Here at Zwift Insider, we find out about events in all sorts of ways. There are the official Zwift channels, then there are the unofficial channels where we get emails, text messages, or see a tweet inviting us to an interesting event. And this morning, I got one such message that piqued my interest!
Lance Armstrong tweeted that he’ll be leading his first group ride on Zwift on Wednesday 3rd November at 5pm CET (9am PDT, noon EDT) and he will also be on Discord for the ride, so you can chat with him via voice.
See ZwiftHacks for event details and Discord link
This is a weekly ride, so if you miss the first one, there’s always next Wednesday.
Ride Details
The ride is called “WEDU Wednesday”. Here are the details:
- Route: Watopia’s Flat Route Reverse
- Length: 60 minutes
- Pace: 2.5-3.1 w/kg
- Sign up here
Finish the ride and unlock the new in-game WEDŪ kit (below).
At the time of writing, there are already 663 people signed up, so it may get interesting on Discord…
Lance on Zwift
Armstrong is a newbie on Zwift, having ridden 133 of his 141 total all-time Zwift kilometers in the last 30 days.
He even tackled the Alpe – although he didn’t finish it. And he already has a number of followers. It’s nice to see that, by and large, the comments posted by the community are welcoming.
I’ve reached out for an interview as I would be keen to hear what he has to say about Zwift and his introduction to the platform.
What is WEDU?
I’ll have to confess, I didn’t know what WEDU was. So I did my research and concluded that WEDU (a play on “we do”) does a lot of things from hosting events to producing podcasts and selling sporting attire.
WEDU was founded by Lance Armstrong. The homepage says:
WEDŪ is a community of endurance athletes united around the belief that the true path forward is forged by breakthroughs of body and mind. We are creators of content that expands this intrepid life and fuels the human spirit.
I want to join just to see who changes his name in the game for the day. It would be a total shame if a dozen people changed their names to start with EPO and then took a screenshot of the rider list while with him.
I am not understanding why Zwift should support a consumate cheat and liar…sends a wrong message
Since anyone with a Zwift account can host a ride, perhaps Zwift hasn’t the balls to tell him he’s banned.
Do you think Lance would care?
Wedu drugs, yes?
No matter what, he’s the reason I’m riding a bike today.
uncool, dude
Seriously, Zwift?
I can’t think of someone I would want to ride with less. Ugh.
What sort of power ups will be available during this ride?
A syringe, methinks
WEDŪ is a community of endurance athletes united around the belief that the true path forward is forged by breakthroughs of body and mind… and pharmacology.
I am stunned.
Can’t wait! I’ve enjoyed both the Forward and the Move podcasts; Lance has a really turned it around and is rebuilding his legacy.
He didn’t just cheat. He tried to destroy people’s lives. That legacy cannot be rebuilt. The guy is evil.
I listen to/watch those occasionally. Despite myself. He’s not really contrite about his past.
I do think Lance, my former cycling and life hero, is beyond redemption notwithstanding th insider wit on show during podcasts.
No thank you Zwift! I don’t think that this send the right message. I have been a Zwifter since 2014 and this is the first time that I have strongly disagreed with who is representing your company.
L. A. What were the people at Zwift H.Q. thinking???
is pot legal at Zwift HQ like it is in Canada????
Not for me, he represents everything I don’t like about cycling. As a Scottish comedian once said, he’s like a fart in a space suit. Just doesn’t go away. Please go away👎👎
It’s not the cheating that turned me off from Lance… it was his willingness to bully and destroy other people’s lives with no remorse. Seriously, is this the kind of person I want to emulate?
Will there be any WEDU rides in a time slot that would allow us Aussies to ride with Lance? I’d sincerely love to ride with Lance and I’m sure anyone who has any understanding of the pressures of pro cycling would all love to join as well. Forget the past, it’s gone… look to the future.
Really? When the going gets tough, cheat? Is this what you tell your kids?
no Dennis, I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d say “if you can’t beat them, join them” haha….
I’ll be there, even if its just to get the kit – Yes LA was a Jerk and a doper but lets face it – all his races were exciting to watch – The peloton were all dopers, he was just the best of the bunch – His podcasts with Hincapie are very interesting to watch – Its time the cycling fraternity moved on – LA certainly has !
the best doper of the bunch, maybe
I’m not sure this is a good move by Zwift. I appreciate giving people a second chance in life, but really I don’t think Lance has learnt anything. He was a nasty human in his championship years and any apologies from him for his behaviour seem to be more regret at getting caught than for the extreme negative impact he had on many individuals. Appreciate it’s a complex issue since virtually entire peloton was doping, but not everyone behaved like him.
