Zwift easy ride, Sunday 29th March

Does anyone fancy a very easy Zwift introductory group ride on Sunday 29th at 11am, for 45 minutes? Anyone welcome, but if you're new to Zwift you should have tried a ride on it at least once beforehand. That's just to make sure your setup works with Zwift.

The ride will be no-drop, so as long as you don't stop pedalling completely Zwift will automatically make sure we all stay together.

If you want to join the ride, just use the Zwift "Companion app" on your phone to search Zwift users for me (Barry Redmond) and "follow" me.

I'll set up a Zwift "meetup" and invite you to join it. You'll see the invitation in the Zwift Companion app, and you'll be able to accept it.

Then on Sunday morning get yourself ready and logged in to Zwift well before 11am, and you'll be prompted to join the ride start.

Remember that clocks go forward 1 hour on Saturday night.

Late news: I just saw a note from Zwift that they have updated the software, so it will automatically update the next time you start it. Please allow time for that before the ride on Sunday.

Sounds great!

Hopefully it doesn’t take me a long to find you tomorrow as it took to join up today!

See you tomorrow for the spin thanks

Reminder to those who followed me on Zwift to join this ride: You need to accept the invitation that I sent you, if you haven't already done so.

In the Zwift Companion app on your phone check under "Events". Our meetup should show up there marked with a green "Going".

Great idea Barry. Had planned to join today, but tech issues worked against me. Am fully set up now, so will plan to join group spins in future.

Brilliant stuff, Barry. Zero kudos to anyone who thought the ride started at <cough> 11.45am...
Looking forward to the next one.

Thanks for organising it Barry. As well as making the turbo more interesting, I now have loads of new favourite cartoon characters.

Thanks for organising Barry - wasn’t into Zwift before but the social side of that made a big difference!

Looking forward to the next one

That went well this morning I think - nothing too strenuous and the social side of things was good. Sorry I was silent during the ride - I couldn't figure out how to type messages to the group while I was also trying to keep up!

Did I see some of you having technical/internet problems shortly after the start? What happened? Any advice to help others avoid the same in future?

Did the whole 'meetup' thing work ok for everyone (aside from the person who shall remain nameless who got the time wrong....) ?

Organising a meetup in Zwift is a bit clunky, so I'm trying to figure out a way of making club rides easier. At present anyone who wants to receive an invitation to a meetup must be 'following' the organiser on Zwift. That could get complicated very quickly if different people are organising group rides, but I don't know if there's any alternative.

I'm also exploring using discordapp.com or similar to provide voice communications between everyone in the group during a ride. Quite a few groups use that with Zwift I think, so hopefully that could be set up very simply. We'll see.

Lastly - trying to drop the ride leader in the first 2k is bad form! Names have been noted.

Sorry I missed the meet up. But I’m up for doing some more meet ups. Just added up on zwift companion Barry

Hi Barry/All,

Thanks Barry for organising Sunday, it worked quite well in my opinion and the few I talked to after seemed to enjoy it. Having the "stay together" feature kept the 15 of us within c.5 seconds which was good to have.

I don't know of a better function on Zwift (or any platform) to avoid issues with different people running group rides but the club feature sounds promising, if far away. So for now, I'd say continue on with the current way, with people posting on this thread for group rides?

Tomorrow I was planning a ride similar in length and intensity to Sundays at 9:00 around Road to Ruins with the No-Drop Stay Together on. I'll add the people in Orwell who follow me and if you don't want to ride you can just ignore it. If anyone else wants to be added follow me on Zwift 'Andrew Ryan'.

Hopefully 'see' some of you tomorrow, Andrew

Road to the Ruins has the Gravel Surface and Road Surface, which have different CRRs in game.

So it'll be interesting to see how riders on MTB & Gravel bikes are kept together with riders on Road bikes.

Indeed , might visit the drop shop now that you say that Luke. Although the "Stay together" feature might decrease the effect.
FYI to anyone riding tomorrow, I'm still doing the spin in the morning as I am busy later during Barry's spin.