Today I stumbled upon a post from one Will Carey in Zwift Riders which simply said “I’m planning this ride IRL in the summer” … and included this video:
My first thought was: hurray! Zwift has finally created another challenge! This is something veteran Zwifters have requested for years, since we’ve knocked out the three existing challenges (Tour Italy , Ride California. and Climb Mt. Everest) a long time ago. These longer challenges provide wonderful carrots to encourage longer, harder, and more frequent efforts.
And this challenge made sense: Zwift already has the London course, with a rumored Yorkshire UCI Worlds course possibly coming this year. A LEJOG challenge (riding the length of Great Britain) seems smart!
But then reality set in. I noticed the challenge progress meter read “100% complete.” Plus Will’s Facebook profile said he was a graphic designer–a creative guy! And there were no Zwift updates to download. But the video was so polished!?
So I reached out to Will and he confirmed the truth: an elaborate hoax! Here’s what he told me:
I was putting together a video for an upcoming ride this summer and I thought, why not do it in the style of Zwift?
Having said that, it’s quite frustrating to have not seen any new challenges in years, despite the fact that you can knock out the graphics for one in an afternoon!
They should add an around the world one; that would keep people quiet for a while.
I thoroughly agree, Will. Hey Zwift: give us more challenges!
He also shared a bit of detail on what it took to create this video:
It was difficult to match the art style of the previous challenges because the style is different on all three. This is a sort of hybrid.
It took about six hours to do but that included a couple of hours recreating assets that already exist in Zwift.
