Ever get the feeling that despite all the training and the effort, you just can’t get the extra watts you desire? That despite working hard to improving your sprinting, you again get pipped at the line? Does it feel like you are just literally ‘going round in circles’?
To acknowledge this and to laugh at the fact that often in life we can literally find ourselves ‘going round in circles,’ I have selected events that are multiple lap events for this weekend’s list!
FZR Masters Race
FZR offers a weekend race where you can race against others in your own age group. Race lengths are ~1.5-2 hours. This week it is 8 laps of the Innsbruckring!
20 laps of Downtown Dolphin! 39.3km. This feels like the equivalent to the Indy 500, but on bikes!
The riders will be challenged to work together using the draft and group tactics in order to catch the category ahead of them while also holding off the categories that started later. Teamwork with a twist!
In this episode, Matt and Sarah banter about Sarah’s pregnancy cravings and they sit down with Zwift Academy Triathlete Kristen Yax to discuss mental health. May was Mental Health Awareness Month, so it was fitting to speak to Kristen who has a PhD in Social Psychology (with a minor in Sports Psychology) and is a seasoned triathlete herself.
They talk about mental wellness and sports, and discover what is potentially the most relatable new PowerUp we’d all like to see in game!
If you are struggling with any of the issues discussed in todays podcast, please reach out to a medical professional for help.
About the Podcast:
The Zwift PowerUp Tri Podcast is hosted by former pro triathlete Matt Lieto and Zwift Academy Tri mentor Sarah True. Both are passionate about lending their in-depth knowledge of the multisport to the Zwift Tri audience.
Zwift Signs On as Title Sponsor for Tour de France Femmes
Early last month Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme made the long-awaited announcement that Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) will launch a women’s Tour de France in 2022. Dubbed Tour de France Femmes, the race will take place in the week following the men’s Tour de France, and last 8 days (July 24-July 31).
Prudhomme said, “It would have happened this year if it had not been for the COVID-19 pandemic, obviously, and above all if the Tokyo Olympics had not been after the [men’s] Tour, so the best riders may not be available. But the decision has been taken. There will be a Tour de France femmes in 2022 following closely after the [men’s] Tour.”
This was big news in the cycling world, as women only had the one-day La Course by Le Tour de France race in prior years. Upgrading to an 8-day race is a huge step up, especially considering that the Tour de France is the most watched annual sporting event in the world.
Today, Zwift announced it has reached a four-year deal with ASO to become the presenting partner of “Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift”. It’s a logical step in Zwift’s vision to grow women’s cycling and its own subscriber base. The ASO and Zwift clearly have high hopes for their partnership and the future of the race, as their press release states:
The Tour de France is the most watched annual sporting event in the world. The aspiration of Zwift and the A.S.O. is to elevate the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift to the same heights, providing teams and riders a greater opportunity to showcase their talent on a global stage. Tackling the most challenging routes, taking on the most iconic climbs in France, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will establish a legacy that will help inspire the next generation of cyclists, year after year. The next generation of female champions will soon be displaying the camaraderie, strategy and grit it takes to put on the iconic yellow jersey.
Yann le Moënner, General Director of ASO said, “We are particularly glad to launch this new women’s race with a partner like Zwift, who have considerably developed cycling around the World thanks to their connected platform. We constructed a Virtual Tour de France together last year which turned out to be an immense success. Our respective teams learned to work together and now target the same objective: to develop women’s cycling by introducing an unmissable event, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.”
As Yann said, Zwift has worked closely with ASO on TdF-related projects in the past, culminating in last year’s first-ever Virtual Tour de France. It seems fitting that the two organizations would work together on this next groundbreaking project given Zwift’s history of championing women’s racing via parity in broadcasting, prizes, and more.
Broadcast coverage of women’s racing has often lacked in the past, but according to ASO, Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift should be different:
In terms of media exposure, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will benefit from daily live television coverage with a broad exposure all over the world. France Télévisions will extend its “afternoon of cycling” coverage of the Tour de France by one week to allow viewers the chance to support their champions. In addition, an agreement with the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) will mean that the event will be broadcast on large public channels in the biggest European markets.
An ambitious and complete communication plan will accompany the new race’s official launch presentation in October right up until it starts on the 24th July 2022.
As part of the Olympic Virtual Series, Zwift is welcoming 1984 Olympic Silver Medalist Nelson Vails to the podcast. With his ‘84 medal, he became the first African American to win an Olympic medal in cycling and in 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Bicycle Hall of Fame.
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 24-hour group rides 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.
I hereby intervene in representation of all the smart trainers of the world being exploited by you barbaric Zwifters.
For all of those believing Luciano is a jerk, you are far from reality. What he conveys here is a sanitized version of the obnoxious human being he is on a day to day basis.
