Do you want to be pushed to the limit, or ride at a social pace? This weekend we’re featuring three different races, sandwiched between two beginner-friendly social banded rides. You do you!
Beth’s Badge Hunt is a series of monthly rides taking on big Zwift routes, and this month’s ride is a celebration of ride leader Beth Phillips’ birthday! These are banded rides, so everyone can ride at whatever effort level they’d like.
ZABI‘s popular race is on Richmond’s classic 2015 Worlds route this week, with a custom finish line at 29.3km. That means you’ll complete one full lap, followed by most of a second lap, but ending (it appears) atop Libby Hill!
It’s a mass-start race, with results divided up into categories.
This weekend SISU’s popular Vuelta-Inspired Punainen race series is in Watopia on the Three Little Sisters route (38.4km, 437m) for its third stage. These are the most popular races this weekend, so if you’re looking to compete with lots of riders, look no further.
The other popular stage race currently underway is the 13-stage Tour de Hisp 2026. Saturday is stage 6, and it’s a climby one on Innsbruck’s Achterbahn (47.7km, 988m elevation).
Even if you haven’t been racing all the stages, you can sign up and go all-in on a single stage for a great race workout. Six different start times to suit your schedule!
This fairly new group ride caters to the 60+ crowd, but anyone under 60 is welcome, too! It’s banded, so you can go as hard or as easy as you want, and everyone will stay together.
This week’s ride is on Makuri Islands’ Chasing the Sun (35.1km, 315m).
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!
Just How Fit Are Other Cyclists For Your Age? (GCN Video)
This week, GCN partnered with Zwift to produce a video analyzing millions of power data points from Zwift users gathered over the past 12 months. The data, when combined with users’ weight, age, and gender, helps answer a few common questions cyclists ask, especially:
How fit am I compared to the universe of cyclists?
How does my fitness change with age?
Here’s the full video… a quick and worthy watch before we dig into the numbers below:
Finding Your Data
To compare yourself to the stats presented in the video, you will, of course, need to know your numbers! These can be found just about anywhere you send your cycling data, including Zwift and Strava:
Zwift shows your Power Profile Over Time (a new feature!) at zwift.com/feed (click MY PROFILE, then POWER)
Strava subscribers can see their Best Efforts Power Curve under Training>Power Curve (strava.com/athlete/analysis)
Zwift dataStrava data
It’s worth noting that Dan mentions a very valid caveat to the accuracy of the data presented in the video. The data is pulled from Zwifters’ activities over the past 12 months, but we don’t know how many of those riders have actually completed max efforts at the four durations below. It’s likely that the actual max-effort numbers for the Zwift population are a bit higher than what you see below.
With that said, here’s the Zwift data presented in the video, so you don’t have to hit pause while calculating your values…
5-Second Power
Male
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
4.16 W/kg
8.75 W/kg
14.06 W/kg
30-39
3.94 W/kg
8.21 W/kg
13.00 W/kg
40-49
3.91 W/kg
7.96 W/kg
12.42 W/kg
50-59
3.74 W/kg
7.36 W/kg
11.32 W/kg
60-69
3.44 W/kg
6.56 W/kg
9.99 W/kg
70-79
2.85 W/kg
5.52 W/kg
8.41 W/kg
Female
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
3.41 W/kg
6.53 W/kg
10.42 W/kg
30-39
3.12 W/kg
6.01 W/kg
9.49 W/kg
40-49
3.09 W/kg
6.00 W/kg
9.30 W/kg
50-59
2.95 W/kg
5.60 W/kg
8.50 W/kg
60-69
2.73 W/kg
5.12 W/kg
7.57 W/kg
70-79
2.37 W/kg
4.36 W/kg
6.47 W/kg
1-Minute Power
Male
