REASON TO RIDE
JAMES SHRUBSALL GETS SOCIAL IN CYBERSPACE
For the past three months and counting, doing any kind of social group ride has been a complete no-no. Even now that we can get together in groups of six, bike riding still tends to be fraught with complexity: avoiding the stream of heavy respiration coming from the rider ahead for one, not to mention keeping at least a metre apart, including avoiding bunching up at junctions. It’s enough to completely take the sheen off in-the-flesh group rides.
I’m generally more than happy to head out on my own anyway — I find conversation a challenge when riding with faster riders, which in my case is almost everybody. But now and then I do miss the camaraderie of the road, which led me last week to try out a virtual group social ride for the first time.
I chanced upon the REVO Social
Sub2 (that’s sub 2W/kg) ride on the Zwift events page for that day and decided it perfectly fitted the bill. Even at my paltry level of fitness, less than 2W/kg is nice and steady. Plus if it didn’t work out I could just log off. There would be no awkward excuses, and no long ride back to the car or to home. Just stop and go have a sandwich.
It does sound a pretty weird idea. How can a ride be social when you’re only together in cyberspace and you only see each other as an avatar? But to my surprise I really did feel a sense of camaraderie during our couple of laps of Zwift’s London course, which was helped by some good banter and plenty of encouragement.
It was obviously a long way from a real life group ride but I found it a great way to pass an hour and will certainly be doing it again.