Join the PD Avengers Strava and Zwift Clubs!
By Rob Warner
Exciting news! Now you can exercise and promote the PD Avengers. You can now be an advocate simply by exercising under the PD Avengers name. How can I do this you may ask? By tracking your exercise on Strava and joining other PD Avengers on the most popular indoor cycling/running app in the world on Zwift. We now have a PD Avengers club on each of these popular platforms!
STRAVA
Strava is a free app you can download on Google Play or the App Store and it is free to join, Premium membership gives you more perks of course but you don’t need it to join the PD Avengers club. Strava is an internet based company that allows people to track physical exercise while incorporating social network features. It is mostly used for cycling and running using Global Positioning System data. Although it is mostly used by cyclists and runners you can easily track dozens of other activities from alpine skiing to windsurfing. Once you’ve established your free account you can click on the following link to go to the PD Avengers club page to sign up and start tracking your fitness along with other PD Avengers!
https://www.strava.com/clubs/pdavengers
I plan on adding challenges for our club to keep it fresh and create more excitement about the PD Avengers. No worries, the challenges won’t be crazy like riding 5000 miles in a month but will be more like riding for 4 hours in a month or similar type challenges.
ZWIFT
If you want to ride alongside and converse with your favorite PD Avenger 20 miles or 3000 miles away look no further than Zwift! Zwift was chosen by cyclingweekly as the best 5indoor cycling app for riding with others and Outdoor magazine said, “Zwift [has] transformed indoor cycling” and, “has changed the way we run and ride”.
Zwift is a subscription based application that costs USD $14.99 per month. Zwift is a multiplayer online cycling and running physical training program that enables users to interact, train, and compete in a virtual world. You can compete against others of your skill level, follow a training plan along with many other cool features that you will learn as you go along. The greatest part of Zwift for me is being able to ride with my brothers who live over 500 miles away and we can ride at our own pace but still stay together. My non-Parkie brother is faster than my older brother and I but we can still hang with him via a cool feature from Zwift that “rubberbands” you together regardless of your pace.
Zwift is a little more complicated to set up and you will need an indoor cycling setup, a laptop,iPad, or cell phone and probably a fan if you sweat as much as I do! 🥵It seriously makes indoor cycling fun and I am able to do it at my own pace, on my own schedule, and in any weather.
I have started a Zwift club for PD Avengers as well. If you are currently a Zwifter and know how to find a club it is the PDAvenger club (all one word). If you don’t have Zwift or need help finding the club please email me at rwpdavenger@gmail.com and I will walk you step by step through the process. Right now I plan on doing a PD Avenger’s ride every Thursday at 7:15 am Pacific or 3:15 pm GMT. Unfortunately, the club event software doesn’t allow you to “rubberband” yet but there is another way to do it so please email if you would like to participate in the PD Avengers ride on Thursdays.
I am a cyclist, definitely not a runner, but if there is a fellow zwifter runner who would like to volunteer to help people with Zwift and can sponsor a run on Zwift at least once a month I think that would be fun for runners. Please email me if interested.
The goal is to get as many members signed up on Zwift as possible in the next couple of months so we can hold some fun and massive events for Parkinson’s awareness month. Let’s get out there and ride, run, walk, TOGETHER!
If you need assistance with getting setup with Strava or Zwift please email me, Rob Warner at rwpdavenger@gmail.com. Use the email as well if you would like to participate in the Thursday rides.
