When I received the e-mail from WTRL about Zwift’s new ZRacing Chase Races I was intrigued, so I went about learning how it all worked.
To race, I had to log into my WTRL account and sign up via WTRL’s website. I was automatically assigned a starting pen – being an A+ rider, I was assigned to pen E, the Elite category. (The first time in my life I have ever been classed as “Elite” so I was immediately liking this event!)
To participate in the ZRacing Chase Races, you need to have a ZwiftPower account attached to your Zwift account. This is because you are assigned a category based on your previous race results. WTRL explains it like this: “your historical race results are analyzed and then used to automatically place you in the appropriate group of racers most similar to you in performance, to ensure you’re racing in a fair and fun event. Racers do not get to choose their category.”
Having signed up, I headed to the start of the race.
The View from the Back
When I entered the pen, I was assigned a pink jersey, and I was in the starting pen surrounded by people in different jerseys. It was clear that these were the different categories of riders, the colours of the jerseys based on the normal classification such as red for A, yellow for D.
(Charlie Issendorf, Zwift’s race director, told us today that the special category-based jerseys will be rolled out for the December 15th races and used each week moving forward.)
Anyway, all groups were in the same pen but they left at different times, with E going last, with a 10-minute disadvantage to make up on the D cat riders.
Full Throttle from the Start
The race was hosted on the Magnificent 8 course, and from the start it was magnificently tough. The Elite had a small team of 15 riders and from the outset, it was full throttle and felt like a larger version of a team time trial. The pace was so rapid that within the first 13 minutes, we had clocked up 10km.
As we approached the first real test, the KOM, I was expecting the group to work together and crest the climb as a blob. But instead I found myself slipping out of the pack and pushing 500 watts to sprint back into the group on the descent.
This is where I realised that this wasn’t just a race to beat the other categories, but a race just to stay with your own “team” riders (and I use that phrase loosely as I couldn’t see much teamwork, more a “survival of the fittest” approach.)
A Glitch In the Matrix
Within 19 minutes we were on Fuego Flats, 15km completed with 14km remaining. This was lightning fast. However, this is where I noticed I had an issue! My avatar was pushing a constant 309 watts. Zwift had glitched and my power had become fixed. This was a problem, of course, because my avatar was now holding a constant power regardless of my actual effort level. I had no other option but to get off the bike and re-pair the trainer. This obviously resulted in me dropping from the group.
I was alone but could see other category riders ahead of me, so I went into time trial mode and started trying to catch the next rider on the road.
Multiple Races In One
This was refreshingly fun and it basically felt like there were two parts to my race, the first being the battle to stay with the group and now this solo time trial as I attempted to finish the event in as high a place as possible.
Cycling solo, I had time to think. I had the realisation that this event actually was three races in one:
- Firstly, there was the race to stay with your own group
- Secondly, there was the race to beat the different categories
- Thirdly, there was the race to win the event and finish first overall
The Finish
I watched as the Elite group really battled it for the win with numbers red as people unleashed their final sprints.
I obviously finished last in my category, but came 70th overall (see race results on ZwiftPower). Moreover, it was entertaining, and something different. It is an event I will try again.
This certainly makes my highlight list because it was well organised and different, with the gaps between groups probably set about right because the Elite riders managed to catch the front group with a few kilometres left. Furthermore, there are several of these events scheduled each Wednesday, so certainly a time slot to suit all.
What About You?
Did you race in this week’s kickoff ZRacing Chase Races? How did it go? Comment below…
I too really liked the event but I hated my start time. Zwift needs some earlier US start times. 7:20 pm CST is a very late start for me and based upon what I heard many others.
There were at least a half dozen time slots available earlier in the day.
That’s one of the failings of the WTRL events. Their start time spacing makes no sense to most of us. The ZRL starts were ridiculous…
I did the chase race last night categorized as a C rider. I had won the SHEries race the night before with a solo breakaway though, and should have anticipated that my legs were toast. I also, despite having elaborate plans to communicate with other Cs in the starting pens, was instead on the phone with my brother until just before race start and joined late, in the back.
If I’d managed to communicate beforehand I would have suggested we start easy, like only 3.5 on the front, so we could become a blob before we accelerate to 4.0 on the front. I also would have suggested that we ease to 3.5 on the first, steep part of the Reverse Hilly KOM, for then we could have let the wattsmonsters (those, like me, with higher raw watts but lower w/kg) draft for the rest of the climb and then they would be there to help both with mass and raw watts through Fuego Flats.
None of that was communicated and thus none of it happened. My first fight was to make it from the back of the pen to the front of the Cs, which took all the way to the volcano, and those were matches I didn’t have to burn.
