This weekend sees the continuation of two popular event series, as well as some long-running community events we want to feature.
Special thanks to Jesper at ZwiftHacks with his Events app which provides powerful event filtering tools that help us create this list each week.
LEQP Provence Badge Hunter Series: Achterbahn
This ride series is proving popular, helping Zwifters work together to earn badges for routes we may not otherwise ride. This weekend it’s Innsbruck’s Achterbahn – a decently long route (47.38 km/29.4 miles) with plenty of climbing (973m/3,192‘).
Various times, see this link for upcoming steering races
ZSUN Base Builder
This long-running training event is the perfect ride for C/B-level riders looking to get some base miles in. Typically a “fast group” gets away, and a slower group also blobs up. Pick your poison, ride at your pace, and build your endurance!
The popular Off the MAAP 2-week tour’s stage 3 is happening this weekend. Each stage includes group rides, races, and a pro-am invitational event. Complete all stages to unlock the exclusive kit!
Welcome back for the second installment of “How to Become a Top Category Zwift Racer” series! If you missed the article on Cat B, you can read it here.
Before I launch into findings, I have one request: some of the high ranked people in Cat C are very young, like under 12, so let’s be gentle in the comments. They are racing in the system provided.
If you don’t know about ZwiftPower and how it ranks racers, click on C in the standings report. Based on your feedback from the last article, I expanded the dataset and used the top 60 Cat C racers as a basis for analysis below. Only race data is considered; group rides and tours were excluded.
Based on the data, if you’re looking to move into the top 20 cat C positions, try to emulate the following:
Race Experience: These people race a lot and get very good at it. Zwift is a skill.
Ways to Win: There are more ways to win in Cat C than Cat B. It looks like you can win high-quality races with long climbs, breakaways, and sprints.
Draft Masters: While these riders can produce good power, they seem excellent at sitting in the draft.
High 15-Second Sprint Power: 8.7 W/kg
Near Top of Category 20-Minute Power: All of the riders in the analysis are capable of riding at or near the top of Category C power. Read “20-Minute Power” below for a more nuanced view.
Be Light: Being around 50 kg can help you exceed category W/kg limits without being forced to upgrade to B.
Race against good competition: Top C’s are doing a lot of series races and high-quality C races. Surprisingly, most of these people race in Cat C regularly.
If you’re curious about the specific data I used, check out all the data details at the end of the article. Otherwise, let’s jump into the number details.
The Numbers Breakdown
As a reminder, Cat C is defined as 95% of your 20-minute power being between 2.5 – 3.2 W/kg and above 150 watts.
I want to mention that there are riders in this group that average 30-50% higher than allowed by Category C limits. These riders skew the data pretty heavily in some areas, much more than in the Cat B analysis. I will try to break things down in a way that makes sense by analyzing the entire group while sometimes pulling out the outliers. I also broke this data into tiers of riders based on rank to see how things changed.
Let’s get moving. Here is the data table:
Raw 20-Minute Power
To get into the top 20 you have to be able to hold around 3.2 W/kg for 20 minutes. Why does the data above say 3.4? It is skewed by a few people who are significantly higher than 3.2 W/kg as shown in the graph. If you remove the riders averaging over category w/kg the average for the top Cat C riders is 3.1 W/kg.
As you can see in the chart, there is no real difference in the 20-minute power between the top 20 Cat C riders and the 21 – 60th ranked riders.
If we remember that the actual FTP ZwiftPower uses is 95% of this 20-minute power for their calculations (thanks to one of the commenters on the previous article for pointing this out), that means the ZwiftPower average for their 20-Minute power is only 2.95 W/kg. This seems to indicate these riders are very good at riding in the draft and conserving energy.
5-Minute Power
You need to be able to hang with this group up the hills. About 3.7 W/kg is the average for the group. The light riders average higher (obviously).
Head down to the Percent of 20-Minute Power section for more detail on 5-Minute Power.
1-Minute Power
Because many of these riders weigh more, many of them are able to produce exceptional raw power over one minute, between 400 to 525 Watts. Their ZwiftPower profiles show them in the 80-95th percentile of all Zwift riders (I don’t have race-only data to confirm those percentiles are applicable to races). As Eric Schlange pointed out in this article, the higher your raw power, the faster you go given the exact same W/kg. I would be interested to see how that plays out in a race.
