This weekend’s first two notable events feature the legendary Col du Galibier. We’re also featuring a wild Tiny Race takeover with a 12-race GC, a race that grows every week, and more. See our picks below…
🤝 L’Etape Climb Portal Challenge – Col du Galibier (Valloire)
✅ XP Bonus ✅ Unlocks ✅ TdF ✅ Climbing
Zwift’s L’Etape Challenge is underway, pushing thousands of Zwifters to complete in-game replicas of iconic Tour de France climbs featured in this year’s L’Etape du Tour event. This weekend features Col du Galibier (Valloire), which regularly serves as the “roof” (highest elevation) of the Tour de France at 2,642 meters.
The Galibier in this direction is 18km long, with 1224m of elevation gain.
Bonus: finish a L’Etape Challenge weekend event to unlock the H2O Audio in-game headphones.
Events scheduled every 3 hours this weekend
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/letapechallenge
🤝 Phoenix Rising Tronathon (Banded)
✅ Climbing ✅ Beginner Friendly ✅ Banded
If you want to take on the Col du Galibier (Valloire) climb portal but find it a bit intimidating, join the Phoenix Rising crew on this banded ride. The ride is two hours long, but as long as you keep pedaling, you’ll stay with the group and keep making progress up the Galibier, which is a massive IRL climb totaling 1224 meters of elevation gain!
Sunday, June 21 @ 1:15pm UTC/9:15am ET/6:15am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5617588
🥇Tiny Races – A-Pex Velo Racing Takeover
✅ Unique ✅ 12-Race GC ✅ Popular
Our friends at A-Pex Velo Racing are huge Tiny Race fans. This week, they’re staging a Tiny takeover, choosing the routes and setting up a 12-race GC competition!
(ZwiftPower won’t let us do a 12-race competition, though – it’s capped at 10 events. So the competition will be based on your best 10 results on the day. See the leaderboard on ZwiftPower.)
Saturday, June 20 @ 3 different timeslots
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/tinyraces
🥇RollCo: Rolling Tide – 20K
✅ Unique Event
This unique race gets 1km longer every week, from 1km to 52km! This weekend, they’re at 20km, so I thought it was worth highlighting once more.
Learn all about the Rolling Ride Race Series >
This weekend’s races are on Watopia’s Volcano Climb route, which means the race basically ends at the bottom of the Volcano descent. Wheeeee!!!
Three timeslots on Saturday, June 20
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/rollingtide
🤝 Cycle Nation Banded Badass Badge Bonanza
✅ Banded ✅ Route Badge
This weekly ride uses longer routes and Zwift’s rubberbanding feature to help riders grab tough route badges with the help of some friends.
France’s Tire-Bouchon route (63.9km, 587m) is on tap, the third-longest route in France.
Saturday, June 20 @ 3pm UTC/11am ET/8am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5616861
How We Make Our Picks
We choose each weekend’s Notable Events based on a variety of factors including:
- Is the event unique/innovative in some way?
- Are celebrities (pro riders, etc) attending/leading?
- Are signup counts already high, meaning the event is extra-popular?
- Does the ride include desirable unlocks or prizes?
- Does the event appeal to ladies on Zwift? (We like to support this under-represented group!)
- Is it for a good cause?
- Is it just plain crazy (extra long races, world record attempts, etc)?
- Is it a long-running, popular weekly event with a dedicated leader who deserves a shout out?
In the end, we want to call attention to events that are extra-special and therefore extra-appealing to Zwifters. If you think your event qualifies, comment below with a link/details and we may just include it in an upcoming post!
