Glasgow Green Cycle Club (GGCC) has been running group rides, races and TTs on Zwift since November 2017, with a high degree of realism for GGCC riders, including the GGCC jersey and bib shorts in every GGCC Zwift event, for everyone worldwide to use.
GGCC
Since 2017, GGCC has organised well over a thousand Zwift group rides, led by a “beacon” leader, including, on occasions, the UK’s record breaking Olympic cyclist, Dame Sarah Storey.
We offer GGCC Zwift group ride training on Tuesdays at 11am and 8.45pm; on Thursdays at 9.55am and 9pm; and on Saturdays at 11.30am. For the more competitively-minded, there are GGCC Zwift races on Mondays at 8.10pm and Time Trials at 7.45pm on Fridays (all UK times).
Zwift has 12 worlds to choose from, including the new Scotland world, celebrating the UCI World Championships in Glasgow, and we run Zwift events based in all of them – Richmond, London, New York, Innsbruck, Bologna, Yorkshire, France, Paris and Scotland, as well as Zwift’s own virtual worlds, Watopia, Crit City and Makuri Islands.
Many thousands of individual participants have ridden over 100,000 GGCC group rides between them, and well over 10,000 GGCC races over 6 years, with as many TTs. Riding and chatting with other riders, via a headset or texting on screen, Zwift allows a highly developed, shared and engaging way to train, with like-minded others, when in-real-life (irl) road or track riding isn’t possible.
Zwift’s GGCC imagery
At the start of events, the ride affiliation is clearly stated, and here, in this screenshot from an event start (in the France Zwift world), you can also see that everyone wears the GGCC in-game Zwift kit.
In the next screenshot, having started an event, led by Martin Burmester from Sweden (an honorary GGCC member!), you can see my announcement reminding riders of the GGCC in-game kit, which they can use for any event after completing just one GGCC event.
Note that in these screenshots of the game, I have a red chevron over my avatar, which shows I am the sweeper for the ride, either pacing folks back onto the peloton, or, more likely, providing a focal point for – erm – slower riders!
Next, we see again the same rider [N1 8 🙂 JCQC from Canada] riding with me. We are 2.4 kms into the ride, as you can see on the right, on the Douce France course, with 129 riders altogether. You can see not only his “Glasgow Green Cycle Club” jersey script, but also the GGCC logo below that.
The side view below (this time in the new “Coast Crusher” Watopia course) shows “GGCC” clearly displayed on the side of my avatar’s jersey, and “Glasgow Green Cycle Club” on the side of the bibshorts.
Discord
We use the Discord chat system on our rides, so that just as in real-life rides, we can chat to those riding with us. We use the dedicated GGCC Discord channel, which I remind riders about in the screenshot below; we use earbuds and microphone, connected by Bluetooth to the Zwift “game”, just as many gamers do.
In the background of the screenshot below is the lighthouse in the St Malo area of France. I was there in c. 1960 on a school trip; I can confirm that the Zwift artwork for France is VERY good!
There is a link to this channel when riders book into the game, so that they know about Discord in advance, as you will see here for one of our Saturday rides, https://www.zwift.com/uk/events/tag/ggcc/view/3914497.
The “Club Discord” live link, as you see below, is on the Zwift Companion Mobile app for the ride, which most riders use (on their mobile phone) to communicate during their ride. 11.30am is the UK time for this Saturday ride, which you can see I am booked to ride. Note also the GGCC jerseys in the imagery.
Riders that complete one of our GGCC rides or races get the GGCC in-game jersey and bibs unlocked for them in their equipment garage in Zwift. They can then use the GGCC kit at any time, and in any of their Zwift rides after that.
Zwift summary
Zwift is ever more popular worldwide for recreation and training amongst professional and amateur riders alike, and is is a really good promotional platform for GGCC as a club. The in-game GGCC kit helps to suggests to Zwift riders to book future GGCC events in real-life, or even to get in touch and join the real-life Club in Glasgow.
GGCC is one of only a few entities, apart from Zwift themselves and some bike manufacturers, to have our own kit in the Zwift game, and so every GGCC Zwift event showcases GGCC.
A rambling mind 