Shanaze Reade has had one of the most fascinating careers in cycling, from winning Nationals in her first MBX race to becoming a Track World Champ in 6 weeks. To celebrate Pride On, we sat down with Shanaze for an in-depth discussion about her career, her retirement, her anxiety, and her recent battle with alcoholism.
In this inspirational interview, Shanaze shares her life lessons and displays the fiery determination that made her a British sporting legend and an LGBTQIA+ athletic icon.
About the Podcast
The Zwift PowerUp Cycling Podcast features training tips from host Matt Rowe (Rowe & King), with regular co-hosts Greg Henderson, Rahsaan Bahati, Dani Rowe, and Kristin Armstrong.
Opinion: It’s Time for a Zwift Event Feedback System
Years ago, someone on the Zwift Riders Facebook group suggested that we need a way to review or rate Zwift group rides.
It’s been a long time since I saw that thread but as I recall, the suggestion wasn’t endorsed by most. People thought a group rides review tool would turn into some sort of a mudslinging platform where hardworking ride leaders would have nothing but negativity tossed their way.
At the time I agreed that it would probably create more hassle and headache than it was worth. And yet, the idea has sat in the back of my mind for years, because I’ve always thought it had merit on some level.
Today, I want to unpack how an Event Feedback System (EFS) for Zwift might function, and what value that functionality might add to everyone’s experience. Because I think such a system would be very useful at this point in Zwift’s evolution. Let’s dig in!
Status: Busy
There’s no easy way to query the massive historic database of Zwift events, so I can’t easily chart how Zwift’s calendar has grown over the years. But I can assure you that the number of events has increased greatly from a few years ago! A quick glance at sites like ZwiftHacks and ZwiftPower shows that the current daily schedule has approximately 90 Group Rides, 130 Races, and 60 Group Workouts scheduled for cyclists.
That’s nearly 300 events per day! Which, in many ways, is amazing: most of those events are organized by members of the Zwift community, and many of those rides are led by volunteers who show up every week to deliver a rewarding ride experience for all involved. Kudos to them.
But imagine being a newcomer to Zwift, trying to find a group ride to join. Intimidating, right? Not only are you somewhat ignorant of how group rides work (“What will a pace of 2.5-3wkg feel like? How hilly is this ‘Hilly Route‘?”), you also don’t know how good of a job the leader is actually going to do.
And heaven forbid you click to join the ride from the Home Screen in the Zwift game, which doesn’t display anything about the event except its title!
5 years ago, Zwift consisted of a much smaller user core which managed a much smaller set of events. Experienced Zwifters were familiar with most of the events on the calendar, and actually noticed when new events were added. But those days are long gone.
We need better discovery tools for events. And an EFS should be a key component of those tools.
The Truth Shall Set You Free
If you’ve been on Zwift very long, you’ve probably taken part in a group ride or two. If you jump into a variety of events, you’ll soon discover that not all group rides are led well.
I joined one just last week, led by a pro rider. (This, by the way, is often the kiss of death on Zwift – pro riders are notoriously bad ride leaders.) The ride details stated a pace of 2-2.5 w/kg. He messaged before the ride began to say he would be holding a pace of 2 w/kg. Then promptly launched off the front, messaging 10 minutes into the ride that the pace would be closer to 3 w/kg.
Not a big deal to me personally on this particular day, but depending on your situation, this could really be irksome.
So what can Zwifters do to help? The answer is: nothing, apart from messaging during the event. Sure, you can post on Zwift Riders about how you didn’t like your ride experience – or how your group ride experience was amazing! But that’s only going to reach a tiny subset of that event’s potential audience.
If it’s a weekly event, it will all happen again the next week: same day. Same time. Same great (or not so great) leader.
Instead of relying on limited in-game messaging, we need to be able to provide feedback easily, which drops into a system that exposes that feedback in various ways to various interested parties. It’s the only way for ride leaders to get truly useful feedback, and the only way for the cream to rise to the top so would-be participants can easily decide if a ride is worth attending.
How’d I Do?
Having led various group rides over the years, including the weekly Friday Pacific Sprintapalooza, I see the situation from the perspective of the ride leader as well as the participant. And you know what I would love to have? An EFS that provided me with this information after every ride I led:
Total riders who joined
Total riders who joined for the first time
Total riders who finished
A simple 1-5 star average rating from anyone who filled out the post-ride survey
Suggestions from participants (short one-liners would be plenty)
This simple report would help me do a better job in all aspects of ride leadership week after week.
What About Negative Reviews?