On the other hand, in his good years he inspired many people and Livestrong was a force for good.
Overall complex so probably best for zwift to avoid.
Well said Tim!
Zwift caught here, but it is consciously an inclusive platform, also Lance has a big enough platform to be a problem for the company.
I’m not a fan of LA, what he did to a lot of people & Pro Cycling is, for me, unforgivable, but he does still command a large following and I can ignore him, I’m not likely to be around when he is and I’m sure there are other people on the platform considered ‘problematic’.
I just ride my bike.
Will he be riding an e-bike?
will you Jim?
Why is Lance Armstrong getting a plug here? He’s a disgrace.
The entire world knows Lance, that’s why Michelle.
Seems like a great partnership since Zwift has been perfectly fine with allowing cheating in races for years now.
A ffing men!!!
I did the ride with LA and gang this morning. 1400+ attendees and very interactive. More so than any “celebrity” ride I’ve done on Zwift. He fielded live questions on Discord and in the chat. Most of the banter was favorable and folks were quick to downplay anything negative. He’s an easy guy to hate but clearly he’s making a big PR push to get back into the good graces of the sport. I was a fan in his heyday but was also not surprised when the truth came out. It’s a dirty business and he was one of the best at being dirty in every facet. Not trying to defend or justify anything he did. But if he didn’t truly love cycling he would just stay away like many other disgraced champions. The passion to ride bikes and to carve out some profit from this lifestyle is still strong for him clearly.
funny to watch both sides defend their opinion. No one gets to the top without stepping on a couple people. All of your hero’s have skeletons no one knows about. People do love a good villain though.
LA is detested because he is a bully, arrogant, and a narcissist, not because of doping. Why would anyone of character want to admit or emulate him?
OK, so I did the ride today and I joined the Discord chat. I did ask for an interview as there are many interesting questions I would like to ask, one being how he got his jersey manufactured by Zwift so quickly when groups have been waiting years…. I will feed that back. Anyway, I think Discord needed to have “Push to talk” enabled, because at one stage I heard someone shouting for their “ear buds” – so I would hope that Discord gets sorted for next ride. My other observation is that for people not on Discord, sometimes their questions got missed, in the text box as so much was going on.
As you know from my previous articles when I led a group ride, it is really difficult so he did a good job, with his limited experience on Zwift. However, my concern was for the 1400 people who were behind him that may not have had the opportunity to ride with him and perhaps it would have been good to have support riders, like what Tim Searle does, maybe some of his ex pro-cyclist friends back in the pack, like a Sweep.
My observation is that I think Zwift needs to provide guidance to people leading rides to help them provide a good experience for all and in particular, if they are new, get them support, or do some form of induction to help them learn how things work and what to do and not to do.
Ultimately, it felt that the people who attended the event had fun, so that’s the main thing, and an hour’s worth of exercise is all positive – I’m off to request my jersey for my Mountain Massif TT events get produced, let’s see what Zwift can do…..
I also join the ride on Zwift and Discord. To be fair to Zwift, they do provide guidance for leading group rides to provide a good experience (I’ve received the ride guide for events I’ve been involved with) Also, we don’t know how long the WeDu jersey was in the works, so it’s unfair to assume it was manufactured quickly. As evident by the attendance, it was quite a popular event.
So I have requested a jersey to be made for my event and it got decline 1 month ago because my event needed to be running / going at least a year. Tour de France winner Andy Schleck hosted an event for 6 months and didn’t get a jersey made and he requested it and was chasing it. It took G, months to get his jersey for the GTCC. That was Lance’s first event.
If you have that Ride Leader pack, I would be interested in seeing it as when I led my ride a few months ago, I got nothing like that. I didn’t even know about the fence and how to use it. I am sure it would be a good resource and should be widely circulated as Tim Searle told me he had to write stuff to teach people a few months ago. I think from memory of my article I did mention about the need for a guide.
It took over five years for my club to acquire a custom in game kit. We led rides since the early days — back when clubs could readily get a custom kit made in Zwift and have hosted rides for 3-4 years. There were not many other riders in the early days of Zwift so we were happy riding with the bumble bee kit. Times and policy changed and custom kits were mostly only made for large, impactful clubs, special events, celebrity rides, and IRL teams. We understood that we needed to provide value to Zwift through our rides in order to deserve the time and effort needed for Zwift to create a custom kit for our club. Once we could provide this, we got a custom kit.
As far as a Ride Leader Guide, there was one made for the ToW ride leaders that gave very basic information about ride leading. I can send this to you if you would like.
Hi, what you explained about getting your kit fits with what I understood, yet Lance got one straight away. I’m just saying it did not seem fair for all the other group rides that put in years of work and have not got a kit or a nice banner for the Companion app.