A few takeaways from the above graphs:
The very high end of Cat C has 1-minute W/kg power in line with very good Cat B racers (between 6 – 7.0 W/kg)
The 1-Minute Raw Wattage for these riders averages 402 Watts with the median being 426 Watts. So if you are an adult, you will need to average at least 400 Watts to keep up over the last minute.
15-Second Power
Similar to the Cat B findings, it appears that a combination of 1-minute and 15-second power is the key. You have to be good at both. As you can see in the graph, you need to be able to average at least 7.5 W/kg, and realistically 9 W/kg to get into this upper echelon of C category racers.
Percentage of 20-Minute Power (Comparing C to B Riders)
As I was running this data I kept wondering “How does this compare to Cat B”? So I decided to break the data down as a percentage of 20-Minute Power to see how the two categories stacked up. Below is what I discovered:
5-Minute Percentage: There is only a slight difference (1.8%) between the two percentages here, meaning that Cat B puts out about 1.8% higher wattage when compared to their 20-Minute Power for a race. Is this a meaningful difference? I don’t know. I think it is indicative of a challenge when moving to Cat B. Not only do the riders in Cat B have a higher 20-minute power, but they are also capable of going up a hill at a higher percentage of that power. As I am sure we have all experienced, even a 5-6 watt increase can be the difference in hanging with the group and the thread breaking with 20 seconds left up a long hill.
1-Minute Percentage: The difference is larger here, 6.9%, between the two groups. What this says to me is that there is a bigger wind up for the finishes of the Cat B races than the Cat C.
15-Second Percentage: Here we have a 10.5% difference, meaning the sprint is much faster in a Cat B race relative to the average 20-Minute power.
I would have expected all three of these numbers to be comparable, I don’t see an obvious reason Cat B would put out a higher % relative to 20-minute power than Cat C. It may be that the races are just very different, where Cat C are broken apart and Cat B stay together in bunches, so the people at the top in Cat B are the best sprinters. Even then I would have expected Cat C to put out a higher % on the 5-Minute power to create those breakaways.
It may be possible that as riders get better their shorter power numbers rise faster than their 20-Minute power.
Heart Rate (HR) vs. Percentage of Max Heart Rate
Many of the comments on my last article centered around the topic of “sandbagging”, or people not racing as hard as they can. The DIRT team had a thread going discussing the percent of max HR as a measure of effort, so I took a look for Cat C.
Looking at the graph, most riders are in a narrow band between 80 – 90% of their Max Heart Rate. This was taken as the maximum HR value I saw in all of their race data and seems totally reasonable!
I know what you are thinking: “Rick, this data means nothing without knowing the raw numbers for average heart rate (Average HR). Don’t you know anything?” Well, here you go! See the “Average HR vs. Rider Rank” chart.
I really made every attempt to look smart here by summarizing good takeaways from this data, but after writing this paragraph 5 times, I just don’t think there is much to talk about…it looks pretty normal. I did want to share the data, however, to help answer questions around these data points.
Races Per Week
Same as Cat B…If you want to get a good rank you have to race a lot. Don’t underestimate the power of learning how to race well and the luck of needing an aero to place high enough to get that race ranking.
The average is 1.9 races per week. But check out that person racing over 6 times a week!
Podium Percentage
This was one of the more surprising takeaways. I anticipated that most of these people would be amassing points through racing Cat B, but instead 50 of the 60 race primarily in Cat C. As you can see from the graph, they are cleaning up. The average podium percentage for this group is 59.2% which is incredible. It continues to lend to the theory about Cat C races getting broken up more before the sprint, so getting on the podium is more a matter of strength than position / luck.
Other Tidbits
The racers are clustered around 50 and 90 kg
The 50kg group mostly made up of young athletes and women
The 90kg group is perplexing; I don’t know why there is a cluster here. One of the commenters on the Cat B article mentioned that they thought Cat C would be heavier than Cat B, so kudos to him / her!
A lot of these racers appear to be very new to Zwift, or at least ZwiftPower. It appears as though C is a common starting category, and I would guess there is more turnover in these rankings than any of the other categories
50 of the 60 riders race primarily in Cat C. Five race in B/C races, one races exclusively in Cat B, two race in A/B, and one races mostly in Women Only events
At a minimum, 3 of the 60 riders are women
5 of the 60 riders have fake names (this is a lower percentage than Cat B)
2 of the riders were verified by ZADA at some point
8 of the 60 riders are Under 20, 2 are between 23 – 29, 15 are between 30 – 39, 21 are between 40 – 49, 8 are over 50 and 5 are over 60. 1 person either refuses to be defined by ages or is immortal
33 of the people are from Europe, 17 are from North America, 6 are from Oceana and 4 are from Asia
A lot of the racers participate in Time Trials (ITT and TTT) as well as racing series. There didn’t seem to be a targeted race type like in Cat B.