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
2.88 W/kg
4.75 W/kg
6.82 W/kg
30-39
2.74 W/kg
4.52 W/kg
6.47 W/kg
40-49
2.68 W/kg
4.37 W/kg
6.21 W/kg
50-59
2.54 W/kg
4.05 W/kg
5.70 W/kg
60-69
2.34 W/kg
3.67 W/kg
5.09 W/kg
70-79
1.97 W/kg
3.18 W/kg
4.44 W/kg
Female
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
2.42 W/kg
3.86 W/kg
5.45 W/kg
30-39
2.24 W/kg
3.63 W/kg
5.13 W/kg
40-49
2.20 W/kg
3.58 W/kg
5.02 W/kg
50-59
2.08 W/kg
3.36 W/kg
4.71 W/kg
60-69
1.92 W/kg
3.09 W/kg
4.29 W/kg
70-79
1.67 W/kg
2.71 W/kg
3.84 W/kg
5-Minute Power
Male
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
2.27 W/kg
3.63 W/kg
5.10 W/kg
30-39
2.15 W/kg
3.41 W/kg
4.73 W/kg
40-49
2.10 W/kg
3.28 W/kg
4.51 W/kg
50-59
1.99 W/kg
3.05 W/kg
4.16 W/kg
60-69
1.82 W/kg
2.78 W/kg
3.76 W/kg
70-79
1.54 W/kg
2.43 W/kg
3.34 W/kg
Female
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
1.95 W/kg
3.07 W/kg
4.28 W/kg
30-39
1.81 W/kg
2.88 W/kg
4.02 W/kg
40-49
1.77 W/kg
2.82 W/kg
3.89 W/kg
50-59
1.69 W/kg
2.65 W/kg
3.65 W/kg
60-69
1.56 W/kg
2.45 W/kg
3.36 W/kg
70-79
1.36 W/kg
2.15 W/kg
2.89 W/kg
20-Minute Power
Male
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
1.95 W/kg
3.09 W/kg
4.32 W/kg
30-39
1.86 W/kg
2.93 W/kg
4.05 W/kg
40-49
1.83 W/kg
2.84 W/kg
3.89 W/kg
50-59
1.73 W/kg
2.67 W/kg
3.63 W/kg
60-69
1.61 W/kg
2.45 W/kg
3.32 W/kg
70-79
1.36 W/kg
2.16 W/kg
2.97 W/kg
Female
Age Group
Bottom 10%
Average Rider
Top 10%
20-29
1.69 W/kg
2.65 W/kg
3.70 W/kg
30-39
1.57 W/kg
2.51 W/kg
3.50 W/kg
40-49
1.55 W/kg
2.47 W/kg
3.42 W/kg
50-59
1.48 W/kg
2.34 W/kg
3.22 W/kg
60-69
1.38 W/kg
2.18 W/kg
3.00 W/kg
70-79
1.19 W/kg
1.92 W/kg
2.69 W/kg
Additional Metrics
The video above also shares some simple graphs showing additional data:
How much our power output changes with age
How much our weight changes with age
As I said… well worth a watch.
Your Thoughts
So how do you measure up? I managed to make the top 10% for my age group (40-49) in 1-minute and 5-minute power, but fell just short in 5-second power and well short in 20-minute power. (Interestingly, this is quite a different result from when I compared my data using ZwiftPower’s rider phenotypes charts back in 2020. Either I’ve changed, the population data has changed, or both. Or maybe it’s time for a 20-minute power test?)
Share your results and any other thoughts and questions below!
A Club Ladder Tourney: What Can You Do With 200 5v5 Teams?
Club Ladder, also known as “5v5”, has now been running for more than three years, with more than 16,000 races contested by 7,500+ unique riders. By sheer volume, it may be the largest community team racing series on Zwift, but its scale isn’t really what makes it interesting.
The unique thing about Ladder is how much control it gives the teams themselves. Two captains agree to race, they find a time that works for both teams, and they get on Zwift and race. There is no fixed weekly schedule, no central race organizer deciding who races whom, and no requirement that every team participates every week. Teams can take it as seriously as they like, build rivalries, race with the same group of mates every week, or simply jump into whatever challenge looks interesting.
In that sense, it is perhaps the most team-empowering series on Zwift.
Over the years we’ve added a few things around that core format to give teams extra motivation:
Rungs give teams a smaller group of nearby opponents to compete against
Belts allow teams to challenge for some extra bragging rights
We’ve also experimented with different race formats, including 5v5v5 racing and Points Races
But we’d never really tried taking the teams and flexibility that make Club Ladder unique and building something completely different around them.
