2022 Zwift Worlds Recap (Nowhere Fast Episode 33)
2022 Zwift Worlds Recap (Nowhere Fast Episode 33)
The 2022 Zwift UCI World Championships had breakaways, gutsy attacks, and exciting finishes. Katheryn Curi joins KBH from inside the Zwift Worlds Zeloton as we discuss and analyze the races held in fake future New York.
About the Podcast
Nowhere Fast is a part of the Wide Angle Podium network and focuses on virtual bike racing. It includes Zwift commentary, interviews, and coverage of real races on fake bikes. Get it on Apple Podcasts, Podbean, Spotify, or anywhere else fine podcasts are shared.
BreakTheBias Event Series Announced
BreakTheBias Event Series Announced
Inspired by International Women’s Day 2022, riders from teams in the women’s ZRL premier division have come together to lead a series of social rides to celebrate the achievements of women on Zwift and promote gender equality by encouraging more women to have the confidence to race on the platform.
Whilst Zwift is one of the global leaders in sport, when it comes to providing equal opportunities and prizes for men and women, a recent report showed that only 8% of the racing population on Zwift is female and collectively we aim to support the IWD theme of 2022 to #BreakTheBias.Â
Racing is often considered completely performance orientated, but ask any of the ride leaders in this series why they enjoy racing on Zwift, and they will all cite camaraderie and collective spirit as one of their primary reasons for participation. For all of us, competing on Zwift has led to new friendships, opportunities and experiences. We would like to invite women of all ages and abilities to join us on our #BreakTheBias rides to share their cycling experiences and achievements and ask us any questions they have about racing, training, and cycling in general as we set about forging a more gender-equal world.Â
Break the Bias Ride Schedule
All rides are for women only. Each event is 45 minutes long and held at a social pace of 1.2-2.1 w/kg.
Rides are scheduled twice each day to cover multiple timezones. The first ride is at 6pm GMT (1pm EST/10am PST), with the second at 8pm EST/5pm PST.
Ride dates:
- Tuesday 8th March (Makuri Islands Neon Flats)
- Tuesday 15th March (Watopia’s Waistband)
- Tuesday 22nd March (France’s R.G.V.)
See all upcoming rides and sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/breakthebias
Be sure to join the Discord server for ride chat and questionsÂ
Read on to find out a bit more about the ride leaders and organisers, including a celebration of their favorite achievements in sport!
Cecilia
Cecilia manufactures hard metal buttons for rock drills at Epiroc. She started cycling in 2009 to do a “Swedish classic”. Cecilia races for Heino race team online and Norbergs CK IRL.
She enjoys online racing for the team spirit and the lack of weather and crashes. Cecilia’s most memorable achievement in cycling is her gold medal from Amateur World Championships 2016.Â
Mary
Mary lives in the Yorkshire Dales, UK and is surrounded by the terrain she loves the most…hills! By day she works as a website manager for an outdoor shop as well as freelancing as a product development scientist for a nutrition company. She also has a small farm with her beloved sheep! Mary races for Canyon Esports online and Team Boompods IRL.
Coming from an elite running background Mary, switched to cycling in 2017 following a long battle with injury that stopped her running and is extremely grateful to have found cycling and especially Zwift. Top achievements include 6th in the recent UCI ESports World Championships, being a Zwift Academy Finalist, 2x National Masters Road Race Champion, and 4x National Hill Climb Silver Medalist.
Kristen
Kristen is an artist, goldsmith, and jewelry designer (Kristen Farrell). She used to have a gallery and atelier in Soho NYC, but moved her shop to the Hamptons when COVID hit. She loves racing on Zwift and being team captain of the premier division squad Virginia’s blue ridge Twenty24.
Kristen’s favorite Zwift achievements include being ranked #1 female on ZwiftPower, a virtual everesting, and placing 1st in race 6 of the 2021/2022 Premier Division Season 1. When she’s not busy training or making jewelry, Kristen is usually taking walks on the beach with her 14 ½ year old Shiba inu named Moscow.
Katheryn
Katheryn is a former professional cyclist who, since retiring in 2010, has worked as a director for several different development teams (Alto Velo and the Amy D Foundation) as well as for the professional team Tibco-SVB. She also is on several different boards of directors, has volunteered in her local community, and is active with her local cycling club.
