Chasing Yellow is back for its third year with its biggest tour edition yet! Inspired by the Tour de France, Chasing Yellow is a 21-stage race where riders race every day of the TdF with a mini Zwift version of the in-real-life course. The tour runs from June 29th through July 21, with just 2 rest days on the schedule, and it’s the queen tour of the year-long Chasing Tour competition.
New This Year
This is the first time Chasing Yellow will cover all 21 stages (previous years only covered 18). That also means the overall distance is more challenging than ever, covering 860km total, which is quite a step up from 558km in 2022 and the 707km covered in 2023.
Adding to the excitement, Chasing Yellow will feature 7 of the newly-released Watopia routes included in The Grade expansion. What better way to experience new roads and tick them off your route completion list!
Schedule Details
Each race is scheduled at four different times throughout the day, so you can find a slot that works for you:
- 9:30 UTC / 5:30 EDT / 2:30 PDT
- 12:00 UTC / 8:00 EDT / 5:00 PDT
- 17:30 UTC / 13:30 EDT / 10:30 PDT
- 0:00 UTC / 20:00 EDT / 17:00 PDT
Note: thanks to the Chasing Series’ novel time gap system (see below) you don’t need to race the same time slot each day.
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Stage Details
- June 29, Stage 1 | Itza Party | 45.7k / 506m
- June 30, Stage 2 | Hilly Route Reverse | 37.0k / 372m
- July 1, Stage 3 | Douce France | 42.0k / 250m
- July 2, Stage 4 | Mayan Mash | 38.0k / 755m
- July 3, Stage 5 | Chasing the Sun | 40.0k / 345m
- July 4, Stage 6 | Watopia’s Waistband | 42.0k / 129m
- July 5, Stage 7 (ITT) | Eastern Eight | 25.0k / 134m
- July 6, Stage 8 | Rolling Highlands | 41.1k / 308m
- July 7, Stage 9 | Serpentine 8 | 45.7k / 398m
- July 9, Stage 10 | Casse-Pattes | 46.9k / 290m
- July 10, Stage 11 | Snowman | 44.0k / 578m
- July 11, Stage 12 | Country to Coastal | 38.0k / 334m
- July 12, Stage 13 | Park Perimeter Reverse | 39.4k / 504m
- July 13, Stage 14 | Achterbahn | 56.0k / 1348m
- July 14, Stage 15 | Peak Performance | 41.0k / 725m
- July 16, Stage 16 | Tides and Temples | 36.5k / 460m
- July 17, Stage 17 | Coastal Crown Loop | 35.6k / 372m
- July 18, Stage 18 | Sand and Sequoias | 42.8k / 292m
- July 19, Stage 19 | Quatch Quest | 46.2k / 1683m
- July 20, Stage 20 | Surrey Hills | 44.1k / 1029m
- July 21, Stage 21 (ITT) | Glyph Heights | 33.4k / 537m
Access race passes here (chasingtour.com registration required) >
Rules & Categories
Chasing Tour rules are quite simple:
- Riders must register for the Chasing Tour at www.chasingtour.com
- Heart rate monitors required
- No ZPower riders
Categorization is different than typical Zwift races, since the Chasing Tour is using the zwiftracing.app ranking system to provide categorization. All categories will start at the same time and be visible to each other during the race. If you need help determining your category, see the CATEGORIES section of the Rules page.
GC Competition Details
In addition to the individual race competition, Chasing Yellow (and all other stage races in the Chasing Series) has a GC competition. It works using the novel “time gap” system, explained below:
- Stage races evaluate a rider’s combined time over the course of multiple stages (race events).
- In an effort time normalize times across multiple time zones a time gap system will be used.
- The 1st placed rider in a race event will earn a time gap of 00:00:00s.
- Each following rider’s time gap will be calculated as a difference from the first rider’s time (ie: +00:00:05s).
- The time gap logic will apply to each race event time zone.
