The world of Zwift is a fascinating corner of the metaverse. Hundreds of thousands of human-powered avatars ride and run these virtual worlds, and each has its own story. Trying to wrap your mind around it all could drive a person to madness!
But never fear, dear reader. With a nod to WIRED’s long-running Chartgeist column, we’ve put together some charts to help you peer into Zwift’s soul. Please note that our goal here is not statistical perfection, but rather a distillation of Zwift’s essential characteristics. Enjoy!
Zwifters come in all shapes and sizes, nationalities and ages, genders and experience levels. But if we really boil Zwift’s core userbase down to their essential characteristics, we’re left with just two distinctives: a proclivity for cycling, and enough nerd-cred to feel comfortable cobbling together the various bits of tech required to get Zwift working.
When you “Zwift”, what are you actually doing? “Zwifting” is a term that captures many different types of activities. We can ride or run. We can do a structured workout, a social ride, a competitive race. But which activities are most popular?
Speaking of activity types, have you ever wondered if you’re in a race while riding on Zwift? It’s an easy question to answer, thanks to our handy chart! Just count the number of nearby riders…
Your Thoughts
What do you think of this first set of Zwift charts? Got an idea for a useful chart we could put together? Share below!
You left out watching IRL racing on GCN while zwifting
and then pushing hard due to sprints or hill climbs going on in said race..
bingo. I have subscriptions to GCN, FloBikes, and Peacock and listen to music while watching and Zwifting for workouts. If I race I just listen to music
I would love to see toggle on/off rubber banding in Club group rides.
I believe race likelihood with zero riders = 0. With one rider, it is at least 50%.
0 riders = 100% if the finish line is close
Unless I’m Z2-ing it (and usually watching dvds/netflix), I’m at least racing myself.
I managed to do a whole ToW group ride without realising it was a race (not technically a race). Oh, how naive I was.
No self respecting nerd would publish a chart with x-axis origin at 1, rather than 0. Also, you could duplicate that chart for the likelihood of allegations of cheating.
Races with one rider are the only fair ones. Once 2 riders are involved, someone is cheating.
Oh, I’ve got a similar one for cheating planned, for sure! It’s based on my finishing position, though… 🙂
This is the content I’m here for!!! 😂😂
Surprised the Pace Partners bar is not taller. C Cadence alone would be that tall. LOL
Q: How many races I’ve done not knowing it was a race?
A: All of them.
This…
And as Titus O’Reilly pointed out in his book “Cheat”, numerous scientific studies have shown that the only two elements required for cheating in competitive activity are:
a) A competitive activity of any kind; and
b) The presence of human beings
Ha, so many ways to go with this. Perhaps concentric circles of “people who hate the Tron bike” and “people who haven’t gotten the Tron bike yet.” Or maybe a comparison of “kits that I spent inordinate amounts of time and effort to unlock” and “kit I actually wear in-game.” I’d also be partial to “likelihood of scheduling a 4AM wakeup for various activities” comparing work, travel, and WTRL
Lol, yes…
Also spider-graph comparing the relative characteristics of top frame and wheel pairings, but for comedy, set the granularity of the axes so that the graph is effectively just a circle
Hi Eric, thanks for these useful views. Maybe, the vista could be expanded with something about: (1) the average of each activity type (f. ex, those who do Workout spend 1 hour on average? for Free Riding 2 hours? and so on); (2) the weekly habitual attendance in terms of time on Zwift platform. Bye and thanks for your daily “voice” 👍
The graph “Is it a race” could perfectly be explained by a graph intention to race vs end up racing
How about seasonal usage stats/variance? Including variance between continents. Personally I prefer an outdoor ride but was surprised to learn how many times Zwift was more convenient due to weather (e.g. Threat of thunderstorms or high winds).
Zwift is ready any time and swapping a bike onto a trainer is not a barrier. I rather get my workout in when it fits my schedule than waiting for instance, the weather to change. Kind of the Netflix streaming having the advantage of watching what you want when you want.
How about, how many Zwifters subscribe to other overlapping services and why? I do, and it is always comes down to keeping my workouts fresh and new as one service usually focuses on only a few of the possible aspects of a the virtual cycling experience.
I was going to point out that “Geeks” was a more complimentary term than “Nerds”, then I remembered that geeks are just nerds with social skills, so I guess the isolated nature of Zwifting lends itself to geeks, rather than nerds 😉
#iamageek
Those are cool, and I take them with a slightly humorous touch…
I would really like to read some “story” around what makes you think that there are more Nerds on Zwift than cyclists (I consider myself both, so that would make me a “Zwifter”) and have friends in both worlds – yet I have never met another Nerd that is on Zwift, while many of my cycling (and other sports) friends are on Zwift.
The best graph certainly is the “is it a race?” graph 😉
Not sure I can relate to the Netflix graph, I like to focus on that content while I watch it (or YouTube Premium), so the only thing ever on TV is “other races” :p
Ideas for other graphs: “elevated heart rate due to physical activities vs due to technical problems”; “thoughts when your PC asks to allow for changes by Zwift (i.e. update)”; “investments into anything Zwift vs IRL cycling”; “something about winning Jerseys in off-calendar worlds”; “likelihood of KOMs by non-power-measured riders”…
I never said there are more nerds on Zwift than cyclists. The chart shows that the UNIVERSE of nerds is bigger than the universe of cyclists. And where they intersect? That’s Zwift’s core audience.
It’s all tongue-in-cheek, of course.
I like your chart ideas. Maybe one will show up in a future post. 🙂
I frickin love chartgeist!
WIRED magazine’s, or my amazing imitation of it? 🙂