When the group ride feedback system was proposed years ago, the big concern was that people would rail against group ride leaders – and nobody wanted to build a system that enabled others to attack hardworking volunteer leaders.
But I don’t think this would be a massive problem, as long as people could only post a review for a ride they had actually taken part in.
Sure, some leaders who do a terrible job would get some poor reviews. But is the alternative (angering a bunch of Zwifters who signed up for the event in good faith) better? I’d say no. Zwift’s event calendar is no longer a backyard weekend project for a handful of hobbyists – it’s stuffed full of events sponsored by big brands and teams with thousands of members. There’s simply no room for poorly-led group rides at this stage in the game.
Simple and Integrated
A third-party solution isn’t going to do the job here. The only viable EFS would be one integrated into the Zwift game, so any rider upon finishing (or prematurely exiting) an event is greeted with a quick survey screen where they tick a box or two and enter optional feedback. Simples.
Four different audiences would have access to EFS data, enabling them to make informed decisions:
Ride leaders could be emailed a report, or perhaps just given access via the Companion App
Team administrators would have access to reports for all rides hosted by that team
Zwift HQ could use the data to “trim the fat” if the calendar go to packed, or spot bad ride leaders and intervene
Zwifters would see some sort of rating for upcoming events, perhaps something as simple as a star rating and total review count. Make it so we could filter events by rating, or perhaps give top-rated events a special designation. Give ride leaders something to work for!
Wrapping It Up
My description above isn’t meant to be detailed and exhaustive, but rather to propose a simple framework for an EFS on Zwift. As a rider who has both participated in and led hundreds of group rides over the years, I think a simple EFS, properly implemented in game, could dramatically improve the group ride experience for participants and leaders.
Your Thoughts
Do you think an Event Feedback System is a good idea? Any features you would change from what I proposed above? Chime in below with your thoughts!
Weight Doping, eBikes, and Bots: the Zwift Cheating Survey
Anyone who spends any time racing Zwift Racing League (ZRL) or any of the other Zwift racing series and also has a Facebook account is pretty much guaranteed to have encountered “the cheating debate.” Accusations, screenshots, high dudgeon, the works.
(It’s something you don’t really encounter in bike racing “in the real world” as the options for cheating are so limited and difficult to detect. That said, in one of the more competitive Gran Fondos here in Mexico City I did once overtake the same guy three times, without him overtaking me. The third time round, I actually saw him joining the course from a side street. But I digress…)
I’ve been Zwifting on and off since 2015, mostly for training purposes rather than to compete, although I have done a fair bit of racing since ZRL started. In 2018 I started a psychology degree, which in my final year required me to do a project. I selected the option to do a survey because I’ve always been interested in the idea of cheating in sport and online cycling struck me as a great subject for a survey. It turned out there was no published research on it either.
Survey Objective
The objective was to see if existing research on Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) would be replicated in online cycling. AGT contends that athletes compete to demonstrate competence, which is either measured by reference to personal improvement/mastery of skills/capabilities (task goal orientation) or by reference to externally focused benchmarks such as beating other competitors (ego goal orientation). Research also suggests a link between achievement goals and moral attitudes, including attitudes to cheating, with a positive association between ego-oriented athletes and cheating.
Survey Responses
My results were consistent with this theory. In terms of attitudes to cheating and sport in general, respondents were less motivated by ego goals (e.g. a desire to win or beat others) than in other published surveys of this type and more motivated by task goals (a desire to objectively improve their own performance). There was a lower acceptance of cheating than in similar surveys of athletes in traditional sports, although those tend to involve high-performing athletes rather than a cross-section of amateurs.
But the bit that I think really interests the Zwift community is how much and what type of cheating goes on. In the survey I identified 7 different behaviours that might be considered “cheating”, with some more egregious than others. I got nearly 600 responses in 10 days as a result of posting a link on various Facebook pages, with the results set out in the table below.
80% of respondents were male category racers, 20% female
Over 50% of respondents were from the UK, about 20% from the USA, and the rest from 25 other countries
Largest single age group was the 40s, followed by 30s and 50s, with those three groups making up 85% of responses
70% of respondents raced in B or C categories
Nearly half had done over 50 Zwift races and 2/3 had also raced outdoors (of whom significantly less than 1% admitted to ever cheating when racing outdoors)
How Much Cheating?
About 46% of participants admitted to “cheating” at least once, although only 7% admitted to cheating often.
Self-reported cheating behaviours (at least once)
Consistent with the opening paragraph, only 12% of participants thought cheating on Zwift was common or very common among their teammates and friends, while 60% felt cheating was common or very common in general on Zwift.
