An end to the dreadmill? Zwift launches a running platform

 I have a theory about treadmill running. Much as a dog year supposedly equates to seven human years, so a mile run on a treadmill equates to seven run outdoor. It doesn’t matter what tricks I try to make it more interesting, time on a treadmill passes slower than a snail on Valium through molasses. But could a saviour finally be at hand (or even foot) with the launch of Zwift running?

Keen cyclists will probably already be familiar with the hugely successful virtual platform. Launched in 2014, there are now 500,000 cyclists signed up, averaging 1m miles a day between them. Zwift is essentially a platform that gets you fitter, with a game element. You link up your home turbo trainer to a computer (or TV) using a speed or cadence sensor, and then, when cycling, you move – at the same speed you are cycling on the trainer – through a hyperreal virtual world. Alongside you are other athletes doing the same. That’s one of the platform’s USPs: all the people you see around you are “real” – there are no bots put into the game just to make it look busier. You can ride with a “real” group – or with a friend who happens to live on the other side of the world. Some of the big group events attract up to 3,500 participants.

That model for cycling is now available for runners. To speed on foot through the virtual worlds (there are three, which rotate day by day) you will need a footpod – available from about £30. This allows the platform to calculate your speed in the same way as the speed/cadence meter does for cyclists. And if an admittedly brief experiment using Zwift with a treadmill was anything to go by, it’s pretty accurate – the footpod and the treadmill speed counter were always within 0.1km/hr of each other.



Source: theguardian

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