kid, a knee that has opinions. Nothing is being chased. We want the legs to go round, and to feel better afterwards than we did before.
Plenty of us know exactly what we are doing, by the way. We have simply decided we would rather lead our training adventure ourselves. Cycling worked that way for a long time before everyone began training like the pros do.
What Indore won’t do.
Every one of these is something we could add tomorrow, and yet we decide not to.
Tell you what today is for.
Nothing in here holds a view on your week. Sessions are there when you want some structure, and they arrive without a calendar attached. Miss one and nothing happens, because there is nothing to miss.
Make the numbers the point.
Power, heart rate, time, the lot — recorded and kept, because one day you might want them. None of it is graded. A record, not a score. A witness, not a judge.
Pretend you’re somewhere else.
No landscapes, no avatars, no weather. You are in a room with a fan on, and indoor is indoor. It has never needed an apology. It is what it is.
Grow in order to keep you.
Nothing gets built because it lifts engagement. If it doesn’t serve the ride it doesn’t ship, and the best version of this app is the one you stop noticing.
The point of the whole thing turns up about 10 minutes after you get off the bike, and it isn’t a graph.
It is the small, slightly surprised feeling of having ridden on a day you were fairly sure you wouldn’t. That’s it. That’s the product.
The name is meant to sound like an Italian sports brand from about 1984.