Off the bike, Katheryn loves to cook, walk her dog Cooper, and spend time with her boyfriend Joe and friends and family. On Zwift she races ZRL with Saris-NoPinz and the WTRL TTTs with IRACELIKEaGIRL. Her favorite thing about Zwift is the community.
She won US Nationals in 2005, the Geelong World Cup in 2008, and several Premier League Zwift races.
Monilee
Monilee is a life-long athlete, mother of 3 young girls (5, 7, 11), works at Microsoft as a Partner Group Program Manager, and loves to ride and race her bike. She learned to ride at the age of 24 (so she could be part of an Adventure Racing team!) and hasn’t looked back since. Her first love was mountain biking – she loves an adventure – so was immediately attracted to the multi-day stage races (La Ruta, Trans Rockies, etc) before moving to compete in the Canada Cup series at an Elite level. After moving to the States she dabbled in 24h MTb solo races where she competed at Worlds for 3 years, with a best finishing place at 4th.Â
She loves to learn new things and push her limits, but most of all she rides for the pure joy of riding her bike. She lives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States where there is plenty of nature, roads, dirt, and trails to keep things interesting. On Zwift she races with team AEO and leads rides with the BMTR community. She is fascinated by food and is often found talking about her latest favorites (especially cookies!).
Charlotte
Charlotte Backus is a professional cycling coach. She lives in Park City, Utah with her boyfriend Matthew Turner and also helps out with their family property management business along with managing many social media platforms and video edits. Having previously raced in the premier division for Twenty24, Charlotte now races in the community division for Socks4Watts.Â
She’s been cycling since she was very young and has raced as a UCI elite pro rider. Her favorite achievements are becoming a coach and being one of the beta riders on Zwift. She strives to help her athletes through her experience, certification, and knowledge in both training, nutrition, physiology, and sports nutrition. She continues to race at the elite level in gravel, road, and esports and continues to coach many athletes from around the world.Â
Alice
Alice is a teacher from Surrey, England, who races for Heino and Socks4Watts on Zwift, and the UCI Continental team AWOL O’Shea IRL. Alice joined Zwift when lockdown hit as a substitute for competing in time trials and road races and soon became hooked due to the camaraderie she experienced in the women’s Zwift community.
Her proudest cycling achievements are competing in the Women’s Tour WWT stage race last October, winning the WTRL TTT World Championships on Zwift, and representing Great Britain in the recent UCI ESports World Championships, where she placed 13th.
Aside from her own racing, Alice is manager of the Socks4Watts Women’s team and is part of a British Cycling Road Workgroup where she works to improve provision for women and girls in outdoor cycling.Â
Arielle
Arielle raced BMX professionally from the age of 15 to 28, becoming the first American woman to win a UCI World Cup, a World Cup series title, a silver at the Pan American games, bronze medal at the world championships, and qualifying for the London Olympics in 2012. She retired from World Cup racing in 2013 to start her family and coach the next generation of Elite BMX racers.
After dabbling in some pro MTB races and after the birth of her second child, Arielle found Zwift as a great way to rebuild strength and fitness from home and fell in love with Zwift racing and the Zwift community after joining the Aeonian race team. She coached 3 Olympians competing in 3 different cycling disciplines at Tokyo this year, is married to an Army soldier, and is a proud mum of a 7-year-old and 2-year-old.Â
About the Organisers
#BreakTheBias with Zwift was founded by Karla Williams and Alice Lethbridge to promote the camaraderie and friendship that exists between female racers on the platform.Â
Karla is a Peruvian/British mum of a little girl, co-founder of Aeonian Race Team, and organiser at The Warrior Games. Karla has been cycling for around 7 years, mainly socially, with some sportives here and there. She discovered Zwift 5 years ago, and got completely addicted to it! Zwift has been an amazing platform to keep her strength during the winter months and has also had a big impact on keeping her healthy physically and mentally.
