I just got my father into Zwift! He’s enjoying it, but he’s only able to cycle with 1 leg! I’ve been searching around the web to see if there are groups of riders who also cycles with one leg or at a lower wattage due to a disability. I’ve tried cycling with him with one leg and wow, what a challenge that is!!! I couldn’t keep up unless I swap my legs, which essentially is cheating since he can’t do that!
Wondering if anyone know of a group / event that he could cycle with with similar disabilities?
I have seen talks on the FutureWorks of having avatars that represents different adaptive athletes, so that is super exciting to see!
I was listening to the ZwiftCast (Zwift podcast) a short time ago and there was mention of an adaptive-athlete group ride series where the "keep-together’ (aka “rubber-banding”) function was enabled. Sounded like a great group…and now I can’t find any more specifics.
I HOPE someone can chime in with useful links and I’m able to find it again, I’ll edit this reply.
Searching for “adaptive” in the “full text” field nets five events but there’s no mention of rubber-banding so I’m unclear if any of them were the ones I heard about.
Hi Wesley. I’m not sure what sort of W/kg your Dad might be able to sustain but I tried searching ZwiftHacks for rides with ‘injury’ in the text and it surfaces some low W/kg rides here: ZwiftHacks Events with “injury” in the text.
If your dad can’t quite do those sorts of W/kg yet then I would suggest that he could modify his weight temporarily for the group ride to put his W/kg at the modified weight as something that he could sustain.
Also if you are able to both ride at the same time (i.e. two trainers) then you could create a meet up with him with the ‘keep together’ on like @Otto_Destruct was suggesting…
Welcome to the Forums, Wesley.
I think it’s great you’ve got your father onto Zwift and I hope he gets as much enjoyment out of it as so many of us do.
This idea might not even be practical and would involve some extra expense, but have you considered single-sided power meter pedals? From what I recall, most of these take a reading from one side only and double the power measured. I haven’t thought this through fully, but if it worked it might allow your father to ride in a wider range of groups as his overall calculated power would be higher.
(And I really hope that no one out there is going to say this is a form of cheating!)
It looks like the Norwegian Cycling Federation has put on a couple of paracycling events where participants are banded together as you describe. The last one was March 2. The OP might want to look into that organization to see if the have more public events planned or even if they have private meetups for adaptive athletes.
Paracycling Group Ride hosted by NCF The at Home Cycling & Running Virtual Training App
Oh amazing! I’ll take a look at those events! I’ll suggest to him to see if he could try modifying his weight on the app and see if it helps!
It just so happen we tried the “keep together” options today and it was fantastic! we were able to cycle together the entire time and had a great time!
Thank you for welcoming me! And that is a great idea! I can look more into this and see if this could work for my dad. With a quick search, it looks like most of them are on the left arm, but I bet there are ones that are on the right. He needs one for his right leg But that is a great idea!
Just in case you went this route, there is a right-pedal-only kit available from Favero who make the very good and reasonably priced Assioma power meter pedals and which would save you having to pay for a LH pedal that would never be used: https://cycling.favero.com/shop/assioma-uno-to-duo-upgrade-kit
Caveat: this is intended for use as an upgrade for someone who already owns a pair of single-sided (i.e. LH measuring and transmitting) Assiomas. If it were me, I’d contact Favero to check that this RH pedal would work okay in the absence of the LH pedal, which I believe in some configurations collects the signal of both pedals and transmits them together to the reading device/zwift.
You never know, Favero might have an even better option for you, or, if it does work, you might be able to pick one of these up secondhand and even more affordably.
Replying with a link to a Reddit thread that cites this one.
An idea that’s come up is a modified app based on PainSled or RowedBiker that applies a wattage modifier. North Pole Engineering (NPE) could also write custom firmware for their NPE CABLE pod that does similar. I’ve reached out to both devs in the hopes something could be worked out.
EDIT - NPE replied!
Hi,
Thank you for reaching out! Our goal is to help athletes of all ranges of ability connect with the devices they want to use to make connected fitness accessible to everyone. An adaptive athlete feature is a natural extension to that and is definitely do-able, as you mentioned below.
I spoke with our lead developer for CABLE and we are currently investigating the best way to handle this. Not only would it be a huge benefit to the adaptive athletes, but secondarily it offers benefits to riders who want to ride with a friend on a virtual training app who is either significantly faster or slower than they are without either athlete having to sacrifice the effectiveness of their ride. We have some thoughts around different ways to help curb ‘e-doping’ that would not impact the folks that this is meant for that we are also investigating as part of the process. I feel like there is a Spider-Man ‘great power’ reference here somewhere…
I appreciate you reaching out and including the Reddit thread, you’re welcome to post this email there if it adds value to the conversation. Also, if there is anyone that would like to reach out directly, they can contact us at marketing@npe-inc.com.
@WesleyC It‘s not clear to me from your post what your father actually wants, and what his background is. Is he new to cycling? What’s his goal and motivation?
It’s perfectly possible to ride with one leg in a typical high endurance / low tempo zone group. Or climb the Ventoux above tourist speed. Witnessed both, outdoors, FWIW.
Accommodation by the means of (albeit makeshift) assistive technology is not a self-evident natural choice, especially in a sportive use case, that’s really up to the athlete themselves.
From a practical point of view, if he can produce 1.5 w/kg, there should be a lot of group rides that are suitable.
Yes he’s fairly new to cycling! At least on an indoor trainer. I think it would be nice to find him a group where he could ride with that is around his level. He’s not in it to race, but it doesn’t feel great when everyone with two legs is passing him consistently, even runners. Which I can understand!
I think the best thing to do now is to join those group rides that so many people have suggested! He’s getting close to being able to output 1.3w/kg so I think he’ll have a great time in those groups
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