- Riders will then be globally ranked based on their overall combined time gaps throughout the tour, with the rider with the lowest overall combined time gap finishing in 1st.
- If a rider misses a stage they are given the last finishing time for the stage.
- For Chasing Yellow a rider must complete all ITTs (2 stages) and at least 16 of the 19 road stages. In short, a rider can miss 3 non-ITT stages and still qualify for overall GC placement.
- Don’t worry if you miss a stage, riders still earn points from the individual race events they complete within a stage race.
Questions or Comments?
I plan to race Chasing Yellow this year, as a fun challenge that’ll boost my fitness. (Unfortunately, my ZwiftRacing.app vELO ranking puts me into the bottom of category B, which means I probably won’t be much of a contender.)
What about you? Will you be racing Chasing Yellow? Got questions about the series? Share below!
Which time slot will you be racing in, Eric?
17:30 UTC, although I’ll probably do the slot before that (5am Pacific) on Sundays due to church.
Young Eric, you do realise that the 12:00 UTC time slot is where all the kool kidz Hang out? It will be nice to (hopefully) see you on Sundays though. Big hugs!
Love it
Pretty tough timetable for folks in Europe.
Indeed, terrible for Europe: actually only one real possibility but 7.30 PM is still too early for me and 2.00 AM way too late for sure.
I live in Japan and feel the same. I have to choose between a 6:30pm or 2:30am time slot.
can you add the rest days in that list?
Where can I find my Zwift id in order to register with chasingtour?
If you go to Zwift Power and choose your Settings, it is listed there.
Thank you! I am in category E. Guess everyone starts there, right?
This is just spectacular. I just signed up, but do have a question. I am in Category A on Zwift and in Zwift Power, but when I go to the profile page here, it has me in Category B. I’ve been in Category A for about a month or so. Is this different categorization? I was able to accept a race pass for the first even in the B category.
Yes, categories are based on zwiftracing.app vELO score (see above). Incidentally – you being a B is a good illustration of why I’m going to get slaughtered as a B in this series. My vELO score is at the low end of the B window, while yours is probably near the top end…
You know this is what it is always like for some us with the normal cat limits for years now…
Oh, trust me, I know! But changes are coming soon!
Just on the subject of categories, I’ve created a profile and am looking to sign up for the first stage race of Chasing Yellow. What category do I pick? I’ve not raced on the chasing Tours before, and am Cat C (mid to lower level) on Zwift. Its not suggested any category for me, I’m assuming that it has no data yet.
You should be able to see your recommended category at https://chasingtour.com/profile
Although sometimes I’ve had to refresh the page, or click “Edit Profile” then “update profile”.
Wish they’d consider moving that 1700 PDT slot back to 1900 for those of us on the US West Coast and Pacific Islands. 1700 and 0500 are really hard to fit into my family/work schedule!
I’m reading a lot of time slot struggles. Maybe in future events like this, six time slots three hours apart.
Maybe I meant four hours apart. 🙃
24/6=4
Done many ct races. Thoes on the edge on group limits after first few stages it can change based on thoes early stages power data and results for thoes new chasing tour. First week can be chaotic with GC ranking with people changing groups or missing a stage. By second week it GC is mostly clear. Third week is holding on through final stage or all out attacks for GC.
I wish they would offer a grand tour like this in the “off” season. After a long winter, the last thing I want to do is spend 19 days on my trainer instead of enjoying some outdoor miles. Maybe if I was a lot more fit and didn’t work I could do both🤔
Have you tried the FRR tour? Similar to Chasing, but runs autumn through to spring. Just like Chasing it’s VERY challenging!!
Here are a couple of questions.
If you miss a stage, you get the time of the last place rider. Is that the last place rider in your heat or of all 4 heats?
Since it is a mass start will your rider position be of all categories or just your own?
Does the vELO categorization work for riders of all weights? That would be great. Because every series with substantial climbing has a few light riders riding at w/kg way out of category because they are below the wattage limit. It’s impossible to compete.