As Karla’s love for the sport grew, she realised how hard and intimidating it is for women to get into the sport and e-racing. Realising this made her passionate about promoting, highlighting, and supporting women’s e-racing by managing a women’s e-racing team and by setting up The Warrior Games, which offer different types of races for the women’s community on Zwift. She hopes to provide ladies the opportunities to try these races and get the confidence in themselves to enter the racing scene, which in itself is very intimidating. #BreakTheBias
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
The Zwift Premier League Burrito King (Nowhere Fast Episode 31)
The Zwift Premier League Burrito King (Nowhere Fast Episode 31)
Zach returns to racing and starts to roll the dice. KBH tries to mimic Zach’s boldness, becoming the “People’s Champ” with his valiant attacks in the Zwift Premier League but is done in by too many burritos. We also develop a Premier League media strategy that may or may not include MOAR HEELS. Mike is still recovering from Unbound but plans to do it again anyway.
About the Podcast
Nowhere Fast is a part of the Wide Angle Podium network and focuses on virtual bike racing. It includes Zwift commentary, interviews, and coverage of real races on fake bikes. Get it on Apple Podcasts, Podbean, Spotify, or anywhere else fine podcasts are shared.
Zwift Updates this Week: Companion App Club Alerts and Weight/Height Locks in Events
Zwift Updates this Week: Companion App Club Alerts and Weight/Height Locks in Events
Zwift issued two important updates this week, but neither arrived in the form of a downloaded game update, so they could easily be missed.
The first update came with the latest version of the Companion app, enabling push notifications for Club Chat and Event Creation. And the second set of updates locks riders’ height and weight during events, preventing them from cheating by making mid-race changes.
Club Notifications
A new pair of notification options was added to Companion on iOS and Android. You can now toggle notifications for “Club Chat” and “Club Event”:
- Club Chat notifies you when someone posts a message on your club’s discussion board
- Club Event notifies you when a new event has been created for any club you’re a part of
These notifications are enabled by default. Change settings via Settings>Notifications in the Companion app.
The “Club Event” notification is especially useful for small clubs holding club-only events. It allows members to learn about new events without organizers having to manually reach out to members by some other means.
These notifications were a popular request among Zwifters, so it’s good to see Zwift further developing the just-expanded Clubs functionality.
For more info on these new notifications, see this post from Shuji in the Zwift Forum.
Weight/Height Lock In Events
Zwift’s dev team responded quickly to last week’s kerfuffle over racers’ ability to change their weight and height mid-race. The exploit needed quick fixing, because racers could change their settings back before the event ended, making it difficult to detect the “doping”.
Yesterday, Shuji announced the fix via a Zwift forum post. Here’s the post in its entirety:
Today we are beginning a series of security changes to address an exploit in game where a Zwifter could change their weight while in an activity in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage in competition. This exploit could be detected on Zwift servers, but would be hidden from public view, therefore impacting community racing. The first fix, which is live today, addresses competitive integrity and ensures greater fairness, specifically in events.
What does today’s fix entail?
Starting today, weight and height will remain locked when you are in an event.
If you are in an event and you try to make a change to your weight or height via your zwift.com web profile, you may be presented with a generic error message. If you try on Zwift Companion, changes will not save, and therefore performance in game will not be impacted.
When can I change my height and weight?
You’ll still be able to change your height and weight when you are logged out of the game, or when you are logged in, but not active in an event.
What about the bug bounty program that was mentioned?
We know a lot of you are also interested to hear more about the bug bounty program. This will take time to develop but as with this fix, we will keep you updated as soon as we have news.
This is the first step of many we are taking to address game integrity. We look forward to updating you on additional efforts
We’ve tested the changes and they are working as described above.
This is a welcome fix and a fast response from Zwift’s team, so kudos to them for good work. It’s worth noting that Shuji says, “… we are beginning a series of security changes…” which means further changes are planned to address this exploit.
Our guess would be those plans simply involve making the UI more elegant, perhaps explaining why a rider isn’t allowed to change their height or weight.
It’s also interesting to note the post says, “This is the first step of many we are taking to address game integrity.” So Zwift has additional work planned in the broader area of “game integrity”. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
Notable Zwift Events for the Weekend of March 5-6
This weekend’s picks are all about going long. We’ve chosen the ever-popular zFondo series, plus three more rides that will have you holding sustained efforts. All great ways to train (or test) your aerobic endurance, and thanks to Zwift you can do it in the company of hundreds of friends!
