Last Monday morning, I climbed into my truck and drove to two hours to the Sacramento airport so I could fly to Atlanta, then LaGuardia, to take an Uber into Manhattan and check into the Roxy Hotel for two nights.
Why fly across the country for such a short stay? Zwifty fun, of course! Zwift was holding an NYC map expansion launch party, and I wanted to be a part of it. Here’s the story…
Related: TSOZ Closer Look: New York Expansion and Power Segments >
Riding the Expansion, IRL
The party at Rapha was on Tuesday night, and I arrived in NYC on Monday night. After grabbing some quality coffee, I met up with Jon Mayfield (Zwift’s co-founder, read that story here) and VP of Product Mark Cote for a quality New York bagel experience bundled with a stroll past the Ghostbusters firehouse and some boldfaced lawbreaking from Jon:
While Mark was in meetings all day, it turned out that Jon was planning to ride down to Prospect Park to see the real version of the roads Zwift would be launching soon. I asked if he’d be up for me joining him, and soon enough, we were making our way to Brooklyn aboard two poorly-maintained hotel bikes:
As we planned our ride on the fly, I learned that Zwift’s new roads (which I still hadn’t seen) include not just the Brooklyn Bridge teased in previews, but also the Manhattan Bridge. We decided to cross over the East River to Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge, then take the Brooklyn Bridge on our return so we could see them both.
The Manhattan Bridge was noisy, with subway cars running next to us as we climbed to the center of the bridge and descended the other side. At the bottom, we rode around and found the famous “DUMBO” (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) spot for a photo or two:
From here, we worked our way south to Prospect Park, taking various unplanned detours to avoid traffic or construction and because we simply weren’t following a precise route. This was a voyage of casual exploration, and we weren’t in much of a hurry apart from our hotel bikes having a 3-hour time limit.
The road to Prospect Park from the northwest is basically uphill, but not steep. My bike kept it interesting by refusing to shift consistently, which was particularly noticeable since it only had three gears when working properly! Eventually, we arrived at the park and began a counter-clockwise lap, looking for something to drink since neither of us had brought any water on what Google maps showed would be a 9-mile ride.
We found a vendor set up near the ballfields on the northwest side of the park and sat down in a shady spot on the grass for drinks and strawberry popsicles. Jon and I were carrying on sort of two parallel conversations, one focused on the road and our surroundings, the other about how Zwift could gamify fitness in new and interesting ways. (If you ever get the chance to talk to Jon about anything Zwift-related, be sure to do it. He’s a super-smart guy who shares his mind clearly and succinctly.)
The lap of Prospect Park took longer than I had expected, but only because my expectations weren’t based on any sort of reality. I come from a place where towns are small, and so are the parks. It still baffles me that a green space the size of Central Park can exist within a tightly-packed city like NYC.
Prospect Park, it turns out, has an outer loop around 6km long. The road is quite wide, with dedicated lanes for cyclists and striders. Much of the loop is nicely shaded, thanks to tall trees on either side of the road.
We were passed by lots of riders, most of whom looked like roadies cruising on recovery sessions. My bike refused to shift into its highest gear, forcing me to set aside the urge to chase their wheels and instead work on high cadence pedaling as we coasted down the slight descents.
Reaching the end of our loop, we made our way to the Brooklyn Bridge. The newish bike lane runs down the center of the bridge, and while it’s clear and easy to ride, the NYC skyline view we had hoped for never materialized.
After crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, we had just a bit more riding to get back to our hotel. Arriving, we saw we had ridden nearly 30km and were just a few minutes shy of our 3-hour window.
About the New Roads
While Zwift co-founder Eric Min spent his junior racing years racing in Central Park, it wasn’t a familiar place to Jon Mayfield. So Jon told me that when Zwift decided to create the original NYC map (which launched in October 2018), he flew out and rode through Central Park to record video for Zwift’s art team, ensuring they captured the feel of the place just right.
They didn’t follow that same process with the upcoming expansion, preferring to use Google Streetview and other sources as inspiration. And while Eric Min has ridden in Prospect Park many times, this was Jon’s first time!
I asked him how closely the expansion’s roads map onto the IRL GPS coordinates of the roads we’d ridden, and he told me they map directly on top of them. I’m not sure if this includes subway routes (I doubt it), but I believe it includes the location and size of the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, and Prospect Park, as well as their location relative to Central Park.
Near the end of the Rapha event, I realized one of the Zwift Rides was streaming a video of the expansion’s roads. So, like any good Zwift Insider, I stood in the middle of the crowded room and recorded it. For all of you! You’ll hear Dave Towle in the background, wrapping up the night with some awards and thank-yous…
A few things to call out in this video:
- It isn’t a continuous shot of all the new roads, but rather high-speed clips of specific sections
- There are lots of subway tunnels with cool graffiti, and you can see a 20-second power segment 4s into the video
- At 28s you are riding through Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza (you can see the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch to the left), then turning right to enter Prospect Park
- You go through what appears to be a lap banner at 38s, before exiting the Prospect Park loop (see the Memorial Arch to your right)
There are some things you don’t see in the video that are worth mentioning:
- The Prospect Park road is a single loop around 6km long, with an additional cut-through road down the middle.
- There are new start pens in Prospect Park
- Prospect Park also includes at least one sprint segment and one KOM segment
- Times Square is just south of Central Park, so it makes sense that it would show up in the expansion. I don’t think I saw it on any screens at Rapha, though.
At the Rapha Launch Party
Of course, the real reason I’d flown across the country to NYC was for the party at Rapha’s New York clubhouse. Held from 6-9pm on Tuesday, you had to sign up for a ticket beforehand in order to get in, since space was limited. And the place was packed! I’d guess around 150 people attended, with closer to 100 milling about at any given time.
It was a classic Zwift gathering, with a DJ bumping tunes, Dave Towle as MC, and a constant stream of stone-fired pizzas coming through the front door from the mobile oven parked in the street.
Two Zwift Ride + KICKR CORE 2 setups were parked near the front, and they would be the scene of some tag-team races throughout the night. These were special Zwift Rides, too: two of just five custom-painted frames from Fat Creations:
Both frames were given away at the end of the night to two lucky winners, one of whom was Tara Seplavy, Deputy Editor at Bicycling magazine:
Note: two more of these frames are being given away to two random finishers of the Zwift Unlocked series – read more about that here.
Everyone who walked in the door was given a green or blue wristband, and this determined which team you were on. Riders then paired up with others of the same color for a tag-team 2km uphill race in NYC, where the first rider hopped off the bike at 1km so the second rider could finish the second half (which was actually more than half, because it was steeper than the first kilometer!)
While the races went on for most of the night, everyone was free to hang out and chat in the (noisy) clubhouse, or in the open air in front of the shop or out back.
I had nice chats with Holden Comeau and David Lipscomb, both legendary OG Zwifters. It was also good to see Makesi Duncan (@dadbodcyclinginc), whom I’d first met at Zwift Community Live in Mallorca, and many other East Coast Zwifters.
I always enjoy attending Zwift gatherings, because I get to meet and chat with Zwifters I’ve seen in game for years but never met face to face. And I get to meet new friends, too! Many thank me for running Zwift Insider, which is always encouraging to hear.
Overall, the party at Rapha was just a fun gathering of Zwift lovers who were excited to hang out with their friends and see what’s coming next. If you ever get a chance to attend one of these, you should do it.
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