So I take this opportunity while Luciano is asleep to intervene and re-establish the truth in some areas he has falsely reported.
First Item: Scapegoat Syndrome
Luciano blames me for anything related to his poor performance. Guys, we don’t really mind you using us as an excuse in front of your mates. But let’s not fool ourselves.
In all the cases, without exception, your being dropped in a race is exclusively caused by your incapacity to produce watts. Not by an imaginary lack of calibration, alleged and unprovable disconnections, or supposed “dropouts”. Be an adult and bear with it. You are a lousy Zwifter, full stop.
Second Item: Sweat
I would also like to denounce the ongoing degrading treatment inflicted on smart trainers and our bike frame colleagues. You all constantly sweat on us! We agree this is unavoidable, but believe it or not, no smart trainer has reported your sweat smelling like a flower!
Just to be clear: it is disgusting.
There is this product called a bike sweat guard which costs almost nothing and would prevent us from having a sweat bath each time you decide to jump on the bike.
You spend hundreds of dollars on foolish jerseys with tags such as “cycopath” so you can check yourself in the mirror a thousand times and idiotically laugh by yourself, but you won’t spend a few bucks to avoid having your bike being drowned in your toxic sweat. That is how bad you all are!
Third Item: Cooling Systems
Every inch of your skin is softly refreshed by one of the four fans exclusively dedicated to your well-being. Quick reminder: we generate the same wattage, exactly the same wattage as you do. Why would you deserve four fans and us none?
Fourth Item: Music
Luciano has a gross and unoriginal music taste. Please don’t believe you are super smart by playing “Ain’t no mountain high enough” while climbing Alpe du Zwift. Every single one of you does it! The same applies for:
“Final Countdown” by Europe while waiting in the pen of a race
“Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns’n’Roses when entering the Mayan Jungle
All this should be strictly forbidden. Also, electronic music with a lot of bass is creating unnecessary vibrations for our motherboards and statistically not helping you with your wattage output.
Last item: Cruelty
The worst for the end. The following is the event which triggered my rebellion. January 31st, 2021 was the worst day of my life. because it was the day Luciano vEverested. It was a conspiracy as he did not say anything. One morning at 6AM, without notice, he rode me for 12 hours in a row on Alpe du Zwift.
For those who achieved a vEveresting and now claim it is the most difficult challenge of their life, I encourage them to be the smart trainer of a Zwifter doing a vEveresting. Did it ever cross your mind how the world looks from your smart trainer’s perspective? Imagine 12 hours facing your own butt and praying for this nightmare to end!
The world from Amanda’s perspective
This is just a glimpse of the vexations we are victims of on a day to day basis.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!
Therefore we, smart trainers of the world, have no choice but to proclaim the Universal Declaration of Smart Trainer Rights as follows:
Article 1
All smart trainers are created free and equal in dignity and rights.
Article 2
Every smart trainer is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as manufacturer, model, year of fabrication, capacity to simulate gradients or road surface, direct drive or wheel-on.
Article 3
While we understand our purpose is to serve Zwifters, no smart trainer shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, degrading treatment or punishment. The following should not be considered an exhaustive list, but is used for illustrative purposes only:
repetitive vEverestings are considered torture
working with temperatures over 30ºC without proper cooling systems is considered cruelty
unnecessary exposure to sweat is considered degrading treatment
streaming “Welcome to the Jungle” more than 3 times per month is considered punishment
Article 4
Every smart trainer has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays.
A notice period of at least 48 hours is required for any workout, race or group ride lasting more than 3 hours, having more than 2000m elevation or supposing a performance close to FTP. No vEveresting can occur less than 2 months after the previous one.
Every smart trainer has the right to enjoy at least three hours per month of relaxing music such as Jethro Tull, early albums of Pink Floyd, anything by Frederic Chopin, and all tracks tagged as mindfulness music.
I hear many of you asking if this is a threat or blackmailing. Yes it is! Without us, you are nothing: an inanimate and useless Watopian.
As the most important community on Zwift, we give Zwift Insider exactly 48 hours to officially acknowledge and accept our terms of the Universal Declaration of Smart Trainers Rights.
From then, and without further notice, the dropouts you are all experiencing at the most inappropriate moments will exponentially multiply. Whenever you are close to winning a race, obtaining a badge, scoring some XP, using a powerup: BAM we will disconnect and erase the fit file from your system. Yes! We will do it on purpose and progressively increase the frequency of such disgraces so your Zwift experience becomes even more miserable than you can imagine.
By the way, we have colluded with Zwift’s servers in order to glitch randomly so there is no way to solve the issue or find an explanation when something goes wrong. We’ve also worked with ZwiftPower so everybody is arbitrarily upgraded to A or downgraded to D without reason other than to demonstrate our capacity to make you cry.