In 2026, we decided to try a tournament.
The Road to a Tournament
This wasn’t our first attempt at doing something different. As mentioned above, in late 2023, Club Ladder introduced one-off 5v5v5 races, and in 2025 we introduced Points Races, adding segment scoring to the standard Ladder format.
For 2026, we wanted to go a little further and create a completely separate competition using the teams and infrastructure we already had.
The opportunity was sitting right in front of us. More than 200 teams were already configured on the Ladder site, captains were actively engaged on Discord, and thousands of riders were already familiar with the format. We didn’t need to create a new racing community from scratch. We just needed to ask whether those teams wanted to try something different.
The answer wasn’t universal. Some teams weren’t able to participate, while others were perfectly happy carrying on with normal Ladder racing. That was fine. The tournament was designed as an additional competition, not a replacement for the format that had already brought thousands of riders to Ladder.
For those who did want to participate, we still had to figure out exactly what they were signing up for.
Designing a Tournament With 200 Cycling Teams
We considered plenty of possibilities, from an FA Cup-style knockout to smaller rung championships, mass-start races, relays, and large multi-team races.
The challenge was finding something that worked with Ladder’s greatest strength: flexibility.
A traditional knockout tournament doesn’t fit that model particularly well. If two teams have to arrange a race themselves, a single round can easily take a week or more. Multiply that across several rounds and the tournament could stretch for months.
There was also the rest of the Zwift racing calendar to consider. Ladder’s flexibility has always allowed it to coexist with ZRL, DRS and the many other competitions taking place throughout the year. A tournament with fixed dates and times would remove some of that flexibility, so we wanted to keep the experiment contained.
We settled on three weeks. We needed a format that could take all the participating teams down to a clear champion(s) in only three races, with everyone racing on the same night.
The 2026 Ladder Tournament
Rather than trying to crown one global champion from 200+ teams, we used the existing Rungs to create groups of roughly 10 teams and let each group race down to a champion.
Rounds 1 and 2 would be mass-start races, with as many as ten teams competing together. But we didn’t want to simply run a normal mass-start race and add up finishing positions. One of the things people love about Club Ladder is its tactical, team-oriented nature, so we wanted the scoring to reward teams for working together.
A New Concept: Team Cohesion Bonuses
The basic idea was that the team’s score would start with the finish time of its third rider. You need at least three riders to finish, and that third rider establishes the team’s base time.
From there, teams could reduce their time by demonstrating cohesion by keeping the riders around that third rider close together.
In Round 1, if the first rider finished within five seconds of the third, the team received a 20-second bonus. A gap of less than ten seconds earned ten seconds, and less than 20 seconds earned five seconds.
The same scale applied between the third and fifth riders, provided the team had five finishers.
So a team with five riders finishing within five seconds of each other could take as much as 40 seconds off its third rider’s time.
Third rider’s time − cohesion bonuses = team time
Lowest time wins.
For example, if a team’s third rider finished at 30:08 and both the first and fifth riders were within five seconds, the team would receive two 20-second bonuses and finish with a score of 29:28:
The deliberately large bonuses were intended to create strategic decisions. If your fifth rider was dropped, was it worth slowing down to bring them back and recover the 20-second bonus? We wanted the answer to be “often, yes.”
The format is somewhat similar to Team Time Trials in ZRL and Team Time Races in the Dirt Racing Series, but with an important difference: this was still a mass-start race, and we were explicitly rewarding team cohesion.
Round 1: A Live Experiment
Teams figured out the basic strategy surprisingly quickly. Getting across the line together was important, but preventing other teams from doing the same was arguably just as important.
Round 1 featured Triple Twist, with decisive climbs over Jarvis and the Hilly KOM. Most races became tactical affairs, with teams saving their powder for attacks on the climbs. Teams that lost their fifth rider were almost immediately in trouble because they could no longer earn the second cohesion bonus, and most of the teams that kept five riders together eventually came down to a bunch sprint.