Please send me the Ride Leader Guide, you mentioned it was given for the ToW and my point is that it would be good to be provided to all people who ride groups. I was speaking to Eric and he hasn’t seen it either, so we would be interested to see it.
Thank you.
WEDU = WeEncourageDrugUse
Wish I could take credit, but that came from a TTT teammate.
Not a good move by Zwift IMO.
I can’t wait for the Ben Johnson run!
It’s not about Armstrong being a cheater. Everybody did it back in the day and a lot of people do it today.
What sets him apart from everybody else is his willingness to destroy people’s lives for it. I don’t think taking EPO in the early 2000s necessarily makes you a bad person. But LA is a sociopath who might have been willing to kill for it.
Lance achieved great things in the cancer community too. Many of us endured thru much chemo therapy and future endurance events with Lance as our inspiration. All of us are not perfect at all and should not be hating on someone who made a professional mistake while competing. Who among us can claim sainthood? I’m riding…
i think it was rather more than a professional mistake…
Jimmy Saville also did lots of good work for charity. Doesn’t let him off the hook for his crimes either.
WeDu? As in “We Du Drugs?” Maybe the ride could have a “syringe” powerup?
Lance Armstrong made tens of millions of dollars in endorsements at the peak of his career, based on being a liar and a cheat. If his current marketability is based on how “inspirational” he is, lol… give me a break.
He’s a fraud, and he should take his money and bugger off.
no.
No no no. This has been debated to death. In the end, the answer is still and will always be, cycling is better WITHOUT that guy. Unbelievable tone deaf decision.
Disappointed that Zwift is giving him a platform. Yes, a lot of people cheated but it was the way he systematically set out to destroy peoples lives that has always bothered me. I wish he would just go away.
I road with him twice, and meet him multiple times in support of Tour of Hope, a cross country ride sponsored BMS, to raise awareness to cancer treatment and patient advocates. Everything you heard about him – self-centered, arrogant d-bag – #truth
And I’m sure he could care less.
unbelievable that anyone would sign up for this. I am reconsidering my Zwift subscription if I discover that the organization supports or accommodates this initiative.
Lance ruined his own career and those of others.
That’s great! This will be the only celeb ride I’ve attended, Go Lance!
so many morally superior people…..what are you doing on planet earth….😃
Sorry Guido, but I’m pretty sure that nobody else in this comment section committed the biggest sporting fraud of all time. So yes you are correct… we are superior to that scum.
WeDu doping. He better get his Moto Guy lined up for Wed morning deliveries cause this is going to get serious!
I think that everyone is entitled to there own opinion in this conversation with that being said you all are going after Zwift by Bullying them on you’re opinion at them, of who we all think should be a good riding ambassador on Zwift. What Lance did is old news. Let’s move forward!
Go F yourself, Lance. You are a disgrace for everything related to sportsmanship. Get lost!
UMMMMM… really Zwift…. Lance Armstrong?????? come on….not a good look to have the worlds biggest cycling cheat on your platform. I thought your were trying to stop cheating on Zwift and now your have “Rides with Lance”..??? Your brand is association with a Lance?? when there are so many other riding platforms available to use..??
Leaving aside the jersey issue, I was under the impression that anyone could set themselves up on Zwift to do this sort of thing without the need for any kind of explicit support from Zwift Central.
That being the case, piling on Zwift seems short-sighted.
I have no time for LA, and no intention of taking part in anything with his name on it, but I am also not comportable with the idea of Zwift summarily banning anyone from the platform on the basis of what they have done not on Zwift, a decade and more ago.
Can he ever redeem himself … no idea, not in my eyes certainly.
Should he be permitted to use Zwift in the same way as any other user can … I think he should, unless he gets himself banned for breaking Zwift’s rules, same as the rest of us.
You are right to an extent, but normal individuals setting up a meet up do not get a jersey in super quick time and they do not get their rides appearing on the companion app upcoming events. Zwift are blessing this.
all these comments – “ugh, why zwift, why lance” “but hes a cheater, blah blah blah” move on, none of you can honestly say you have never cheated at anything. get off your pedestals. did he cheat, yup. was he an asshole, yup. did he eventually admit to it, yup. was he the only one cheating, nope. have others who cheated admitted to it, nope. i am not condoning cheating, but to think high level athletes arent always looking for an advantage is foolish.
Pretty simple. If you don’t like the ride then don’t ride it. We all have a choice to simply not click on it. Love him or hate him.. the dude is a legend. I would be honored to meet him or do a virtual ride at the least. YOU THE MAN LANCE!