Rapha Festive 500 challenges riders to ride 500 km between December 24 and December 31. While this challenge is traditionally done outdoors, Rapha is teaming up with Zwift and allowing virtual kilometers to count—so any combination of indoor and outdoor riding counts towards the final goal.
As long as you’re tracking your rides on Strava, any kilometers logged—both indoors and outdoors—count towards the challenge. Need to connect your Zwift account to Strava? Here is the how to guide.
Looking for an event to join? Check out our Festive 500 rides here. Finish any Rapha Festive 500 group ride, and the kit is all yours. To learn more about Rapha Festive 500, check out the FAQ.
The link you shared for the “f500” tag brings up a very strange list of unrelated events. Actually it looks like it includes every single event on the Zwift event calendar, starting now.
This is lame, you should only get the kit if you actually finish the challenge not just any group ride. The Festive 500 is a pretty big challenge for most people and should be acknowledged appropriately.
Edit, a few years ago you only got the kit once you completed the challenge on Strava. Please go back to that.
I am with Mike on that one. The point of Rapha Festive 500 is to ride 500km between Christmas and New year. Getting the kit for only one ride makes the kit meaningless.
Agreed giving the kit unlock for one ride is silly. it’s meant to be a challenge to complete not something easy. it’s meaningless for those than genuinely do it if you are handing out kits to all.
and why not give the kit to anyone that does 500k that week. I’ll likely do 500k but I’m unlikely to do official rapha 500 events.
That’s wrong, people should be forced to ride 500km (either indoors or outside) during the time to unlock the kit, riding one short event should not count.
You could also have a special kit that isn’t announced for the traditional (unofficial) Festive 1000 which I have done two years in a row.
I’m too unfit and injured to do Festive 500, so I could theoretically just do the one event and get myself the kit. However I will not do that. I will make sure I do not get the kit because I don’t deserve it.
Fwiw, I wouldn’t think you need to go out of your way to avoid the kit ending up in your garage. Just don’t outfit your avatar with it, right? To each their own, but I wouldn’t let someone giving me kit I don’t think I deserved stop me from doing a ride if I wanted to do it.
It seems reasonable that outdoor rides should somehow count towards the kit unlock but Zwift can’t log those. Perhaps the solution would be that those completing the Rapha challenge on Strava are emailed an unlock code?
That’s what they did 2 years ago when I last did it. I didn’t do it last year as it seemed pointless if everyone who finished a single 30Km ride got the kit (and I had a FRR tour coming up which is best started on fresh legs).
Considering that Rapha may be paying Zwift to propagate brand/logo impressions via the game, why would either party want to make it harder to get more instances on the screen? Or, perhaps Zwift is paying Rapha in order to entice ridership by making the FF more attainable. Or maybe it’s a quid pro quo wash - regardless, don’t forget, in this case we are the product.
Solid point. What about giving people the kit to wear while participating in the events, but only let them keep it if they complete the challenge? We know that’s possible to do. That gets the brand on-screen, but also makes the reward more meaningful. Also might entice people to work at the challenge, by invoking the endowment effect–once you have it, you value it more and don’t want to lose it
250km is about the max I’ve done in a week, give or take. I suspect I could do 500km if I paced myself.
Could be an excuse to knock out some remaining epic route badges - Four Horsemen, Uber Pretzel, London PRL Full - but adding 7500 meters+++ of climbing to the 500km seems like a setup for failure.
Tempus Fugit with a Pace Partner for the win?
Also: anyone else wear Rapha jerseys? I’ve yet to find a cycling jersey that’s cut to fit me well - Castelli and the like are far too tight around my midriff in any size that doesn’t drape like a mumu on me.