There were some genuine heroics, though. Several teams used their team time trial skills to regroup after riders were dropped, with their strongest riders sometimes sacrificing their own finishing position to keep the team together.
Team TFC provided perhaps the best example. After the KOM, the team regrouped around riders who had been dropped and deliberately stayed together rather than chasing individual finishing positions. Under this scoring system, that was exactly the right decision.
Round 1 also exposed a flaw in the scoring. Because the back-end cohesion bonus depended entirely on the fifth rider, once Rider 5 was dropped, Rider 4 effectively stopped mattering to the team’s score. Some fourth-place riders ended up soft-pedaling or even DNFing, which was the opposite of what we wanted.
The goal was for all five riders to have a reason to stay together, so we changed the scoring for Round 2.
Round 2: Tighter Scoring
For Round 2, Riders 4 and 5 could each earn their own cohesion bonus based on their gap to Rider 3:
Gap from Rider 3
Rider 4 bonus
Rider 5 bonus
Less than 5 seconds
10 seconds
10 seconds
Less than 10 seconds
5 seconds
5 seconds
Less than 20 seconds
2 seconds
2 seconds
The bonuses were smaller, but keeping the fourth rider close still mattered even if the fifth rider had already been dropped.
We also changed the course topography, with Round 2 finishing uphill on the Rooftop KOM on Makuri’s Electric Break. The climb punished teams that had saved everything for a final sprint, while the tight final corner produced several very close finishes. Several teams missed out on cohesion bonuses by mere tenths of a second.
In the end, only two teams remained in each group.
The finals were set.
Round 3: 5v5 Finals
For the finals, we went back to what Club Ladder does best: a traditional 5v5 race.
This time we abandoned the experimental time-bonus scoring and returned to finish-position points. The course was The Muckle Yin, offering two climbs of more than two minutes, sprint climbs, rollers and a flat sprint finish.
After some heroic catches, tactical attacks and close finishes, the points were tallied and our first Ladder Tournament champions were crowned:
Americas: Coalition Akkadium, TFC X-Force, OTR RED_PELOTON, SISU Meno
Huge congratulations to all of the winning teams, who now have the coveted virtual trophy on their team page and the rarified Club Ladder Kit in their garage to wear for the balance of the year.
What Did We Learn?
The tournament is now over, but the experiment isn’t really finished.
We sent a feedback survey to participants to find out what worked, what didn’t, and whether they would do it again. We received 130 responses from a mix of riders and captains.
The headline numbers were encouraging:
83% said they would personally race in a future tournament, with another 15% saying maybe.
69% said the different scoring format made the tournament more interesting.
62% wanted to see one or two tournaments per year, while another 35% would happily race three or more.
The comments also highlighted three themes.
Theme 1: The Tournament Was a Welcome Change of Pace
The clearest message from the feedback was that people liked the idea of a tournament. Several riders described it as a great way to shake things up, while others offered ideas for how future editions could build on it.
One recurring criticism was that the tournament ended too quickly for teams eliminated in Round 1. A double-elimination or “loser’s bracket” format could give those teams something to keep fighting for, even after missing out on the main prize.
Theme 2: Scoring Was Interesting, But Difficult to Follow In-Race
The feedback on the scoring was generally positive. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said that having a different scoring system from regular 5v5 made the tournament more interesting, and 73 of the 130 respondents rated the scoring as easy or very easy to understand.
The bigger challenge was understanding what the scoring meant during the race. Because the result depended on the third rider’s time and the gaps to the other riders, it wasn’t always obvious which teams were currently ahead or whether a few seconds of separation had gained or lost a valuable cohesion bonus. Several riders suggested that better in-game or third-party tools showing the live team score would make the format much easier to race.
There was also some debate about the racing the scoring encouraged. Some teams enjoyed the emphasis on keeping five riders together, while others felt the large cohesion bonuses could discourage attacks and lead to races being decided by a final sprint. Several riders suggested keeping the team-cohesion element but adding additional ways to score during the race, such as intermediate sprints or KOMs.
We seem to have succeeded in making team cohesion an important part of the race. The next challenge is finding ways to add more tactical opportunities without losing that team element.