March zFondo
The final weekend of Zwift’s 2022 zFondo series is upon us, and signup numbers are huge, with over 5,000 riders already signed up at the time of this post being published. If you’re looking for a challenging long ride this weekend, this is the first place to go. It’s your only chance to unlock the finisher’s jersey, too!
Multiple dates/times
Sign up at zwift.com/events/series/zwift-fondo-series-2022
Vatternrundan Group Ride Series
Vätternrundan is an IRL event which bills itself as “the world’s largest recreational bike ride.” The ride is 315 km long, around lake Vättern in Sweden, and happens in in June.
Swedish Zwift Riders (SZR) has been running a Sunday series since January to prepare riders for the long effort. This weekend’s ride is 4 hours long, on Watopia’s Waistband.
Sunday, March 6 @ 7pm GMT/2am EST/Saturday 11pm PST
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/2685004
Mt Fuji HC Dojo Series 2022 – TT Performance Check
Ready for an all-out effort up Alpe du Zwift? As part of this year’s Mt Fuji Hill Climb Dojo series, Zwift is hosting a non-drafting TT ride on the Road to Sky route. TT bikes aren’t allowed, so pick your best climbing rig and go up up up!
Saturday, March 5 @ 11am GMT/6am EST/3am PST and 8pm GMT/3pm EST/12pm PST
Sign up at zwift.com/events/series/mtfujihcdojo
BMTR Flat 100 (Miles)
BMTR’s Flat 100 is a popular weekly group ride with four different pace categories. Held on the super-flat Tempus Fugit route, this is the perfect event if you’re looking for steady, long miles!
Saturday, March 5 @ 1:10pm GMT/8:10am EST/5:10am PST
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/2844285
Your Thoughts
Got other events that stand out this weekend? Share below in the comments!
Chasing Cancellara TT Races Announced for March 9-13
Do you consider yourself a good time trialist? Next week’s Chasing Cancellara events give you the chance to compare yourself to one of cycling’s all-time greatest, Fabian Cancellara. Here are the details…
Who is Fabian Cancellara?
Fabian Cancellara (or “Spartacus” as he is nicknamed, due to his stature) is a recently-retired Swiss professional road cycling legend and Time Trial Specialist.
His achievements are impressive. He was the 4x World Time Trial Champion and 2x Olympic Time Trial Champion as well as winning three of cycling’s most prestigious races (the “monuments”), multiple times. In addition, he won 8 stages of the Tour de France, including wearing yellow for 29 days.
Group Social Rides
Fabian is leading two social rides prior to the big events, and one afterward:
- Fast and Female Social Ride, Sleepless City, February 28th @ 6:30pm GMT
- Q&A Pre-Event Social Ride, Richmond Rollercoaster, March 3rd @ 6:30pm GMT
- Recovery Ride, Champs Élysées, March 15th @ 7:30pm GMT
Main Events
On March 9-13 individual TT events will be held on two different Zwift routes. Fabian won’t be racing with everyone else. Instead, your goal is to beat Fabian’s pre-set times:
- Stage 1: 2015 Richmond UCI Worlds Course, 16.2 km (10.1 miles) / 142 m (466‘)
Time to beat: 24m 36s - Stage 2: Temples and Towers, 32.6 km (20.3 miles) / 280 m (919‘)
Time to beat: 51m 56s
(It’s worth noting that neither of these course times is incredibly fast. We would say they’re roughly at B race pace.)
Sign up and see what you can do!
Pick Your Wheels
The event notes say, “You’ll be auto-assigned Fabian’s weapon of choice: The BMC Time Machine time trial bike, so get ready to light it up!”
That means you’ll still be able to choose which wheels you use. We recommend the DT Swiss disc wheels for both TT events, since they’re the most aero.
Unlock the Kit
The suffering will be worth it as when you finish one of the race stages, you’ll unlock the exclusive in-game Chasing Cancellara kit. Note: finishing one of the social rides will not unlock the kit.
See you on the start line!
How the Season Was Won: a Clean Sweep for the DIRT Roosters
How the Season Was Won: a Clean Sweep for the DIRT Roosters
This week was the final race of Zwift Racing League 2021/22 Season 2. My team, the DIRT Roosters, had a plan to craft a glorious ending to our so-far undefeated season in the EMEA W B2. But you know how plans go in bike races!
