CorsaiTOOLS & GUIDES

GUIDES

Learnings and ramblings from a fitness journey.

Just writing about my adult rediscovery of endurance sports and all the mistakes and learning along the way.

I’m not a coach, physio or personal trainer. I’m a nerd who ran high school XC and got back into it in the 2025 run club surge. I feel like I did a lot of things wrong and some things right, learning a whole bunch along the way. These writings are opinionated and based on my experience.

FEATURED RAMBLINGS

You just set up indoors and don’t know what to doYou just got a Zwift Ride. Here’s the first month.6 MIN →You’re injured and watching your fitness drain awayToo much too soon9 MIN →Your easy run came back red and you feel unfitWhy you’re in zone 5 on your easy runs5 MIN →

EVERYTHING ELSE

A gear head’s guide to not buying everything at onceBuy the thing that measures before the thing that goes fast. Fit, then pedals, then - much later - the frame.

Getting your buddies into cyclingThey don’t need an expensive bike. Lend them one that fits, start them on flat pedals, and don’t rush them onto a long group ride the way I rushed my brother.

Your first group ride in LAComing from running you’ll show up with far more engine than handling. Hold your line, don’t surge inside the group, and make Better Than Brunch your first one.

Do I need to do strength training?Yes. Fifteen minutes twice a week, a wooden band platform and some latex bands. Not a $3k home gym.

What does it mean to burn a match?W' is the anaerobic battery sitting on top of your aerobic engine. Hard short efforts drain this battery and it replenishes slowly, sometimes not for the remainder of your ride.

What is FTP, actually?A number whose definition is genuinely debated, whose job is to anchor your zones, and which became a scoreboard.

Cycling workouts by zoneSweet spot, threshold, VO2max and the long easy one, written out in watts. Every target is one estimated number times a fraction.

VO2max is mostly a vanity metricYour watch is guessing it, and it most likely isn’t the thing limiting your performance.

Which clipless pedals, and the fall you’re having anywayGo SPD - two screws, smaller cleat, and you can walk in them. Back the tension all the way off and practice unclipping before you need it.

The soft saddle is a trapSquishy gel vs hard: why firm wins once you break it in, which takes about two weeks. Plus the cardboard sit-bone measurement.

Use your Zwift Ride without paying for ZwiftYes, for ERG workouts. A free iPhone app holds your watts and records the ride to a .fit, with no roads, no racing and no subscription.

How golf shot tracers work, and how to add one to your videos for freeA golf ball isn’t a parabola and it isn’t evenly timed, which is why a drawn arc looks fake. Tag the ball a couple of times and let a flight model do the rest.

Your Zwift ride went to somebody else’s StravaYou rode on your friend’s account, so the ride is on their Strava. Download the .fit off Zwift’s website and upload it to yours.

Fix your heart rate zones in StravaStrava guesses your max from your age. Mine is 205 and it guessed 188, so every easy run got filed as threshold.

Fix your heart rate zones in Apple HealthApple guesses your max heart rate. Measure it and set it yourself, otherwise every zone below it is wrong.