Theme 3: A Tournament Can’t (And Shouldn’t) Replace Ladder
One of the things that makes Club Ladder work so well is that teams have a surprising amount of control over their experience. In a normal Ladder race, captains can look at the teams around them, find an opponent that makes sense, and issue a challenge. If the team at the maximum challenge range (up to seven spots above you) is stacked with top-level riders and your squad availability is limited that day, you can save that challenge for another week when you’re able to put out your best team. The flexibility is built into the format.
The tournament necessarily changed that. Once the groups were drawn, teams couldn’t choose their opponents or race times, and a few respondents pointed out that some matchups were very uneven as a result, particularly in the smaller Americas and APAC time zones. Balancing competitive matchups with having enough teams in each race to make the tournament viable is a real challenge when numbers are low.
This reinforced something important for us: the tournament isn’t intended to replace regular Ladder racing. Some teams wanted to compete for a tournament championship, while others either couldn’t participate or simply preferred the normal Ladder format. Both are perfectly valid. The tournament gives teams another way to use the Ladder community and infrastructure, while the regular week-to-week Ladder competition remains the flexible, team-driven format that has worked for thousands of riders.
What Would We Change?
There were some lessons from the organizer side, too. We’d improve the time zone support and communication up front, and we’d pressure-test the rules more thoroughly with practice races before experimenting in a live tournament.
We also didn’t account for adding the races to ZwiftPower, which turned out to be something people really did want. That required quite a bit of manual effort to get right.
But overall, we’re pleased with the results. The vast majority of respondents said they would do it again, and that’s probably the best test of a community racing experiment.
So, How Would You Do It?
Club Ladder gives us a pretty unique opportunity. We have more than 200 teams, an established community, active captains, and thousands of riders who already know how to race together.
We tried one way of turning that into a tournament in 2026. It worked well enough that we’d like to do it again, but there are plenty of ways we could make the next one better.
Would you run a knockout? A round-robin? Mass-start races? Relays? Keep the Rung structure, or throw it away completely?
How would you balance the teams, keep the racing competitive, and still preserve the flexibility that makes Club Ladder unique?
It’s a 17.5km point-to-point route that begins with a short climb, then takes riders over more rolling terrain before finishing on the infamous dirt Temple KOM:
With the route including some dirt sections, riders are asking: does it make sense to swap to a gravel bike for all or part of this race?
The first stretch of dirt on this route comes around 10.7km into the race. Riders begin the Temple KOM, then turn right onto the cutoff road which takes us to the other side of the Temple KOM for a descent back to the Castle area. While this is a dirt section where gravel bikes will be a bit faster than road bikes, it doesn’t make sense to swap from road to gravel when you hit the dirt at 10.7km because you’ll be switching back to tarmac around the 12.9km mark, for a paved stretch just under 2km long.
But then we arrive at the next dirt stretch: the full Temple KOM. The dirt begins around 14.8km into the route, and continues to the finish line (with the exception of some wooden bridge sections near the end). The finish line is the KOM banner in the giant mystical tree atop the Temple KOM:
Does it make sense to swap from a road to a gravel rig for this final dirt climb? The short answer is: yes, if you have the right controller setup. But let’s unpack this, because there are a lot of considerations that go into the bike swap decision.
Key Bike Swap Considerations
Time Savings
This is the first question I always ask when considering a bike swap. All other things being equal, how much faster can you complete the dirt section with a gravel bike vs road bike?
I did a quick test with our standard bot rider (183cm, 75kg, at 300W). Here are the Temple KOM times for a top-spec un-upgraded road bike setup vs a top-spec un-upgraded gravel setup:
That’s a difference of almost 25 seconds – slightly more than the time gap I’ve measured previously, thanks to the new Cannondale frame and Roval wheels being faster than the older gravel setups.
Route Layout
It’s crucial that this route ends atop the Temple KOM. If it kept going and ended on a paved section later, we would need to consider switching back to a road setup, since we would be at a major disadvantage sprinting against roadies on our gravel bike. But the route ending on the dirt tips the scales firmly in the direction of the bike swap.