First, a look back at last week’s TTT, and a lesson I’ll call “Don’t ride centuries before races.”
First: Last Week’s TTT
Last week’s team time trial was a 2-lapper of Richmond UCI Reverse. I had told my team the prior week that having me race was not the best idea, because I had a long ride planned the day before with my brother Steve who was visiting from out of town.
Team captain Antoine thought it would be fine, and told me I would probably be surprised by how good I felt. I told him he might be surprised by how bad I felt. Sometimes I think the rest of my team recovers much faster than I!
Anyway – the long ride (92 miles from my home to Mendocino, CA on the Pacific coast) was tougher than anticipated. It seems we chose the worst day of the year so far to do the ride: it was 20 degrees colder than the week before, the wind was high all day long (mostly a quartering headwind), then with an hour left to ride rain began dumping on us. We arrived freezing cold and soaked to the bone, but it was another brotherly adventure in the big. Always worth it.
My legs didn’t feel great the next day during warmup, and as we blasted out of the pens, they didn’t magically improve. I will confess I made it further than I thought I would, barely holding on up the three climbs on the first half of the lap, then put in two pulls on the flat half.
As we headed into the second lap I knew I couldn’t make it over the climbs without my team slowing for me. They were riding super strong, so I knew they would be faster without me. So I announced over Discord that I’d be taking a suicide pull at the bottom of the first descent, pulling them into the start of the next climb. 410W for 60 seconds and I was done. Then I dropped off and played DS for the rest of the race.
The 5 remaining Roosters did great work – especially Sean and our sub rider Paul. We beat the next-fastest team by 31s for our 6th win in 6 races.
The Final Race: Lutece Express
The final race of the season was 6 laps of the Lutece Express in Paris – a route which suited us well with its slightly downhill sprint and lack of significant climbs.
We had devised a two-part plan for the race:
- Individual riders would attack the sprint on each lap as they saw fit. So if you had a good powerup, or the legs felt good and you wanted to chase someone else attacking early, go for it. The idea was that we would amass a lot of intermediate points this way, spreading our efforts across the race.
- We would attack as a team just before the climb on the final lap. We would then attempt to stay away to the finish… for glory!
With beet juice in my system, three pieces of caffeine gum coursing through my veins, and PR lotion on the legs I kitted up and headed out to the sands of Fuego Flats to warm up my legs with the C. Cadence crew. I put in a few digs to get my heart rate up to 160 – it was responding nicely, and the legs felt pretty good.
On Discord, team captain Antoine had confessed (with pictures) to a few too many drinks before the race. While we teased him about celebrating early, he clearly wasn’t sure how he’d feel racing with some alcohol in his system. So he had a bucket nearby, just in case.
The Start + Middle
The start was fairly tame, even though we hit the climb straight out of the gates. We quickly established a rhythm that would hold throughout the race. Here’s what it looked like, beginning with the climb:
- Up the Montée des Champs Elysées. A rider attacks on the final steepest bit and another rider or two (usually from DIRT) gives chase. Sometimes these riders would stay away to the sprint line. But usually not.
- A group of riders hits the sprint hard, stretching/splitting the peloton as we go through the sprint banner.
- The peloton comes back together before the lap banner, with a few riders dropped off the back for good.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
I only went hard on one sprint: lap 2. I used my aero powerup and came across the line in 4th FAL, and the leaderboard also showed me in 4th. But the leaderboard is useless for tracking FTS, because a single rider can grab multiple FTS slots. As it turned out I ended up 9th in FTS, scoring only 2 points. #sad
The Finish
The Roosters rested a bit in the last few laps, getting our legs primed for our team attack. With around 25 riders left in the front pack, the plan was for Arjen to count us down (since the attack was his idea), then we would all go hard to create a quick gap, then TTT to a glorious finish.
It didn’t exactly work out that way.
Arjen counted us down, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1”. Then we hit the gas and jumped! But the response from the pack was nearly immediate, with rider numbers turning orange just behind us. We only managed a small gap before we gave up, choosing instead to save our legs for the sprint to the line.
Nobody went long on the sprint this time – everyone was keeping their powder dry for the final sprint. Except for teammate Clem, who went all-in, coming first across the sprint line and yelling “Yeah!”
To which Arjen replied, “The race is not finished, Clem!” Clem had sprinted for the wrong finish line. Ha!