My second fight was uphill on the dirt, when the lead strung out. I made it to the tarmac on the tail of the lead but just didn’t have the legs to bridge the gap in front, nor the oomph to jump on the wheels of any streaming past. I sat up for a second and then stood up for the whole first steep part of the KOM, almost 500 watts, only to discover that the tail of the lead was already cresting the next bump. I slowed and waited for the next group which had a few ATP teammates in it, as well as a Herd Marine Otter I’ll be racing in the ZRL Playoffs on Saturday.
Once down the hill the first group of Bs blew through. We’d had enough speed to supertuck and I was very glad I knew to pedal before the bridge – we carried enough speed that I was able to sprint onto the tail of them. They really wanted to shake the few of us who did so though and after a few km I was alone in the desert.
More Bs came through, and I caught them too. I have no idea how but I managed to stay with them through Col de Saddle Springs and catch their downhill. I suspect they were resting knowing what I hadn’t noticed… the As hit us on the bridge and somehow I managed to make it with the last of them over the dirt onto the pavement and supertuck right into the heart of them on the tunnel downhill. Some Bs were there but very few Cs.
It was not to be though. I managed to hold it through the first tunnel but at the start of the second just couldn’t hold it any longer. I fell off and spent the rest of the race trying to chase down the two Ds who were ahead (never made it) and hold off the Bs behind (did manage that). Those Bs behind had Elites right behind them so I guess I finished ahead of all of the Elites, but that wasn’t that great.
End result: 53/130 Cs, behind lots of As, Bs, and Cs. Even without a cohesive group the lead Cs almost had it, finishing just 2-8 seconds behind the first Bs. Next time.
I did this race, in B group, and it was not so nice : we were a big group and we should have gone very fast but we were a few to take pulls. I did take a lot of hard pulls, and was exhausted at the end. There we had a sprint, and this sprint was won by Eric min (yes, the one). I knew he was good so I had watched him and noticed he didn’t take any pull.
in fact he hid in the middle of the pack and pulled a big sprint at the end…
so where is the “esprit sportif”? Isn’t that sandbagging?
do you still wonder why Zwift headquarters don’t do anything about sandbagging when their big boss races like that?
at the end, we were very slow, 42km/h for the circuit, in B category, whereas in a normal (not chase race) on the same circuit I already had a 48km/h lap…
as we were very few to take pulls, that’s normal. We didn’t catch the Ds…
I was in the same race but had a completely different experience. I was pulling my best together with several others. Maybe Eric didn’t pull I also saw him mostly in the back, but that’s tactics, think of it what you want in terms of team spirit but it’s not sandbagging. The group up the KOM was still quite big so that went quite well for us I thought, no surges.
My speed on the lap was 45km/h so no idea where you get yours from, and we did catch the D’s just in small groups. All in all I had a good workout and good fun.
I was in the same race, newly promoted B that was autocatted also to B but with one if the bottom 10 w/kg avg for B pen.
Finished in the middle which I thought was ok.
Was nice to race a better time for me than ZRL too.
im the same, a C with a sprint that can beat a lot of B’s; so hiding is just ice cream, and when no one wants to pull, its just an easy sit and sprint
Agree that sitting in isn’t sandbagging. Eric Min is a smart racer with a great sprint. If he sat on the front and took pulls he probably wouldn’t have had the kick to win!
That’s one interesting thing about these chase races… if nobody takes pulls, you probably won’t get a chance to win. But if you take pulls (or take too many pulls) you’ll be too gassed to win, also.
I took seriously the description of the event, and worked for the team. My bad. Next time I’ll let others work.
Very much not sandbagging. That’s called bike racing. He beat you at bike racing. “Racing is licking your opponent’s plate clean before starting on your own.” – Tim Krabbe, The Rider.
I didn’t understand the spirit of this event then. For me it was a chase race, they said we have the same jerseys because we should work as a team. I raced like a TTT, taking hard pulls. Next time I’ll go for the win of the B’s, not bothering about the chase race. Understood.
Same story for me, in the Bs like any other race, I was just trying to hang on. The split went coming up the dirt back to the Italian village. When the As caught my B pack, I managed to jump on for a while but got dropped eventually and then the Bs I left caught our small group anyway. I only got upgraded to B last week and it would have been more fun in the front of the Cs, but hey that’s racing. Side note: how do you get zwift to get stuck on 309 watts sounds like the dream! 😄
A lot of these comments talking about what people saw seem to be saying different things in disagreement as if we were all in the same race, but might be cleared up if it’s clear there were multiple instances of the race and we saw different things because we weren’t all racing at the same time.
I’d recently gotten upgraded from D to C (was a C last spring, then got hit by a car on my last long IRL ride), so I knew I was going to be spat out the back when the reverse KoM got steep if not before, and that’s pretty much what happened.
I saw a lot of chat of people calling out other folks for not pulling in the main group (which, fair enough, that’s why they got caught), but I was too far in the red trying to pull my little group into reeling in folks in front of us (or briefly hop onto the backs of the fast folks passing us) to understand how they had time to type.