The racers were DQ’ed 1.9% of the time due to UPG/HR/DQ
The Data Details
Data Source: ZwiftPower
Data Curation: Manually downloaded. I would love to pull more data and do other analyses (see other articles I’m planning at the end) but I haven’t found an API to download all of the data from ZwiftPower. (Guys who run ZwiftPower – hit me up.)
Data Filter(s): Past 90 days of racing from the Top 20 category C racers as of August 4th. When you look at the rider profiles you will see higher power than what is shown below because the data I used is only from raceswhere the rider achieved a rank of under 420 for the race ranking.Our goal is to identify how to become a top Category C racer in Zwift, not to see what everyone’s max wattage is during a 2.0 W/kg group ride with a sprint in the middle. Also, cutting off at 420 is arbitrary. Looking at the best five races from the racers between 50th and 60th it seemed appropriate.
Analysis Tool(s): Google Sheets and Excel.
Next Articles and Projects:
Below are additional data-focused articles I plan to write, also based on data from ZwiftPower:
Cat A+ is next, then Cat A
Women Specific article – I’m not sure of format and Categories
What it takes to win a Zwift race
Zwift Rankings and Category Improvements
How to Race like a Pro – This is a teaser for another project I’m working on. Details to come soon!
A huge thank you to everyone who read the last article and provided feedback. I really appreciated every single comment and tried my best to respond to everyone.
Also – thanks to my amazing wife for helping with the edits.
Ideas and Comments
Let me know your thoughts on this one and ideas for future articles in the comments below! I am particularly interested to hear your thoughts on whether my conclusions align with what actually works for real Cat C racers. I promise to respond to your comment (unless you say something mean about me, in which case I will immediately write a pithy response, followed by me deleting said pithy response, followed by me responding with “thanks for reading”, written with no exclamation point and no capitals because that way you know I am mad at you).
The challenge is, steering has been disabled by default on all races because Zwift doesn’t want the few riders with steering abilities to hop into races and win every time due to a competitive advantage. (It’s a legit concern – watch ZwiftPower’s James Hodges steer away from the pack in a recent WTRL Gravel Series event.) To Zwift’s credit, they’ve quickly spun up some ZHQ Steering Races where steering is allowed – and I jumped into the very first one last Saturday.
Saturdays are my long ride days, so I planned to get some miles in before and after the race. But first, I did my usual race prep: rubbing PR lotion into my legs, and chewing 2 pieces of caffeine gum.
Good news for PR Lotion fans, or those who want to give it a try: I’ve got a discount code! Use “ZwiftInsider” for 20% off your purchase.
My legs felt decent as I spun around France with my buddy Mike, working on my steering chops on the Petite KOM descent. I noticed that cutting the corner on each of the zigzags allowed me to gain about 5 meters on Mike, every turn. Significant! Then I headed over to the windy river road, the curviest road on Zwift, and worked on cutting corners there too. I was following a dude who kept trying to get ahead, but couldn’t as I would cut the corners and stay with him at a much lower wattage. Even grabbed the Ballon Sprint jersey. Fun stuff!
The Start
There was a good amount of chatter in the start pens, and it was interesting to note that at least a handful of the riders did not have steering capabilities. I was happy to see that, because I wanted to learn what those riders thought about racing against Sterzos. But that would have to wait until after the race…
The clock hit zero, we flew out of the start pens, and immediately I received an unsettling surprise – we were racing with the A’s! Curses. I had mis-read ZwiftPower’s explanation of the category setup for the race, and didn’t realize us B’s would be joining the A’s. But it was the first steering race ever on Zwift – I wasn’t about to give up! So I gritted my teeth and mentally prepared myself for a harder effort that initially planned.
383 watts for 90 seconds got me to the top of the brick climb in touch with the front group. But could I hang with them for 11.5 more laps? There was only one way to find out.