Alas, the Zwift gods gave me a feather powerup at the sprint banner. Not what I was looking for. So I surfed the wheels, then activated my powerup around 300m before the finish. The sprint felt pretty good, but not good enough. I crossed the line in 7th.
A 3-picture story of the final sprint:
Clem, for his part, finished in 24th. (But he had already earned 50 sprint points by that point, so we’ll give him a pass.)
The deserving win went to TFC’s Liam Dunne, an incredibly gifted all-around rider who was always in the mix when it came to intermediate points and tight finishes. Chapeau, sir, on another good season. Hopefully we’ll see you and TFC in B1 next season.
See (partial) activity on Strava >
See results on ZwiftPower >
Watch the Race Video (sorry about my loud mic)
BSOD
Just to make things interesting, as my avatar sat still on the bricks of Avenue des Champs-Élysées, my fancy new Windows 11 PC suddenly threw up a blue screen of death. Ack! First time that’s happened.
Happily, the race was well over at that point, and my result was recorded on ZwiftPower. But my ride won’t show on zwift.com, and uploading my local fit file to Strava (after running it through fitfiletools.com‘s Corrupt Time Fixer) only shows a partial ride, missing the final sprint.
Team Result
Despite our failed final-lap attack, the Roosters took the win by a large margin. Once again, our intermediate points made a massive difference in the overall result:
Consider this: we scored 172 intermediate points, while the 2nd place team scored 176 total points.
Pre-drinker Antoine, despite his complaints of not feeling well, managed to score a boatload of sprint points (34 FAL, 11 FTS). In fact, he scored FAL points on every sprint. Perhaps being a bit sauced is the better way for Antoine to fly?
Winning this final race of the season means we made a clean sweep of the B2 division: certainly not the result we anticipated heading into this season after being promoted from B3. Oddly enough, we found our time in B2 a bit less competitive than B3!
But we’re under no illusion as we head into next season anticipating an upgrade to division B1. B1 is where the hitters live. Because the top teams don’t get promoted out of B1 up to the A’s, you end up with a lot of really strong teams in the B1 division (also A1, C1, and D1). It’s going to be a night-and-day difference. But we’re looking forward to it.
Takeaways
It appears my sprint power is improving a bit, thanks to my Sprintbooster training. I set a new 15s power PB on my lap 2 sprint in this race (880w), but I know there are more watts available. I’ve just got to train my way to them!
It’s been a really fun season with the DIRT Roosters. As we get to know each other better, season after season, we work together better, using each of our strengths to maximally impact our team result.
Honorable mention this season goes to Sean Phillips, who sat in on a few races and did great work as an extra Rooster. Hopefully we’ll see more of him in the future.
Your Thoughts
How did your final race (and season) go? Share some interesting stories below!
March’s Zwift Fondos are this Weekend!
March’s Zwift Fondos are this Weekend!
Zwift’s 2022 zFondo series ends this weekend with the March fondo events. Don’t miss this last chance to unlock an exclusive jersey while joining thousands of Zwifters working together to put in big efforts!
March Fondo Schedule
February’s set of Zwift Fondo events kicks off at 12am Friday, March 4, which is 7pm EST/4pm PST Thursday, March 3.
Events repeat every 5 hours until Sunday, March 6th at 10pm GMT/5pm EST/2pm PST. There are a total of 15 events currently scheduled.
Kit Unlocks
This is a 3-month series, and each month’s fondo has its own unique kit unlock. These kits are exclusive, meaning they will never be available anywhere else in game. A true badge of honor! Here’s a shot of all three kits:
Routes
Zwift Fondo events have three categories (A, B, and C) which are open to all riders. These categories don’t refer to rider strength or speed – they determine which route you will ride.
And this year Zwift has created a fresh set of fondo routes! Here they are (click for route details):
Is this a Race?
Officially, no. But hundreds (possibly thousands) of riders will turn out for each of these popular “fun race” events, and the front of each category will certainly be filled with strong riders going all out.
As Zwift says, “This is not a race, but some will choose to ride it like one. Do what’s comfortable, and go at your own pace.”
These events have double draft mode enabled, so be sure to work with others when possible, since this conserves energy.
Questions or Comments?
Post below!