Competing In Ironman VR Events on Zwift

April 2, 2020

LAST UPDATED April 8, 2020

IRONMAN® has rolled out their “IRONMAN Virtual Club” platform, and this weekend is their first event: the IRONMAN VR1. Here’s a look at how this virtual competition works, and how to best complete it on Zwift.

How IRONMAN Virtual Racing Works

The IRONMAN Virtual Club is designed to let you “Train, compete, and celebrate your achievements with a global community of fellow athletes no matter where you are.” Once you join the Virtual Club you can sign up for different events and compete with other athletes around the globe as you complete workouts on your own time, using the platform and devices of your choice.

A good comparison here is Strava Challenges, which riders or runners compete across a particular date range for a total distance or elevation goal. IRONMAN Virtual Club events are similar, although they span fewer days and may combine a mix of running and riding. Just like a Strava Challenge, you’ll receive a badge upon completing the IRONMAN event.

Once you link your fitness tracking app (Strava, Garmin Connect, etc) to your Virtual Club account and register for an event, your activities begin counting toward that event.

IRONMAN VR1: The First Virtual IRONMAN Race

Tomorrow is the start of IRONMAN VR1 – a virtual race in which competitors must run 5km, bike 90km, and run 21km between 6pm GMT on Friday, April 3 and 11:59pm GMT on April 5.

These events could be completed outdoors. They could also be completed indoors on virtual platforms including (of course) Zwift!

Signing Up

Without going into intricate detail, here’s the signup process to join IRONMAN VR1:

Create an account at ironmanvirtualclub.com
Connect your tracking app(s) to that account (Strava, Garmin Connect, etc)
Register for IRONMAN VR1 through the “Register Now” link on the VR1 homepage. This will get you a bib number.
Return to the VR1 Homepage and click “Sign Up” to enter your bib number and join that event.

Note: registration is free, although the system is clearly set up in a way that would allow IRONMAN to charge for future events. Over 5100 athletes are registered for VR1 at the time of this post.

Tackling IRONMAN VR1 On Zwift

If you’re wanting to complete any part of VR1 on Zwift, make sure your Strava account (or whatever fitness app you’ve linked to your IRONMAN Virtual Club account) is connected to your Zwift account. This can be done at my.zwift.com under My Profile>Connections.

To finish IRONMAN VR1 you need to complete two runs and one ride:

Run 5km
Ride 90km
Run 21km

It appears the order of the activities doesn’t matter – you could do the ride first then both runs, etc. They just need to be done between 6pm GMT on Friday, April 3 and 11:59pm GMT on April 5.

There isn’t much strategy involved with the running portion, beyond standard running strategy! But let’s talk about the ride. Or more specifically: how do you turn in your fastest 90km ride on Zwift?

Choosing the Best Zwift Route

Your fastest time will be found riding on the flattest virtual tarmac. Zwift’s flattest routes are:

Watopia’s Tempus Fugit
Watopia’s Tick Tock
Richmond’s The Fan Flats
London’s Greater London Flat
London’s Classique or Classique Reverse

There are other flattish routes on Zwift which would be decently fast, but these are the flattest and fastest.

Event Selection

Boost your speed even more by joining a draft-enabled Zwift event (or even better, a double drafting event) on a flat course with other riders of similar ability. This gives you the benefit of a strong group draft, giving you the same speed with ~30% less power.

Zwift’s own event search tools don’t let you filter rides based on length, hilliness, or drafting setup. We recommend ZwiftHacks’ or ZwiftPower’s event search tools for the job.

Example: from ZwiftPower’s homepage click “Filter”, then choose “Flat”. This brings up all the flatter rides. You can filter additionally by length, double draft, and more.

IMPORTANT: if you choose to do this 90km ride in an event, and your event is less than 90km, you will have to keep riding once the event ends, to complete the 90km distance in one activity. So plan for that! Whatever you ride before the event won’t count, since it is uploaded automatically by Zwift as a separate effort.

Bike and Wheel Selection

Since your effort will be on a flat route, choose the most aero in-game bike and wheels you’ve got. Unless you’re riding this as a TT (see below), you’ll want a frame from our fastest frames list (see frame ranking charts for a complete comparison).

And whether it’s a TT or not, you’ll want a wheelset from our fastest wheels list (see wheel ranking charts for a complete comparison).

Riding a TT?

If you’re a purist and want to ride the event on a time trial bike (which doesn’t draft other riders), just pick the best frame you can get from our fastest TT frames list (see TT frame ranking charts for a complete comparison).

Free Riding: TT or Drafting?

If you’re not riding this as an event, you’ll probably wonder: what’s faster in a free ride: a TT bike or a standard road bike that lets you draft?

The answer is: it depends. It depends on how many other riders are on the road!

Luckily, with the crazy numbers we’re seeing on Zwift lately, you can rest assured that riding a standard road bike will give you the fastest time, because you’ll be able to get a lot of drafting done on flat routes.

Exact Distance

IRONMAN’s instructions say “… make sure that you complete the exact distances specified, as your ranking is determined by your time and distance recorded on your GPS tracking device.”

As confirmed by double-checking with IRONMAN support, your ranking will be based on your overall activity time, even if your activity is well over the required distance. This seems a bit odd – it would make more sense to take the time from your initial 90km if your activity is longer than 90km. But according to support, they don’t have that ability. Therefore, you should make sure your ride is at least 90km long, but not much longer!