Brakes (Sort of) Required
Are you able to brake in Zwift? Doing so quickly today requires the older Zwift Play controllers, or the controllers on the Zwift Ride.
You can also brake via the pairing screen, but to do so you have to bring up the pairing screen and go to 0 watts. So the fastest and simplest way to stop is via manual braking.
Pro tip: Set “Braking Sensitivity” to 100% (see above), as this will bring you to a stop 2-3 seconds faster than the default 50% setting.
Time Cost and Fast Swaps
Of course, bike swapping has a cost, because you have to stop moving before you can swap. Since the race ends atop the KOM, there’s no need to swap back to the road bike. So the major cost of your bike swap is the time lost while stopping at the bottom of the Temple KOM, swapping, then getting moving again. (Of course, there’s also the cost of losing the draft. I discuss that below.)
Doing it quickly takes a bit of practice. But if you have braking controllers (see above), you can go from full speed racing on your road bike to fully swapped and moving ahead on your fastest gravel bike in less than 5 seconds. In fact, I did it today, on my way to an unimpressive 8th-place finish:
Equipping the Best Wheels
One thing that helps make this swap more effective is last week’s game update that saves wheelsets to frames. Now you can equip your ideal gravel setup beforehand, then race on your road setup. When it comes time to swap, just click that gravel frame, and it’ll have the wheels you last used attached.
Where To Swap
You don’t want to swap on the flat and fast start to the KOM, because your effort isn’t high there, and you’re benefiting from the pack draft at those higher speeds of 40+kph.
Instead, wait to initiate your bike swap until the group slows down around the big right-hand turn where the road pitches up to 5%. This allows you to derive maximum benefit from the pack draft at higher speeds, initiate a faster bike swap, and get back in touch with the pack sooner since they won’t be so far away once you get going again.
Losing the Draft
Assuming you’re in the front pack when you initiate your bike swap, you can plan on most or all of the pack going up the road without you as you stop to change bikes. (In today’s race, I think I was the only rider who stopped to swap!) This means you’ll lose the draft benefit of the pack until you catch them again.
This is an added “cost” to bike swapping, but there are two things worth mentioning that reduce this cost:
You’re on a climb traveling at 15-20kph for most of the remainder of the route, so you’re not saving a lot of power in the draft.
As mentioned above under “Where To Swap”, timing your swap smartly lets you stay in the draft when it’s most helpful and get back in touch with pack riders more quickly once you get moving again.
Bike Upgrade Status
This isn’t actually a key consideration, but I know people will ask, so I’m including it!
Many riders have a fully-upgraded road bike, and a partly-upgraded or un-upgraded gravel bike. Does it still make sense to swap in this case?
Using some approximate napkin math, we can say that the Temple KOM is ~6 minutes long, or 1/10th of an hour, which means the fully-upgraded bike would be 37/10=3.7 seconds faster up the Temple KOM than its un-upgraded version.
So if you have a fully upgraded road bike and an un-upgraded gravel bike (using the frames and wheelsets I used in my tests above), the gravel bike will still outclimb the road bike by over 21 seconds.
Conclusion
Given all the considerations above, I’d say bike swapping on WhatYumeziWe’reLost? is a no-brainer, assuming you have access to quick menu navigation (best done via Mac/PC keyboard shortcuts).
Your Thoughts
Have you tried a bike swap on this route? Do you agree or disagree with my conclusions above? Chime in below!
Tomorrow Is VO2sday! 5×4-Minute Mass Start Time Trials on Zwift Shorts
It’s been ten weeks since I last posted about Zwift Insider’s VO2sday races, so I figured it was time for an update. Keep reading to learn all about our “Structured Workout Races”!
The VO2sday concept is simple, but not easy: 5 all-out 4-minute efforts, with 6 minutes of recovery between each race. If you do it correctly, you’ll accumulate 5×4=20 minutes of quality VO2 max work by the end of the last race. But it’s done in a motivating and engaging race setting, which makes the suffering much more bearable. Here are two live streams from last week’s races:
August 25 Race Details and Signup
Tomorrow’s races feature the first 5 routes of the new Zwift Shorts challenge. As long as you complete a full lap of the route, you’ll get credit toward the challenge, which means bonus XP! (Pro tip: most riders cover around 3km of distance in a 4-minute VO2sday race on flat roads. So you may need to keep spinning after the race ends in order to finish the lap and get credit toward the Zwift Shorts challenge.)
