The story     

    This past week, my dad, sister, and I did the Zwift Running League relay on Friday. Here is the shortened version of the story! We knew that we wouldn\’t be able to do the cross country races so we decided we would just do the relay races for the fun of it. At the start, my sister was having some leg pain so she had to take it slow for her turn, then when I started running, I couldn\’t see anyone, and no one could see me! It was too late to log off and back on so I just had to run not being able to see anyone. I started to run but my avatar was not moving. I quickly tried to pair the run pod again but the iPad wasn\’t finding it. We had to quickly switch my sister Sophie\’s run pod onto my shoe. We didn\’t have time to calibrate so my pace was around 30 seconds off, reading faster than I was actually running. We also noticed that everyone in our category was running 5-6 minute miles. When signing up I thought I put us in the right category, apparently not. After I finished my turn, my dad got the run pod onto his shoe and began running. The running pod suddenly started fluctuating a ton, saying he was running 15 minute miles while he was actually doing 7-8 minute miles. This issue lasted to the end of his shift and by the end the total mileage for the run on the treadmill was 4.48, rather than 3.6.

The issues

    The biggest issue that we faced was the run pod not being calibrated properly. The category did not matter too much because we would compare our finishing time to other runner our level. Calibrating the run pod to each individual is important because of the different stride lengths that can mess things up quite a bit. The second issue was being in the wrong category. I am not really a runner so the different category forms were pretty confusing to me, like the aspect of having 2/3 of the riders able to go one pace, and the rest of the team being able to go another pace.

Takeaways

    We learned a lot from this experience. Next relay we will definitely need to be ready earlier to make sure everything is calibrated, working, and make sure were in the right category. We look forward to doing the upcoming relays! Thanks for reading! Did you do Zwift Running League this year? If so, how did you do?