You get the time of the slowest person in your category from the entire day of racing.
Your position for results is based on your category, but in-game it shows your position out of the entire field.
vELO is results-based and so it works for everyone. If you finish well you go up, if you finish poorly you go down.
Awesome! Thank you Mike!
I’m curious if these routes are slightly different then the actual routes? For example:
Achterbahn is listed as 56km / 1348m but the actual route says its 47.38km / 973m. Is this just a typo on what Chasing Tour listed?
Hi Seth, it will be a custom finish. From looking at the differences in altitude I suspect that the Chasing route will take us up the Innsbruck kom for a 3rd time and will probably finish at, or near, the top. Fun fun fun 🙂
Stage 7 (ITT) will be the Eastern Eight course, but only 25km (typically 51.7km), so does anyone know where the start and finish will be?
Is it the first 25km, but there’s no finish flag after 25km?
There should be a blue hologram finish banner across the road for custom finish spots. S7 ITT guessing coming back over col de saddle spring/ Titan grove junction.
Are these on the Zwift Companion App Events planner? I can’t see the 29th slots.
Events aren’t public – you have to create an account at chasingtour.com before you can get the event links. Links are here once you log into that account: https://chasingtour.com/race-passes
OK, thanks Eric
I have registered, how do I check in each day. I see nothing on Zwift companion or Zwift start up home screen
They’re private events, so the only way you can sign up is by having the links… which are only available on https://chasingtour.com/race-passes
I registered and went to the race pass page and clicked on one of the time slots (I got the little blue check mark). Was hoping to try out my first ever race! But nothing shows up in Zwift on iPad or on my phone. The chasing tour profile also doesn’t seem to work, even though I entered my details (including Zwift ID), it shows place holder values and there is no way to edit age or weight or even category.
Looks like it works fine 🙂 The event finally showed up in Zwift, I guess these kinds of events don’t show up until right before the race. I’m guessing the profile stuff is because they capture your info on the first race or something like that.
Stage 1 is an iTT?
Where do you find the GC? I see they have the overall points GC for all their various events but I can’t find anything specific to Chasing Yellow.
Yes, i ask too
If you go to the CT website, and go to results you can pick the “series” for GC results. (At the time you were looking the first set of data may not have updated though)
Just a thought on the time gap calculation used for the GC. I have been fortunate to ride in groups that don’t have a dominant rider winning by huge time gaps, but just to give you an idea of the issue, in last night’s race, after lap 2, I was the only B rider to stay in the lead group of A’s after a very hard climb up HILLY KOM reverse. There was also a C rider with us. People were commenting on how we could still have a C rider. So all of the people riding in C for that heat are getting large time gaps even though may be racing faster than other heats.
We have a similar situation in the B category. One rider is smashing the field in the first heat, so those riding with him are getting pretty rough time gaps. There are people who have much faster GC times than me, but are over a 2 minutes behind me at this point.
I know people complained about the straight up GC series in the Zwift Games, but I guess there are negatives to whatever method you choose when you have multiple heats.
People probably wouldn’t like it very much in a series like this, but I really love the Zwift Hill Climb events that have no drafting.
Tough Topic. An idea for next year could be to use an average time of the winners of all the heats as the base for the GC time gaps. I don’t think anyone would care that we would not get the results until after all heats are finished.
After you figure all of this out, perhaps you can next tell me how to pace myself for events like this. I’m failing miserably
Well said, Frank. I agree with just about every point you made and I’ve had a similar experience. A handful of really strong A+’s joined the 9:30 UTC race today and smashed everyone. 8 of the top 11 hadn’t done any of the first 3 stages and most of them probably won’t do the rest of the series (maybe some stages, but not all). Sucks for those of us going for GC to lose significant time to people like that. As you said, tough topic and I don’t know what the best solution is, but this doesn’t seem like it.