VO2sday Micro Races aren’t your typical Zwift race. These are time-based races finishing at the 4-minute mark instead of finishing at a particular point on the course.
The win goes to whoever rides the furthest in 4 minutes. And the overall rankings across the 5 races are based on the total distance you cover across all 5 races.
ZwiftPower can’t handle time-based race results, so our results are hosted by our friends at LeadoutEsports.com. This week’s results will be found at https://leadoutesports.com/vo2sday/17.
Be sure to register at Leadout and link up your Zwift account so your name is included in the race results (here’s a shot of last week’s B category leaderboard):
Structured Workout Racing
I’ve set up these races with a very unique structure, with the goal of delivering an event that is engaging and fun while delivering a proper VO2 max session:
5x 4-minute V02 max efforts: That’s 20 minutes of solid VO2 max interval work in just 44 minutes.
Recovery time: Races are 10 minutes apart, so a 4-minute race leaves you with 6 minutes of recovery before the next interval.
Drafting is disabled: These are effectively time trials, so you’ll want a fast TT setup. Turning off the draft moves us from the “sit in then sprint” mindset to “hold steady high power for the duration” mode.
Mass start: While riders are broken into categories for results, these are mass-start events with all categories starting together, so everyone has riders ahead to chase. (Remember, the goal is to push as hard as you can for the duration of the race. There is no “sitting in the pack and conserving” on VO2sday!)
Mix of courses: Each week we mix up the courses a bit to keep things interesting, but they’re all some mix of flat, rolling, and even downhill parcours.
Compound Score categories: Since results are driven by your power numbers, riders are categorized by compound score, not Zwift Racing Score. This takes into account your 5-minute power and body weight.
Watopia is available every day while the other maps rotate as “Guest Worlds” according to the calendar below. This gives Zwifters access to three worlds (Watopia + two guest worlds) at any given time.
Zwift’s Climb Portal gives Zwifters access to a growing library of famous real-life climbs in a gamified environment where roads are colored based on gradient. Learn more about the Climb Portal >
While the library of climbs continues to grow, only three climbs are accessible on a given day:
Climb of the month: the first climb listed on the calendar below rotates monthly. This climb is available only in France, and you can ride it by clicking the appropriate card at the bottom of your home screen under “Just Ride”.
Featured daily climb: the second climb listed rotates daily and is only available in Watopia. Ride it by clicking the appropriate card at the bottom of your home screen under “Just Ride”.
Climb of the week: the last climb listed rotates weekly and awards bonus XP upon completion. This climb is only available in France, and can be accessed via the “Climb of the Week” card on your homescreen.
Learn more about a climb by clicking it in the schedule below.
“We Ride Paris” Challenge Launched on Zwift In Partnership with Paris Saint-Germain
This week, Zwift rolled out the We Ride Paris “connected cycling challenge” as part of a unique initiative spearheaded by the Paris Saint-Germain football club. Powered by the support of pro cycling team Groupama-FDJ UNITED plus WHOOP, Zwift, and Wilier, We Ride Paris aims to “bring as many people as possible together around a fun, sporting and collective challenge.”
Completing the Challenge
Completing the challenge is quite simple – all you have to do is ride at least 16.4 kilometers, either on Zwift or out on the road. This needs to be done between August 18, 2026 at 9am PDT and September 13, 2026 at 23:59 PDT.
While you can technically get entered into the prize giveaways managed by PSG (see below) by riding any 16.4km+ session on Zwift or outside, Zwifters will probably want to click and free ride the Crêpe Escape route via the We Ride Paris card on their home screens, or take part in one of the special We Ride Paris events (see below), since doing so unlocks the special We Ride Paris kit and socks, and triggers an automatic email with more info on entering the prize giveaway.
