I appreciate the helpful suggestion. I tried it a few years ago, and found it hard to find what I was looking for. The interface may have improved since then. I think the advantage of using Strava for this is knowing how many people do a certain route, and how often - data that ridewithgps does not have. But I don't use Strava yet, so I'm going off the experiences of others.

I did not even realize Strava had a route builder. Looks like it's in beta. That's one of the features I like about ridewithgps. I can create a route. Save it to my garmin 520 and have navigation for a ride when I'm riding someplace new. Hopefully strava's turns out to be good. I hate paying for two services.

I'm forced to interact socially in my personal and professional life. Why would I want to clutter my "escape from the real world" time with more mundane social interaction? Especially with people I don't know?

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

Strava's business is collecting data on cycling habits and they have a boatload of data. The program uses that data in its route builder and will build a route for you based on where cyclists actually ride. If it is a popular area, you'll even get, for example, that little jog through the subdivision the locals use to miss that one bad 1/2 mile stretch of road. You can also find routes other people have ridden, although that, while not hard, is not as easy as it could be. Both features work great. I use both when I travel and it has never let me down.

Agree with Dale here...

I tried Zwift in the beginning and was like blah. I would rather do trainer road or do perfpro and watch a movie. But then someone was talking about the races recently and so I gave it another try. So last Thanksgiving, I read some blog on zwift and got all the tools. I got ZWIFT running on my laptop, the Zwift Mobile APP on my iphone, i already had a computrainer and HR monitor, I registered on Zwiftpower.com and linked my strava account, and then i also ran a Zwiftmaps app that overlays a map over Zwift. It shows all your friends on the map if you follow them on the ZwiftMobile App (on your phone)... it's a cool tool. I also run spotify with some hardcore beats during races. This is a lot of stuff to put together, BUT if you understand it and put it all together, it's fricken awesome.

So now i sign up for races/events all the time and I'm totally addicted. I ride 5-6 times a week. I do my FTP Tests during a race because looking at trainer road or doing it by myself in perfpro is agony. I also do my workouts during races... i will hang back on some races and then do periods of hammering with intervals. When the race starts, you will find your self settling into a smaller group and you can pull or draft depending on what you want to do. And then you can hammer the whole time too. The key is to enter races with lots of people so you get all kinds of different pace groups. The best is starting at the back and trying to bridge up to other groups. They also have "workout events" you can join where no matter what power you output the group will stay together.... so you are all in pain together. Sort of like a studio workout if you have ever gone to a computrainer studio before, then you know what i'm talking about.

To each his own though... i wrote if off in the beginning and now i can't get enough of it.

Yes, this is precisely what I was referring to.

Yep! Everyone who hasn't tried it and thinks it is just riding around on a video game have no idea what they are missing. The races, workouts, etc. and community make it amazing. It will only get better over time. I need to try a race soon.

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