The Steering Experience
First Things First
There are a few things one must understand about FutureWorks Steering:
If you don’t steer at all, you will basically stay in the same left to right lane position during the ride. Think of the road like a slot car track, with (I think) 12 slots in it. As you steer, you are moving between those slots.
You can ride through riders front to back. When that happens, Zwift automatically steers your rider around the other rider.
You cannot ride through other riders side to side. So if you want to cut a corner sharp, but there’s a group of riders on your inside, you won’t be able to move all the way over.
Positioning Myself
Since the Downtown Dolphin route moves in a clockwise direction, almost all of the turns are right-handers… meaning the shortest line is on the right-hand side of the lane. There are three key left-hand turns, though, so being in position for those turns is also important, if you’re trying to optimize your line.
I quickly found that it was difficult to get into position for those left-hand turns since the main mass of riders was always occupying the left half of the lane, and (like racing outside) I couldn’t just steer through them. My guess (and I haven’t verified with ZHQ yet) is that non-steering riders are set to stay on the left side, while steering riders stay on the right. That was certainly how the group behaved in this race at least – the only riders I saw on the right half of the lane were clearly steering-enabled.
So I would move left as far as I could go, but unless there was a gap in the riders, I wasn’t able to cut the turn as sharp as I’d like. That wasn’t a huge deal to me, though: with only three left turns and seven right turns, I was happy to have an open right lane.
As the race progressed, I found myself battling for right-hand turn position with other steering riders. We definitely all wanted that tight, fast line! It was fun to try to time my moves so I could slot in just behind another Sterzo user, benefiting from the double draft while gaining several meters on the unsteering masses.
Taking the inside of the hairpin heading into the lap banner always gave me an extra ~5 meters on the other riders
Dodging the Draft
When I was in the right half of the lane with the peloton in the left half, my rider would pop out of the draft occasionally (as evidenced by my avatar going from a seated up position to a more aero, in the drops posture.) I would scoot over toward the peloton in order to get back in the draft, and my rider would sit back up.
This is definitely a place where Tron riders are at a disadvantage, since your avatar doesn’t change position based on draft status on the Tron bike.
Muted by the Double Draft
This race had double draft enabled, which I think made it a little less exciting. Steering-enabled riders may have attempted some breakaways in normal draft mode, but experienced Zwift racers know it’s nearly impossible to stay away from the pack in double draft, since it raises pack speeds so high.
I see the next ZHQ Steering Race doesn’t use double draft, so that’s good news.
Burrito Madness
This was my first race since the burrito powerup was changed to affect all riders within a 2.5m radius. Wow! What a difference. Especially in a double draft race, you really notice when you lose the draft effect, even for just 10 seconds.
There were a lot of burritos flying around as riders have begun to realize what an offensive weapon the revamped burrito really is. (If you want some tips on how to best use the new burrito, see my recent post.)
The Finish
I was stoked to still be in the front group of ~18 riders as we began the final lap. Then all hell broke loose!
Someone attacked on the front of our group, and a couple of riders followed. Then someone activated a burrito powerup, further lowering any hopes of the front of our group pushing up through the gap and bringing the attack back.
That’s what I realized after watching the recording of the race (below). But in the actual event, I didn’t even see the move. I was at the back of our pack, the move happened on the front, and all I knew was that suddenly several riders were off the front, and I was on the limit and unable to reel them back in from their position 3-4 seconds ahead.
Final lap, in a bad position to follow the break
So instead I prayed to the Zwift gods that no B’s had made the break, and tried to sit on the wheels and time my aero powerup and final sprint. I waited for the first rider to jump, and it turned out to be fellow B rider Scott Yarosh. He jumped hard, and when I went to put down the power, it just wasn’t there! Scott stayed away, taking first for the B’s while I came in second. Nice sprint, Scott.
Steering is fun in races: it definitely added an enjoyable element of interaction and immersion. Figuring out how to get the best line possible is an entirely new challenge, but a welcome one.
The burrito is a big deal: mark my words – this little powerup is going to play a much larger role in races moving forward.
Even though I dread it, I need to keep racing against A’s: it pushes me harder, and that’s how I get better. Also (bonus): beating some A’s helps me boost my ZwiftPower ranking!
