How the Race Was Won: Small Pack Tactics

This race was a bit different from most I’d been doing… but it was a welcome change. Instead of 60+ B riders on a ZRL course or Crit City, it was a small pack on two laps of New York’s Astoria Line 8 route.

The pack was small, the race was short (23km)… and I’ll try to keep this short, too. Let’s get to it!

Start + Lap 1

The race start was easy enough, and our pack of 9 B’s quickly started ticking off the miles as we made our way around Central Park.

Just 1.1km in, an A rider named Duffin came flying up from behind, through our pack, then eased off to sit in. I’m not sure what the story was with Duffin – he seemed to disappear occasionally, then reappear. Perhaps internet connection issues? But Duffin would play a part in how the race unfolded, so I wanted to mention his arrival.

I knew the Astoria Line 8 route well, having raced NYC’s ground-level roads many times. I particularly like this route, as it includes the punchy Harlem Hill section to the north. This is a great place to put in digs and drop riders. And that was exactly my plan.

We descended Harlem Hill, then began climbing up the East Drive climb (I’m not sure if locals have a better name for it). That’s when I launched my attack, going off the front hard. Only two B’s followed: Curtiss and Machala. Duffin, our lone A passenger, also hung on. And we caught Cross, another A, at the top of the climb.

Now the question was: could we stay away from the 6 chasing B’s? With two A riders sitting in, and probably the three strongest B’s, I figured we had a good chance. We kept pushing on and I watched the gap to the riders behind slowly dwindle from 5 seconds to 2. But then a rider named Ferreira jumped across to our group, and the gap began to stretch out again.

7 seconds… 10 seconds…

Ferreira was on the front pushing hard, and by the time we crossed the lap banner the chase group was 30 seconds behind. They’d given up.

Lap 2 + Finish

Ferreira was keeping a furious pace at the front, and I noticed as we started lap 2 that he was on virtual power and basically holding 4.9 w/kg (around 315W). Also, no heart rate!

Clearly Ferreira was not a legit B rider. (That’s what I get for entering a race without category enforcement!) Ferreira had gapped us off the front, and I messaged our group, “Not chasing Ferreria. Clearly not a B rider.”

“Thx”, said Curtiss.

And there we were. It was now us three B’s, with Duffin floating off the back, occasionally riding through our group and sitting on the front.

When we hit the East Drive climb for the second time I put in another dig, but Machala and Curtiss hung with me. It looked like I wouldn’t be able to shake these two, so it would come down to the sprint finish.

I picked up a feather powerup at the sprint arch. Not my preferred powerup, but also a pretty handy one on NYC’s punchy little uphill finish.

Now it came down to tactics and timing. I didn’t want to attack off the front without an aero powerup, so I sat in and watched the other riders, looking to grab their wheels if they attacked. Curtiss activated his draft powerup and I eased up even more, making sure he wasn’t benefiting from my draft.

Then his numbers went orange, and I hit the pedals hard to grab his wheel! Punched the spacebar to activate my feather, and as the road turned steep with 100 meters to go my avatar came around Curtiss’.

I crossed the line in second, a minute behind Ferreira – but I considered it a win. And so did ZwiftPower!

See ride on Zwift.com >
See activity on Strava >
See results on ZwiftPower >

Watch race video

Takeaways

In a normal year we see reduced race participation on Zwift from around April thru September. Where every B race has 50-100 riders in January, most have 10-20 during the northern hemisphere’s sunny months.

Personally, I enjoy this change.

Big pack races have a certain feel and challenge to them. The pack speed is high, so you can’t attack and stay away. Instead, efficient riders can tailgun most of the race and simply sprint at the end. And you don’t really focus on individual riders, because there are too many names to track. Instead, you focus on your position in the group.

Small races have a totally different feel. You can sort of get to know each rider. And in a race like today’s, a handful of strong riders can actually make an attack stick if the conditions are right.

And if that attack sticks, you’re faced with a finale where it’s just you versus a few other riders, instead of you against 30 others. That makes the finish much more tactical and interesting.

The downside of small pack races is that they don’t really help me when it comes to ZwiftPower ranking points, because there just aren’t enough well-ranked riders in small events. But that’s alright – it’s not all about ranking points anyway. Today I enjoyed riding a more tactical race, and it fell in my favor in the end, which was just icing on the cake.

Your Thoughts

Do you like small races too? Share your thoughts below!

Announcing the Zwift Insider Rebel Race/Ride Series!

Mark your calendars, Zwifters. For the first time ever, we at Zwift Insider are organizing our very own race/ride series. And it’s a special one… for two reasons.

First, all events are held on Rebel Routes – those routes originally created by community members and published here on Zwift Insider before they were officially added to the game.

Second, all event finishers will unlock the Zwift Insider kit. It’s a kit that speaks to what we’re all about here at Zwift Insider! Ride smarter. Rider harder. Dig deeper.

The series is six weeks long, with each week dedicated to a different Rebel Route. Here are the details…

Race and Recon Ride Schedule

Each week features two recon rides on the week’s featured route:

• Thursday @ 6:10pm GMT (7:10pm BST/2:10pm EDT/11:10am PDT)
• Friday @ 1:10am GMT (11:10am AEST/2:10am BST, Thursday 9:10PM EDT/6:10pm PDT)

These are leaderless group rides at no stated pace. Ride them as a recon for Saturday, or just because you want to earn a route badge, grab the Zwift Insider kit, or ride with friends!