Views on commonality of cheating among friends/teammates vs in general
Cheating Predictors
The statistically significant predictors of cheating behaviour on Zwift were:
Participants’ overall attitude to cheating
Their approach to weight measurement (i.e. whether they rounded down their weight, etc.)
The number of races they had done
This may suggest that the more races someone does the more cynical they become about cheating or perhaps simply that the more races someone does the more likely they are to have failed to update their weight at least once. Interestingly age, gender, race category and views about the legitimacy of online cycling as a sport didn’t seem to significantly predict “cheating behaviours”.
Cheating… Just Enough
One of the more interesting results was the apparent conflict between participants’ general anti-cheating views and the relatively high occurrence of occasional “cheating behaviours”. Participants were generally task-orientated, yet nearly half admitted to doing something that could be considered cheating at least once.
Mazar et al. (2008) have shown it is common in the face of potential rewards for dishonesty for people to cheat just enough to gain an advantage, but not enough to undermine their conception of their own honesty. In other words, individuals have a self-prescribed amount of dishonesty that they can permit without undermining their own self-concept of themselves as fundamentally honest.
In the case of online cycling, this might be occasionally failing to update one’s weight ahead of a race even if you know it has increased, but not so often as to undermine your sense of your own honesty.
Caveats
Of course, like any methodology, surveys have their drawbacks. In this case, the sample was self-selecting – I sought volunteers. So maybe those who are anti-cheating were more likely to participate? Also, social desirability bias means that even when a survey is anonymous people can be reluctant to admit to behaviours like cheating which are seen as socially undesirable. So there are caveats to the results.
Wrapping It Up
Overall the data is interesting (if only for the 3 people who admitted to using an e-bike!) and it has certainly generated some online debate. If I were to follow this up with more research, I’d want to do something qualitative with in-depth interviews to try and get under the skin of some of the apparent conflicts in the data between anti-cheating attitudes and what appear to be occasional cheating behaviours.
My own view is that it’s best to use Zwift as a wonderful training platform and enjoy the racing for what it is and the performance improvements it brings. Hopefully the various controls that WTRL, Zwift, and others are implementing at the very top end will prevent any cheating that does go on from having an impact when the results really matter. Ride on!
Your Comments
What (if anything) surprises you about these survey results? Comment below!
This week’s Top 5 Zwift Videos explore different types of racing, from the upcoming Zwift Classics to Team Time Trials and even racing above your category. There’s also an example of how live coaching can help during a Zwift race, and instructions for dual recording to compare power sources.
Zwift Classics 2021 – Sherpa Spills the Beanz…
Sherpa Dave gives a rundown of everything we know so far about this year’s Zwift Classics, now run by WTRL in partnership with Zwift.
How The Best Zwift Team Time Trial – By the Numbers
An oldie but a goodie. Paul Fitzpatrick analyzes how the fastest teams on Zwift race during WTRL Team Time Trials. See what you can learn from them!
Just how quick are Cat A ZWIFT racers?
Someone suggested that Mark Lewis, a 100kg racer with big power in the C category, might be able to keep up with the A category in a short race. He took that challenge.
ISRT LIVE Zwift Coaching Race for Avneet Singh ft. Mayank
This is a neat look at live Zwift race coaching in action. On the “Indian eRacing” channel, Mayank Tripathi talks his ISRT teammate Avneet Singh through a B race.
How To Do Dual Power Recording For ZwiftPower & Zwift Races
James Young walks you through how to dual record two power sources at the same time using ZwiftPower.
Got a Great Zwift Video?
Share the link below and we may feature it in an upcoming post!
As part of the Olympic Virtual Series, Zwift is welcoming the Queen of BMX, Mariana Pajón, to the podcast. The first-ever Colombian to win two gold medals in BMX, she also has over 30 championship titles. She won her first world title at the age of nine!
The Olympic Virtual Series is jam-packed with exciting events, serving up a month of action June 1–27. Join other Zwifters for Olympian-hosted podcasts and Olympian-inspired workouts with surprise guests, all leading to a 24-hour group ride as well as a broadcasted chase-style event with Olympians!
About the Podcast
The Zwift PowerUp Cycling Podcast features training tips from host Matt Rowe (Rowe & King), with regular co-hosts Greg Henderson, Rahsaan Bahati, Dani Rowe, and Kristin Armstrong.
Initial responses from Zwift on social media posts seemed to indicate that Meetup functionality wasn’t planned until the fall, which seemed like an oddly long delay. Happily, according to a new Zwift forum post they have opted to roll out Makuri Islands Meetup functionality beginning Monday, June 28th!