The Non-Steering Perspective
I asked Bob Gorman, a B rider who raced this event without a Sterzo for steering, to share his thoughts. Here are some excerpts from what he said:
This was my first race with Sterzo steering allowed and since I do NOT have the device I was very curious as to how it would unfold. My initial thoughts were that not having the steering feature would put me at a disadvantage but that did not pan out. I am not strong enough to ride in the front group of B riders for very long and it seemed that most of the front riders were using the Sterzo more so than the midpack B riders where I find myself.
You don’t know, or at least I couldn’t figure out, who actually was using Sterzo and who wasn’t except for the few that could cut the apex of the corner and pull out for a break. I can see it being an advantage if you were podium hunting, had a team, or if everyone had it but for me it was a lot easier and not a handicap to ride with the group. I could ride through people, didn’t get boxed out, and could better take advantage of the draft.
Where I would have used the steering would be to get outside on the final sprint and cut the last corner.
If summary, it looks fun but I am happy to know that at least for now I can still have the same amount of fun without having it. I wouldn’t feel handicapped in any way by not having steering enabled. In the future I think there needs to be races that allow Sterzo only, now that would be interesting. And maybe find a way to let us steer with our Companion app!
Is Steering Advantageous?
After the race, I decided to try a little experiment. I set up a quick custom workout at 250 watts steady, and did two laps of the Downtown Dolphin route: the first without steering, the second using steering to take the best lines.
Lap 1 (no steering): 3 minutes, 11 seconds
Lap 2 (steering): 3 minutes, 4 seconds
So steering saved me 7 seconds on just one lap of the route. That’s significant! Bearing in mind that you probably won’t be able to hit every corner perfectly when riding with others, and that lap times are shorter in races, I would say steering still gives you a 2-4 second per lap advantage. That’s much more than any bike frame or wheelset gives you.
Your Thoughts
Have you tried steering in a race yet? What are your thoughts on it? Share below!
The VeloViewer-powered Route Hunter leaderboards were first rolled out in October 2019. They were an immediate hit in the Zwift community because they gave people a tool to track which routes they’ve completed, as well as a competitive leaderboard for anyone wanting to see how they rank against the universe of Zwifters.
Since then, new routes and maps have been added to Zwift, and we’ve created new Rebel Routes as well. All these new routes are added to the Route Hunter Leaderboards soon after their release.
Additionally, in May 2020 Strava made major changes to their services in an attempt to drive subscriber growth. This didn’t change anything if you’re a paying Strava Premium subscriber, but for free users, the Route Hunter Leaderboards no longer show segment times for yourself or others. Instead, they act more as a checklist of which routes you’ve completed.
About the Leaderboards
There are 15 different leaderboards, each containing their own Zwift routes:
Click “Connect with Strava”. (If you’re already signed into your Strava account in your browser, skip to step 3.)
Log into your Strava account. You will be redirected back to the leaderboards homepage.
Click “View” beneath one of the leaderboard titles.
If you are not yet a member of the Zwift club on Strava, click the link to join the club, click “Join Club”, then return to the leaderboard page and click “Recheck Club Membership”. (If you are already a member of the Zwift club on Strava, skip to step 5.)
Click “Update Your Times” to import your Strava rides into whatever leaderboard you are currently viewing. You may only click this link once per day for each leaderboard.
Using the Leaderboards
Here are a few tips for using the leaderboards:
While they will work just fine on a smartphone, the leaderboards are much easier to browse on a large screen.
Click any column title in a leaderboard to sort by that column.
Click “View” next to the route title to view that segment’s details in VeloViewer. It’s not always clear where particular segments may stop and start, so looking at the actual Strava info is helpful if you’re chasing segment times.
Filter by gender using the buttons at the top-right.
Clicking a rider’s time for a particular route will take you to their Strava activity, where you can look for reasons to rationalize them beating your segment time 😄
Can You Ride Them All?
Very few Zwifters have ridden every segment in the leaderboards (over 200 routes+KOMs at this point). Can you do it?
A Note About Group Ride Efforts
Due to the location of start pens in relation to spawn points and lap start/finish banners, we had to make a choice with some routes when selecting which segment would be used for the leaderboards:
Start from the start/finish banner (eliminating group event traffic) or
Start from the start pens (eliminating free ride traffic) or
Start well after the start pens and start/finish banner, creating a rather wacky segment with an arbitrary start point which isn’t accurate when riders do multiple laps.
We chose to go with #1, because we didn’t want this to be restricted to “event-only” efforts, and we don’t want segments with a weird start point.
