Bored of the same old turbo screens?

You are a dolphin off a warm coast at first light and your legs are its tail. Above about 60% of your FTP you climb; below it you sink — so the hoops strung through the water are an interval session drawn in the sea. Run the shoals, chase the line, and when the game calls a swell, throw everything at it and see how far out of the water you can get. Land nose-first to keep the chain. The whole pod jumps with you.

A synthwave rhythm ride down a black-chrome canyon, every light in it pulsing on the beat of a track the game writes itself. Neon arches fly at you two to the bar and only score if your legs are turning at the speed the music is asking for. Every eight bars the cadence band moves — spin it out, grind a big gear, cruise — and then the track breaks down and a wall of light comes at you that only fifteen seconds over threshold will punch through.

The hardest thing on the site. A horde fills the road behind you from kerb to kerb, it gets faster every minute of the session, and the only thing keeping it off you is watts. Wrecks to steer round, side streets that empty without warning, and every two or three minutes a barricade where the survivors let you through and hand you three upgrade cards. Sixteen upgrades that stack and feed each other, so no two runs build the same way.

The gentle one, and the reason you can stay on the bike for an hour. Golden hour on a northern fell, thirty sheep scattered over half a mile, and you are the collie. Steering puts you on one side of them or the other and they move away from wherever you are, so it is all worked out in geometry. Push too hard and they break and scatter — which is why it is an hour of honest zone 2 with just enough sprinting to head off a runaway.

Something seventy metres tall has come over the seawall, and you are not driving the machine sent to stop it — you are its reactor. Hold above the called target and the whine climbs until the spinal cannon lets go on its own; then the core is too hot to touch and you have ninety seconds of riding under a ceiling while it cools. Brace for the tail, hold the shield, aim for the weak point. It is eight over-unders with sprints in it, and it does not feel like one.

Low level down a valley with the walls close enough to count the hedgerows. Your watts are thrust, and thrust is the only thing holding you up: ease off and the nose drops. Tanks on the valley floor to put rounds into, missiles coming up behind you that only a proper sprint on the burner will outrun, and a rear-view mirror so you can watch them do it. Clip a wall or the ground and it costs you a life.

Dover beach, a klaxon from the pilot boat, and then the hardest pacing test on the site. The tide runs square to your course, so it can never push you towards France — it only slides you along the French coast while you swim. Feeds every few minutes that you have to ease off to take. Miss Cap Gris-Nez by more than a couple of kilometres and the coast falls away and the distance left goes up. Ferries, container ships, and a chart in the corner telling you the truth.

The one that started all this. Warm up for a minute, then the dead wake up. Packs come after you and the box at the bottom tells you the power you need to hold to pull away; hold them off long enough and they give up. Roadside shamblers lunge as you pass, and if one gets hold of you the pedals go heavy until you sprint it off. Swing the weapon with the space bar or a Bluetooth remote. Three lives.