Additionally, the post indicates that event organizers will be able to select Yumezi routes for their events beginning on this same date. Until now, Yumezi-based group rides and races have been few and far between. But we expect that will change quickly!
Both Meetups and event editing are accomplished via the Companion app, so it would make sense for both features to be updated simultaneously.
Creating a Meetup
Creating a Meetup is easy, via Zwift’s Companion app (available for iOS and Android).
Need a little help? For tips on organizing and joining a Meetup, view our “All About Meetups in Zwift” page.
Zwift has just announced a massive “Fun Is Fast” event series which begins June 27 and runs through July 21. The impressive series includes seven types of events:
Women’s Wednesday Social Rides
Podcast Rides
Group Workouts
Ven-Top Challenge
France Fondos
TT Challenge
Champs-Élysées Races
All rides are currently listed as taking place on Watopia’s Beach Island Loop.
Women’s Wednesday Social Rides
Each Wednesday five timeslots are scheduled for social rides which celebrate the women’s community but are open to all riders.
These rides are 45 minutes long, with a target pace of 1.5-2w/kg. According to Zwift’s press release, “These rides celebrate women’s cycling and will be led by some of the best riders around including riders from CANYON//SRAM, the Internationelles and Team Twenty24.”
These 60-minute rides feature podcast episodes from the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast. Ride at whatever pace you’d like, and listen in to hear insights from the pro peloton.
Three workouts inspired by Geraint Thomas, Mathieu van der Poel, and Anna van der Breggen will showcase the training and skills required to become a top rider the pro peloton.
These workouts are available as group events, or you can choose them from the “Fun is Fast 2021” category in your training menu to execute the workout whenever you’d like.
On July 7th, the pros will be racing up Mount Ventoux not once, but twice, in stage 11 of le Tour. The IRL roads may be closed for the big race, but Zwifters can tackle a GPS-accurate version of Ventoux in the Ven-Top challenge rides hosted at the top of each hour July 7th!
These events have an A and B category:
A: the full Ven-Top route – 20.9 km (13.0 miles) with 1534 m (5,033‘) of climbing, ending at the weather station atop Ven-Top.
B: the shorter La Reine route – 22.8 km (14.2 miles) with 1181 m (3,875‘) of climbing, ending at Chalet Reynard partway up the big climb.
Some will treat these rides as a personal challenge, while others will treat them as a race. (They are designed as rides, not races, so they don’t count toward ZwiftPower ranking points.)
On July 11-15, hourly fondo events will be hosted on the France map. These are longer doubledraft “fun race” events where riders are encouraged to work together in a pace group that suits you.
These events have an A and B category:
A: the Petit Boucle route – 61 km (37.9 miles) with 430 m (1,411‘) of climbing
B: the Casse-Pattes route – 36.8 km (22.9 miles) with 243 m (797′) of climbing. This is a custom-length route that is approximately 1.5 laps long, ending at or near the Pavé Sprint banner.
On Wednesday, June 30 and Saturday, July 17, Zwifters are invited to test themselves against reigning World Time Trial Champion Anna van der Breggen in “the race of truth” – an individual time trial.
Canyon Speedmax CF SLX Disc – a speed machine!
She set her current best time of 27:44 on the Tempus Fugit course only days after her recent Dutch National TT win. Put in your best effort and see how you match up!
The pros will finish their race on the iconic Champs-Élysées in Paris, and Zwifters will get a chance to race the virtual version as well!
During the last week of the series, race events will be held every hour, inviting Zwifters to race the Champs-Élysées. Choose the appropriate category based on your FTP, then put the hammer down!
Complete any Fun is Fast event to unlock the new Supersonic Jersey as well as the new Supersonic Wheels!
Both unlocks can be seen in the image above. The wheels appear to be a re-skinned version of the Zwift 50mm carbon wheels, but we’ll need to test to confirm.
There is something special about the Tour de France. While I enjoy watching and following racing throughout the year, like so many others I get most excited for the Tour.
The challenge is that despite being only a few years older than Valverde and having been recently promoted to “B” on Zwiftpower, I have begun to accept that I should not be waiting on a call from Brailsford or Vaughters. Alas, as I sit on the trainer rewatching past stages, I find myself wishing that I could be more a part of it.
I recently learned about a virtual Tour de France competition at work (Google) giving awards to the folks that bike the farthest, the fastest, and the highest during the Tour. While I was thrilled to have a race of my own, a quick glimpse at my colleagues’ Strava accounts made it clear that I would not be in contention for a jersey.