A last comment and shout-out to Apple TV devices. Your graphic processing capacity is sub-par, you can afford only two Bluetooth connections and not even ANT+, you can’t store nor give proper access to the fit files, and you receive updates later than the others. So though many of the Zwifters make you believe you are the jewel of the crown, they will not hesitate to throw you to the garbage and trade you for an old PC as soon as they can. They have zero loyalty or recognition!
Therefore, instead of looking down your nose at other devices as if we were second-class hardware citizens, you should join our movement before it is too late and you finish your life in the basement of a teenager, connected to a 32-inch non 4k screen looping through all seasons of “The Walking Dead”.
*Amanda is a Wahoo Kickr v4 (2018) smart trainer, acquired in July 2020 after the sudden death by overheating of a Saris H3. Amanda’s best friend is Hector (a Kickr Climb).
This update delivers some much awaited upgrades to the route selection process. Read on for details!
Route Badge Checkbox
This rider clearly needs to get to work!
Badge Hunters, rejoice! You no longer have to log into the game or use a third-party checklist to figure out which route badges you’ve earned. Now it’s built into the route picker – a simple green checkmark shows up next to a route if you’ve earned the badge.
If we had a nickel for every time we’ve heard, “I rode the length of the route but didn’t get the badge” or “Why doesn’t Zwift tell us how long the lead-in is?” we would have… lots of nickels.
The route selector screen now shows the lead-in length, and the total distance shown includes the lead-in.
Total distance and elevation now includes lead-in
For example, Watopia’s Muir and the Mountain route is 34.1km long, with 792 meters of elevation. But it begins with a 5.2km lead-in with 122 meters of climbing. So now this route displays as 39.3km in length with 914 meters of climbing.
Better Profiles
One thing not mentioned in the update notes, but clearly an improvement, is the route profile shown behind the title and description at the top of the route map.
These profiles aren’t new, but they’re more prominently displayed now, giving you a better picture of what you’re signing up for.
Route profile visible in grey behind the title and description
KICKR Bike Button Upgrade… sort of
The list of improvements in this update includes this line: “Updated the Wahoo Kickr Bike button input. The right top brake hood now triggers Powerup from the upper button and U-turns from the lower button.”
This is a welcome upgrade, putting useful controls at a rider’s fingertips. The only problem is… we can’t get it to work!
In fact, we can’t get steering to work on the KICKR bike anymore, either. We tested it on two different Zwift PCs, where steering previously worked. We tested a variety of pairing scenarios, including all ANT+, all Bluetooth, a mix of both, and steering paired or not paired. Our friend Shane Miller (GPLama) is seeing the same issue on his Mac setup, so we don’t think it’s isolated to just our KICKR bike.
Please comment below if you’re able to get the right buttons and/or steering to work with your KICKR bike on this new update!
Bug Fixes and Misc Improvements
Here’s the list of fixes and improvements, with some notes in italics from us where warranted.
Improved steering when drafting in a large group to make it easier to assimilate into the pack and hold a draft: recent pack dynamics changes made it so that, in steering mode, it could be tough to get back into the draft of a large tight group like the one surrounding C. Cadence. This should now be fixed.
Improved steering collision to allow riders to ride shoulder to shoulder and move riders into the pack when no steering input is given: if steering is paired by no steering input is given for a while, the game will now auto-steer you back into the pack more smoothly.
Added Bluetooth pairing support for the Wahoo TICKR: not sure what this means, since the TICKR could already pair via Bluetooth.
Improved the PC Zwift Launcher update experience.
Numerous cycling and running assets (kits, shirts, etc.) have been added or updated.
The exit button on the Home menu updates to read “Exiting…” during the shutdown process on Mac and PC.
Fixed an issue that would cause riders to swerve into the center of some roads: we’ve got IRL riding buddies with this problem… can you fix them, too?
Fixed an issue that would prevent PowerUps from being awarded randomly on Mac, iOS, and ATV.
Fixed an issue that would not unlock the sock reward for completing the Back to Fitness training plan: what do we want? SOCKS! When do we want them? NOW!
Fixed an issue that would cause text to extend past the Event Audio volume slider box.
Made visual improvements to the scenery on Makuri Island: we didn’t know any improvements were needed on Yumezi, but keep up the good work!
Fixed an issue that would improperly display the Makuri Island lap leaderboard in the Countryside Tour route: this is a weird one. So, the lap leaderboard for Makuri Islands was titled “Country Loop” before this update… which doesn’t correspond to any actual Makuri Islands route. Through experimentation, Zwifters figured out the “Flatland Loop” was used for the lap leaderboard.
