Zwift Watopia & (not)parkrun Mash-up
It took me nearly a year of cycling on Zwift before starting to do Zwift running too. I was hesitant to buy a treadmill so I considered buying the £38 RunPod to see if I could run both in Zwift and in real life (IRL) at the same time.
Winter 2020 approached and, with the prospect of being locked down for a long time, I bit the bullet and bought a treadmill. Predictably, I got hooked on Zwift running and was soon collecting the Run Achievement badges.
My friend Brian reminded me about the question of whether you can run both IRL and in Zwift at the same time. Having now had a better understanding of how Zwift Running works I thought that it would be weird but possible. As it turned out, that was true.
So, on a chilly Saturday afternoon in January I got to the start line of the Black Park parkrun course ready for the experiment. I had my Garmin watch ready to record the IRL run, my RunPod on my trainer and the Zwift App open on my iPhone. I selected the Watopia 5k Loop course, pressed start on the Garmin and I was off.
I normally run IRL with my iPhone in an arm strap. I kept it in my hand for this run as I wanted to keep track of my Zwift progress on screen and didn’t want to end the run by accidentally clicking on something. Keeping an eye on the IRL course and on the screen was a bit distracting but I wasn’t going for a PB so it was doable. I loved the contrast between the grey, drizzly Black Park and the bright, clear beach scene in Watopia.
When I’m running indoors there’s normally a noticeable difference between the treadmill speed and what shows in Zwift via the RunPod. The variance between Zwift and my Garmin for this run was only very slight. By the end of the run my Garmin showed 5.01 km to 4.77 km in Zwift.
5k is probably as far as I would do as a dual run. Apart from the distraction it was a quite a drain on the phone’s battery so it won’t have lasted for a 10k. It was a fun experiment to prove that it could be done but I don’t think I’ll be doing any more dual runs.
Zwift stats after sync with Garmin Connect
Zwift print screen at end of run
IRL stats directly recorded via Garmin watch
Start of Black Park parkrun course
Black Park parkrun elevation profile