It occurred to me then that if I wasn’t going to be in contention to win, I wanted to set myself a difficult personal challenge so I would stay engaged. So was born the TDF1000.
The challenge is simple: during the Tour de France (June 26th to July 18th) ride 1000 miles and have fun! That is it! 1000 miles (1609 km) in 23 days.
This works out to just over 43 miles per day. Personally, I plan to try for 40 miles per day on weekdays and 100-120 miles on the weekends. (We’ll see if I can earn myself a rest day). Do it all on Zwift, do it all outside, or mix it up.
Join In the Fun
I will be hosting daily Zwift Meetups and would love to find folks in other timezones to host their own TDF1000 Meetups.
If you are interested:
Add [TDF1000] to your Zwift Name so others will know that they should lend you a wheel if they see you around.
Join the TDF1000 Facebook Group to find Meetups and commiserate with other folks attempting the challenge.
Have fun and enjoy the Tour!
Hope to see you out there. I can’t wait to hit 1000 miles while flying down the Champs-Elysees in just a few weeks!
This week, I am highlighting events that caught my eye for varying reasons. Each of these highlighted events has something unique about them!
Operation Overlord – WWTW Charity Ride
The Atom Racing Team is running a group ride to commemorate OPERATION OVERLORD, which began on 6 June 1944 on Normandy Beaches what is now called D-Day.
The ride is to commemorate the huge sacrifice of the Armed Forces during World War II.
The ride is a social ride, so every category will be welcome to join. In addition, the ride is designed to raise the profile of a UK Armed Forces Charity, Walking With The Wounded.
Who are the InternationElles? They are 10 amateur female riders based across the world and ride for equality. In 2019 they rode the full route of the Tour de France to campaign for a women’s race. For more info please head to internationelles.com.
This is a social ride for 1 hour around Paris. A chance for people to ride together and chat using the Zwift Companion App.
Join Mike Tindall for Raid Local 2021: Ventoux! This event is raising funds for Cure Parkinson’s, a charity dedicated to funding the most promising research into a cure for Parkinson’s.
Mike will lead this social ride for one lap of Ven-Top at 2.5 W/KG, taking on the world-famous Tour de France ascent of Mount Ventoux while raising funds for a cure.
For those who don’t know, Mike is married to Zara Philips, the Granddaughter of the Queen, oh and Mike is a former English Rugby Union player who won 75 caps for England between 2000 and 2011 and was a member of the English squad who won the 2003 Rugby World Cup.
About Cure Parkinson’s Raid Local Cycle Challenge
It was born in 2020, when 95% of their fundraising events were canceled due to the pandemic, including the charity’s six-day Raid Alpine ride. Determined to continue to raise urgently needed funds, Cure Parkinson’s tried to replicate, on local roads and on Zwift, the first day of Raid Alpine. With COVID-19 restrictions limiting travel once again, Cure Parkinson’s launched the second edition of Raid Local, this time inspired by the legendary Mont Ventoux
This isn’t a race, more a relaxed training ride where I am sure you will be able to ask Shane any tech-related questions. I’ve watched plenty of his videos but never ridden with him, so this might be a great opportunity to catch up with Shane and talk about all things tech-related.
Sunday June 27 @ 11:30pm CEST/10:30pm BST/5:30pm EDT/2:30pm PDT/7:30am AEST Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/2091788
Monday’s Mountain Massif TT
3 months ago I undertook a bit of investigative journalism to understand how events are put on in Zwift, resulting in me creating a Zwift event. On March 29th, 2021 the Monday’s Mountain Massif TT was launched: a brutal 12.15km TT up the Epic KOM reverse. At the time of its launch, it was the only Mountain TT on the calendar.
The event was well-attended, which led to it being hosted weekly on Mondays at 7pm CEST. However, the evening timeslot in Europe meant that not everyone has been able to experience this uniquely challenging event… until now!
On Monday 28th June the Mountain Massif TT is going to be operating in 2 timeslots, to cater for the global Zwift community, meaning a wider audience will have the opportunity to test their legs in this race. The first event will be hosted at 12pm CEST, followed by its regular session at 7pm CEST.
I am extremely grateful to our friends in Zwift HQ for helping expand this event, ensuring that it is accessible to all and moreover fulfilling my promise I made to the community to expand this to cater for other time zones. I look forward to seeing new faces on the start line on Monday.
Two start times, see links above
Your Thoughts
Got other events that stand out this weekend? Share below in the comments!