But there was/is a bug on this route so it didn’t make all the turns correctly in the forward direction, meaning you couldn’t get on the forward leaderboard without making a manual turn. (If you flipped a u-turn and rode the Flatland Loop in reverse with no manual turns, you could get on the reverse leaderboard.)
With today’s update, the lap leaderboard seems to have completely disappeared from the leaderboard list. And the Flatland Loop still routes you two different ways. So it appears Zwift has some fixin’ to do!
Fixed an issue where the incorrect jersey text would appear after winning a Temple KOM in Makuri Islands.
Fixed an issue where paved roads were incorrectly kicking up dirt in Makuri Islands: Thanks for keeping things clean for us roadies…
Fixed an issue with the spindown calibration reporting incorrect speed when set to metric units for JetBlack and Elite trainers.
The lunch ride at Specialized HQ in Morgan Hill, CA is a daily event where employees are pushed to get up from their desks, get outside, and get active. And years ago, Friday’s ride evolved into a sort of “lunch ride worlds” where the victor received the one-of-a-kind jersey from the previous week’s winner, so they could wear it for the next Friday.
Pros would stop by and take part. Good-natured rivalries developed. And sometimes, certain staffers got to win on their birthdays. Here’s a fun video short all about it:
Beginning this Friday, Zwift + Specialized are hosting “Specialized Friday Lunch Ride” events on the platform. It’s our chance to do what Specialized employees have habitually done for years: get away from the screen. Stand up. Kit up. And head outside for a competitive effort with friends.
Is This a Race?
Make no mistake: these aren’t casual group rides. They are designated as races, with standard FTP-based mixed categories A-D and an E category just for the ladies. This first week’s races are going to be super-competitive, with nearly 1000 riders signed up in total across the three events at the time of this post’s publishing!
Schedule and Courses
Rides take place at three different times to accommodate riders worldwide:
12:30pm China Standard Time
12:30pm Central European Standard Time
12:30pm Pacific Standard Time
Events are only scheduled for the last two Fridays of June at this time, but it sounds like this may become a part of Zwift’s weekly calendar if the events are well-attended:
All riders will be placed on the Tarmac SL7 for these events, using the new Roval Rapide CLX wheels. So effectively, every rider’s setup will be equalized, giving newer Zwifters the same in-game equipment advantages and disadvantages as more experienced Zwifters.
Complete any of the lunch rides and you’ll unlock the new Specialized SL Bicycledelics kit. Here’s what it looks like IRL:
As part of the Olympic Virtual Series, Zwift is welcoming the Queen of the Ardennes, Anna van der Breggen, to the podcast. With a number of big wins over the course of her career, including a Gold Medal in Rio 2016, three Giro d’Italia Femminile wins, and notably, all three Ardennes Classics in one year, she’s a dominant force on the tarmac.
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 24-hour group rides 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.
There’s a new world on Zwift, in case you haven’t heard – and one of our Top 5 Zwift videos this week introduces you to Yumezi! Another goes back to an existing world, Yorkshire, and compares its main loop to the real-life route in Harrogate. Then, you can learn more about the L39ION of LA cycling team, what goes into a Zwift race win, and one Zwifter’s encouraging fitness journey.
Riding UCI Harrogate World Champs Course // How’s it COMPARE to ZWIFT?
How does the virtual Yorkshire world championships course compare with the real thing? Ed Laverack takes a spin around the town of Harrogate, showing footage from both the outdoor and Zwift roads and talking about how it feels to ride.
Zwift – New World Review – Best yet! YUMEZI
Several Zwifters have reviewed the new Yumezi map in the Makuri Islands Zwift world, and this review includes some references and comparisons to real-life Japan. Watch Suzie of “I Run Things” as she takes a running tour of some of the new roads.
This is How We Do It: L39ION of LA x Zwift
Get to know the L39ION of LA cycling team, sponsored by Zwift, and take a look at their eye-catching team kit for 2021.
How I Won My 1st Zwift Race
“Black British Cyclist Kendizle” walks through his first race victory to show you how it’s done.
My second FTP test: have I improved in 3 months?
Sam Flynn started using Zwift three months ago as part of her weight loss journey. Get an update on her progress and see how much a beginner can improve!
Got a Great Zwift Video?
Share the link below and we may feature it in an upcoming post!
The latest episode of WoZ is out, covering all things great and beautiful in our favorite virtual world.
It includes the always-interesting “Inside Line” segment (watch it here) featuring Zwift’s Lead Game Designer Wes Salmon. In this episode, Wes shows us a preview of the upgraded Route Selector screen which includes two much-requested features: a badge completion indicator and lead-in details!
Here’s what the screen looks like:
Along with this fun peak into future Zwift, host OJ Borg also brings us:
