Coronavirus: Cyclists come up with creative way to bike legally during lockdown

While cyclists have been widely criticised for breaking the lockdown rules, some have come up with a creative way to stay legal.

An Auckland bike shop that's organised group rides for 16 years has managed to stay indoors, by moving online.

Cyclist Jeremy Turner is getting ready for his usual Sunday ride - except these days he doesn't leave his garage.

With a bike trainer connected to an app called Zwift, today he rode 70km with almost 50 of his mates from home.

Zwift lets cyclists ride solo or with others through made-up worlds or real cities, including London, Innsbruck, Yorkshire, and New York and you can chat while you ride.

"You know what I got really quite emotional after our first ride doing it," Turner told Newshub.

"I thought 'wow I really miss riding with these guys and hanging out'."

The owners of the bike shop where the rides are organised are also along for the ride.

"We can see them, we can talk to them and so it's much the same - not quite the same as the beautiful day out there, but somewhat the same," Mt Eden Cycles owner Mark Taylor says.

But there are some disadvantages.

"You gotta drink a lot more - water I mean. You gotta drink a lot more liquid," Turner says.

"It's just so much hotter inside because there's no breeze."

That lack of a breeze is one of the reasons other cyclists have given for frustrating police and not staying local.

And on Sunday it seemingly continued with hundreds cycling along Auckland's waterfront. 

It's likely some of these people are breaking the rules and aren't currently within a few kilometres of home.

For Taylor it's not just about doing the right thing, it's also about his 15 staff and his business which looks like it'll take a six-figure hit.

"We're just really keen to make the first number of those six digits a really really small one, and that's simply about getting back to work," he says.

"So my message would be stay at fricken home and stay in your fricken bubble, for everybody's sake."