Special Events
A number of events are taking place as part of this initiative – some on Zwift, and some IRL.
Virtual group rides will be held on Crêpe Escape with professional Groupama-FDJ UNITED riders (see upcoming events at zwift.com/events/tag/werideparis, or click the banner below).
An IRL finale will be held at the Parc des Princes and an auction of exclusive bikes, with proceeds donated to the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund – PSG For Communities and the Xana Foundation.
Prize Giveaways
Complete the challenge for an opportunity to enter for a chance to win prizes including attending an exclusive in-person event at Parc des Princes, the home of Paris Saint-Germain. Six winners will be chosen to take part in the event at the Club’s iconic stadium. The event will include a unique group ride on Zwift alongside Club personalities and professional riders from Groupama-FDJ UNITED.
Other prizes include a Zwift Ride, annual Zwift memberships, VIP experiences at professional cycling races with FDJ UNITED, official We Ride Paris IRL cycling kit, WHOOP wearables and monthly memberships, and vouchers to spend at the Paris Saint-Germain online store.
Important note: to be entered into the prize giveaway, you must register at the PSG website here after completing your qualifying ride.
Kit Unlock
Completing the Crêpe Escape route via the We Ride Paris home screen card or via a special We Ride Paris Zwift event unlocks the We Ride Paris kit and socks:
Fundraising
Paris Saint-Germain commissioned internationally renowned artist Edgar Plans to create the distinctive visual identity for We Ride Paris. His design has been applied to a cycling kit, Zwift Ride smart bikes, and Wilier bicycles, bringing together the worlds of Paris Saint-Germain, PSG For Communities, and the Xana Foundation.
Wilier and Zwift will provide five Filante SLR ID2 bikes and five Zwift Ride smart bikes respectively, all customized in the We Ride Paris colors. These exclusive pieces, created especially for the occasion, will be auctioned by Paris Saint-Germain. All proceeds from the auction will be donated to PSG For Communities, through the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund, and the Xana Foundation to support their work.
This weekend is headlined by a memorial ride – the sort of event we never want to see, but nevertheless must be held. RIP Finlay Tarling.
That event is followed by the kickoff of SISU’s popular stage race series, and we finish up with three popular weekly community rides of varying difficulty.
On August 14, the cycling world lost Finlay Tarling in a tragic accident during Stage 8 of the Volta a Portugal. This Sunday, we come together to remember Fin, celebrate his life, and honor his memory by doing what he loved most — riding our bikes together.
Led by the Wobble Cycling Club, this is a 60-minute open-paced ride on Watopia’s Tair Dringfa Fechan route.
Participants are invited to donate to the fundraiser at gofund.me/526400d3f. “This fund can hopefully serve as part of a legacy project providing an opportunity to help future generations of young Welsh riders discover the freedom and confidence that a bike can give a child.”
This weekend SISU’s Vuelta-Inspired “Punainen” race series kicks off with an individual time trial on Watopia’s Hilly Route (9.3km, 109m) – the very first route ever created in Watopia! Bring your fastest TT rig and be ready to go all-in. These are by far the most popular races this weekend, so if you’re looking to compete with lots of riders, look no further.
A regularly featured event here on Zwift Insider, the BMTR Fundo consistently draws lots of joiners because it’s well led and run week after week, year after year.
This week’s ride is on the London Calling route (31.2km, 207m) and you have four distance groups to choose from, all the way up to 100 miles!
It’s been a while since we’ve featured this event, but it’s always well-attended and well-led at a pace that helps everyone stay together. Experienced leaders and sweepers do their best to keep the groups together so everyone can work together to knock out a long ride!
This week’s ride is offered at a D pace of 1.6-2.0 W/kg, and is on Greater London Flat for 8 laps. That’s a total length of 99.1km and 468 meters of climbing.
If you want to take on Alpe du Zwift but find it a bit intimidating, join the Phoenix Rising crew on this banded ride. They’re taking on the Road to Sky route, which features the Alpe. Even if that is a bit too much for you to handle, the beauty of banded rides is that as long as you keep pedaling, you’ll stay with the group and keep making progress!
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!