I think our specific group of Cs would have done better had we run the Magnificent 8 in reverse so all the big diesel engines who’d gotten dropped on the climb could have stuck around a lot longer and contributed before being dropped, but I think that, had the main group slowed on the hill the direction we went so fewer people were dropped, the extra people would not have made enough of a difference to gain that time back (unless we were actually organized and people were willing to do a series of hero pulls to make the desert one long lead out with discarded pullers littering the roadway).
I think future weeks, as people get practice with this (sure, we’ve all done chase races before, but not often at this big of a scale), will improve the flow. Especially if people get together and chat amongst their teams to make (and follow through on) plans while in the pen. Part of that requires an entire cat thinking of themselves as one team, which is odd when many of the folks in there are people you’ve raced against frequently and whose names are tagged with teams you think of as something you’ve got to beat.
Ah well, being pushed by so many people so much faster than me meant that I posted average power from 5 to 40 minutes that were bests for me since I got hit. Not as good as before, but I felt a good soreness when I woke up this morning, so I’ll take that as a win even if I couldn’t hang with the people I wanted to and didn’t have anything left for a sprint at the end.
Tim, nice writeup! I had a similar “multiple race” experience, where I started with the B’s (as a relatively “high” B) but then realized I forgot to pair my HRM. Not wanting to be DQ’ed (and miss that data), I stopped to pair. I briefly jumped on Zwift Companion to see what other events I might switch to, but I was prepared for an intense race and then it occurred to me that I could wait for the A group and race with them. I couldn’t hang with the front of the A’s through the KOM, but I did end up passing about a quarter of the B riders and still got a great workout. Too bad for you there was no other “Elite Plus” chasing group to join!
I was in the same one as you and I thought we worked really well together. There was almost always someone on the front pushing 6.5+ w/kg and when that person eased someone else took it up (until the last 4-5k) when we caught A and realised we probably weren’t going to catch the front!
See you next week, as I mentioned, it was a lot of fun. That KOM had me pushing 500 watts to keep in the group. I was sure that the Elite group caught the front, so out of interest, how close did the group get to catching the front?
Think it was about 35-40sec in the end! Big group of B’s + C’s held on. Was heaps of fun! Yeah I avg 400w (5.8ish w/kg) for the KOM but the group seemed to stay together well up it (obviously not perfectly)!
Hi Tim as another A+ rider with our group having less than 20 riders it was pretty much impossible to catch A with 100 and B/C with even bigger groups. Riding super hard we made 20s on A and 1m on B. In future events it would be nice to see more equal size groups or at least A/A+ combined.
As I dropped from our group, looking on the mini map, I saw A+ catch A and thought that was the catch and when I saw the huge power numbers for the sprint, I thought everyone was fighting for the win. I guess the end of my article is wrong about the catch but hey ho, I was doing my best with the mini map. Maybe this highlights that perhaps Zwift needs to beef up the detail on that map to make events like this easier / better to ride. I am a little disappointed that our group didn’t make the catch as we were full throttle from the start.
I was in what I believe was the largest field of the day at 10:20 PST. I was in the B group. It was total chaos. I’m used to hard race starts but this was something else. The front pack clearly had a plan to go for the overall win and not wait for anyone who didn’t keep up. In retrospect that strategy worked, so they definitely accomplished 2 out of the 3 goals you identified Tim. Once I realized I wasn’t going to figure in the final results I latched onto a fast A group and we rode through the desert to the end. I made up about 100 spots in the Bs by doing that. It was a fun and crazy race and I can’t wait for the next one.
I was in the 10:20am PST B group too, that start was intense! The blob of 462 B racers was massive so I knew I had to be on the front otherwise with so many racers there would be no way to even see the front to watch for gaps. Pretty neat how close the groups were at the finish, within five seconds I think.
I was in the A group in that 10:20 PST. The groups were so big it was total carnage every time we overtook a group— if you weren’t in the front 30 you’d get caught. Maybe too big? Got dropped for good going into the tunnel. Soooo hard!
I wasn’t really interested in racing it, doesn’t fit my schedule but I watched it on YouTube regardless and it was really entertaining!
I was in cat D and would have benefited from another 10 head start on everyone 😂😂😂😂😂 The racing was good fun managed to tag on to half dozen faster riders so got a good tow!! Must have looked like parasite in yellow hanging on to a bunch of blue riders!!
Will be back as it was a good challenge!!
I just wonder why they don’t use the auto cat model to make groups of equal size? It seems that there is no difference with the classic system (except the separation between A & A+, which is a good thing: a 4,1W/kg racer can’t even stick to a 6W/kg racer).
Of course, this mean the registration stops few minutes before the start of the event and you know your group just few minutes before the start…