The races happen in three timeslots each Saturday:

• 7:10am GMT (5:10pm AEST/8:10am BST/3:10am EDT/12:10am PDT) Sign up for week 1 >
• 12:10pm GMT (1:10pm BST/8:10am EDT/5:10am PDT) Sign up for week 1 >
• 5:10pm GMT (Sunday 3:10am AEST, Saturday 6:10pm BST/1:10pm EDT/10:10am PDT) Sign up for week 1 >

• Week 1 (May 7): Downtown Titans
  • 1 lap: 25.4km, 295m
• Week 2 (May 14): Eastern Eight
  • 1 lap: 54.1km, 412m
• Week 3 (May 21): Seaside Sprint
  • 6 laps: 40.7km, 312m
• Week 4 (May 28): Three Little Sisters
  • 1 lap: 38.4km, 437m
• Week 5 (June 4): Triple Flat Loops
  • 1 lap: 36.4km, 162m
• Week 6 (June 11): Watopia’s Waistband
  • 1 lap: 27.8km, 101m

See all upcoming events in the series >

Zwift Insider Kit Unlock

Complete any of the recon rides or races and unlock the new Zwift Insider “Ride smarter, ride harder” kit!

Race Rules and Specifics

The rules for this series aren’t much different from other Zwift races, but here’s what you need to know:

• Races are using Zwift’s new category enforcement tools to reduce sandbagging.
• Categories will start separately.
• Three race-friendly powerups will be given out at each banner: aero (helmet), draft boost (van), and lightweight (feather).
• Heart rate monitor required if you want to be included in the final results.
• Smart trainer or power meter required. ZPower riders will be removed from final results.
• Final results will be available on ZwiftPower.

League and Scoring

These are typical “scratch races”. You can treat each race as a standalone event, or go for the overall series win!

See the Zwift Insider Rebel Races league page on ZwiftPower for current GC standings >

Team Participation

While these aren’t team-based points races like ZRL, there will be teams participating including DIRT, SISU Racing, and others. Bring teammates, implement tactics, work together to support your GC rider(s), and make the races interesting!

Questions or Comments

Share below!

Update (April 2022): Current Status of Category Enforcement for Zwift Racing

The first category enforcement test races on Zwift were announced in late February, and the initial test was a success by anyone’s definition. For the first time in Zwift’s history, riders were restricted in their choice of race category based on their historic power data.

Since those early trials, Zwift’s category enforcement tools/features have been evolving, as has their documentation.

Today, with many positive reviews from community members, category enforcement is being used in more and more races each week. Currently there are 623 races happening in the next 7 days, with 145 of those races using the new category enforcement tools. Category enforcement is an option for event organizers to use on request, but it is not yet the default.

Next Steps

I reached out to James Bailey (originally a Zwift community member and now working at Zwift as an Event Operations Specialist) for an update on category enforcement. Here’s what he told me:

We currently have 15+ organisers with approximately 185 events running Category Enforcement. This assigns an estimation of critical power (CP) from looking at the Zwifters 2-50 minute power curve. This determines their category based on both CP and MAP using the below values:

• A: (4w/kg CP OR 5.4w/kg MAP) AND 250w CP
• B: (3.2w/kg CP OR 4.1w/kg MAP) AND 200w CP
• C: (2.5w/kg CP OR 3.9w/kg MAP) AND 150w CP

Whilst not quite “fully baked” the feedback we have received from the vast majority of users who have taken part in Category Enforcement races has been extremely positive.  A large number have said how much more enjoyable they have found racing and how their events haven’t been stretched early on by riders who shouldn’t have entered that category.

Prior to promoting outside of the Futureworks banner there are a number of areas that we need to work on. These include:

• Category Enforcement in Women’s races
• Support material explaining how CP and MAP are calculated.
• Better integration and visibility in ZwiftPower and minimizing discrepancies in category sign ups
• Ability for Event Organisers to customise limits

Additional Next Steps

On the “Next Steps [February 2022]” forum post, James shared that the goal is to make category enforcement the default setting for Zwift races, so organizers would need to turn it off on purpose. But before that happens, Zwift has a short list of things they want to get in place. Here’s what James listed on the forum thread:

• Riders without data automatically go into E (rather than A)
• Better information presented when signing up for an event, rather than just being told that you can’t
• Ability for Support to “forget” an effort when it’s been caused by a miscalibrated trainer, or similar
• Adding CE for Women’s races
• Support documentation that isn’t “ask James or Flint”

Critical Power

The use of Critical Power (CP) instead of FTP is an interesting move, and one that will have reverberations throughout the cycling world just as Zwift’s focus on FTP has made it a more prominent metric. While CP and FTP are sometimes used interchangeably, they’re actually two very different metrics.

CP and FTP are typically within 10% of each other for any given cyclist, but they are calculated using very different inputs. An explanation of CP is outside the realm of this post, but you can check out this BikeRadar post for a more in-depth look at the Critical Power metric.

If you don’t know your CP, you might check out intervals.icu as a free service that can calculate your CP and many other metrics. Tip: find your CP by going to Power>Options, and choosing “Morton’s 3 Parameter CP” as the “power model used to estimate FTP”.

How does CE actually work?

To put it simply: Zwift looks at your last 60 days of activities to determine your minimum category. That’s the essence of category enforcement as it currently stands.

As often happens with early-stage projects, there was very little documentation available for category enforcement when it was originally trialed. One Zwifter (James Eastwood) pushed Zwift hard for more details, then put together a thorough post explaining how category enforcement works – or more specifically, what the Critical Power (CP) and MAP/VO2 category boundaries are, and how those are calculated.

If you’re wanting to dive deeper into Zwift’s use of these metrics for category enforcement, read James’ post.

Finding Category Enforcement Races

Zwift has no easy search filter built into Companion, etc to list only those races using category enforcement. But ZwiftHacks, as always, comes to our rescue! Here’s a custom ZwiftHacks search showing all upcoming category enforcement races.

Questions or Comments

Have you tried category enforcement races yet? How was your experience? Share below!