This weekend’s theme is “firsts”. We’ve got our first Zwift Academy Run events, the first-ever ZA Road segment rides, Livestrong’s first Virtual Challenge, and two rides that can help you complete a difficult route for the first time. See the details below!
Special thanks to Jesper at ZwiftHacks with his Events app which provides powerful event filtering tools that help us create this list each week.
Zwift Academy Segment Ride #1
The first-ever segment rides in Zwift history are rolling out beginning Saturday morning PST! Details on how these rides work are a bit unclear, but it appears that the game will have some new features which push riders to go for a max effort over particular segments.
Segment Ride #1 has two options – A or B. Both involve sprint efforts followed by a long climb effort, so they’re testing your sprint power and threshold power. Be ready to push to the max for 20+ minutes!
Multiple dates and times. See times slots here: men’s events / women’s events
DIRT Badge Hunts: Achterbahn
This weekly long ride from DIRT helps riders check off those difficult-to-ride routes. This week we tackle Innsbruck’s Achterbahn – the longest route on the Innsbruck map! It covers all Innsbruck roads in both directions, meaning you’ll cover 47.38 km (29.4 miles) with 973 m (3,192‘) of elevation gain.
Saturday 11am BST/6am EDT/3am PDT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/1127015
Livestrong Virtual Challenge
Ride for a cause! The first-ever Livestrong Virtual Challenge is happening Sunday on Zwift – a 90-minute ride on France’s Casse-Pattes route to raise funds for cancer survivors and their families. Fundraisers unlock some pretty sweet incentives at different funding levels.
Be sure to read all the event details so you can get registered, raise funds, etc within the Livestrong system.
Sunday 3pm BST/10am EDT/7am PDT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/1088277
Zwift Academy Run
ZA Run has just launched – are you in? This weekend you can take part in some of the first events of the first-ever Zwift Academy Run program. Take on group workout #1, or join a group run in whatever category suits you best!
Multiple dates and times. See time slots at zwift.com/zarun
Peloton Istanbul Race: the Mega Pretzel
Weekends are the time for epic rides, and what’s more epic than a race on Watopia’s Mega Pretzel route? 107 km (66.5 miles) long, with 1642 m (5,387‘) of climbing, the very best riders in the world can’t break the 2-1/2 hour mark on the Strava segment… and the rest of us mortals are looking at more like 3 hours and 15 minutes or more.
Whatever your fitness level, jump in and take on the challenge! Because what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… right?
Saturday 2:15pm BST/9:15am EDT/6:15am PDT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/1127048
Your Thoughts
Got other events that stand out this weekend? Share below in the comments!
I’ve been waiting to get my last route badge, the PRL Full, there is a race (ha!) happening on that route on Saturday! I figured even if I am not racing, I’ll have some company!
It’s probably a better idea to do the PRL Full in free ride mode. You’ll have a lot more company then you would have in an “instanced” event. There might be some riders near you at the start but with an event this long sooner rather then later you’ll probably fall alone or with just 1 or 2 companions for the 2nd half of the event… in the open world there’ll always be people riding up box hill.
Thanks for promoting Badge Hunts, Eric – This is only week #4 of the official version, but we’re thrilled to have been noticed!
Eric, what about the virtual Bike MS rides? Great cause.
They sure are! I featured one last week, so didn’t this week.
Our long running L’Equipe Provence Badge Hunter Series will be riding the Uber Pretzel this Sunday 🙂 https://www.zwift.com/events/view/1129046