This means many of your group ride efforts will not be included in the leaderboard times. This is especially apparent on Watopia routes which begin downtown, since the start pen is located after the start/finish banner. You may also notice it with New York routes, and some other routes in other worlds.
Shout Out to VeloViewer
Ben over at VeloViewer is giving us this functionality free of charge. But if you find it useful, please consider upgrading your VeloViewer account to a Pro or Pro+ account. Cost is only £10-£20 per year, and you get lots of premium features–read more about those here.
Changelog
August 15, 2024: get all caught up by adding new routes and KOMs.
Dec 16, 2019: changed Dust in the Wind segment to reflect Zwift’s finish line at the desert arch.
Nov 29, 2019: changed the Road to Sky segment to reflect Zwift’s recent move of the spawn point. Segment now begins at the junction of the new Jungle start pens. Changed Muir and the Mountain to reflect Zwift’s route change, which has this route officially beginning and ending at the Titans Grove KOM.
Suggestions or Questions?
Post them below! Thanks for joining in the fun, and Ride On!
The Feather powerup used to make you 9.5kg lighter, so you could climb a bit easier or sprint a bit faster. Heavier riders have complained that giving every rider the same weight advantage means the feather has a greater effect on lightweight riders than heavier riders – and they weren’t wrong!
For a 60kg rider, the old feather’s 9.5kg advantage meant a 15.8% reduction in body weight. For a 90kg rider, the same feather gave them a 10.6% reduction in weight. Since heavier riders already struggle on climbs, the mismatch seemed especially unfair.
The updated feather now reduces everyone’s body weight by a flat percentage: 10%, by our calculations. Here are some numbers we saw in our tests:
75kg rider @ 300 watts (4 w/kg): goes to 4.4 w/kg with feather activated
60kg rider @ 180 watts (3 w/kg): goes to 3.3 w/kg with feather activated
60kg rider @ 360 watts (6 w/kg): goes to 6.7 w/kg with feather activated
Due to the way Zwift sizes our avatars, this 10% weight reduction will typically result in a visible change in size for your avatar.
Our 75k avatar before the feather powerup (left) and during (right)
A 95kg rider won’t notice any change with the new feather powerup, since it will reduce their weight by 10% (or 9.5kg, the same as the old feather). Riders lighter than 95kg may notice the feather has less effect, especially very light riders (60kg or below). Riders over 95kg may notice an increased effect.
Burrito PowerUp: Bringing the Pain
The old Burrito powerup simply turned off your avatar’s slipstream for 10 seconds, so no other riders could benefit by sitting in your draft. The problem with this setup was, the burrito is an event-only powerup, used for races. And most racing is done in a pack setting. And if you’re in a pack and activate the burrito, riders behind you are still benefiting from the slipstream effect of other riders ahead of them, even if they aren’t benefiting from you.
Basically, in a group of any significant size, activating the burrito did nothing.
It was useful if you were attacking off the front – but that’s such a rare occurrence in races that riders would often “burn their burritos” – using them immediately, or clicking the link to throw them away.
The new burrito is much more… er… powerful. It now disables the draft effect for all riders within 2.5m of yourself. Here’s a visual comparing normal pack dynamics to the old burrito effect to the new burrito effect:
Note: the draft “trail” show above is for illustrative purposes only and not indicative of Zwift’s actual draft “shape” or strength.
This change makes the burrito especially effective when used in the peloton, because it makes every rider within 2.5 meters work harder! The rider who activates the burrito still receives the same draft benefits as before, but riders within 2.5 meters are receiving zero draft benefit for 10 seconds.
Strategic Burrito Usage:
Watch for friendly fire: if you are riding next to a teammate, keep in mind that activating your burrito will adversely affect them. Consider moving away from your teammate or warning them via Discord to move away before activating.
Don’t double burrito: if a nearby rider already has a burrito activated, activating your burrito powerup will have a negligible effect since nearby riders will already have their draft disabled by the first burrito. Wait until the first burrito expires (it only lasts for 10 seconds) or move elsewhere in the pack.
Burrito-powered teamwork: to facilitate a team breakaway, move within 1 rider of the front of the pack (but still within the draft of the front rider(s), then activate your burrito as teammate(s) attack. This will let the teammates get away, while making it difficult for anyone to bridge across the draftless space to grab their wheel.
Mind the gap: when you see a nearby rider activate a burrito, increase your wattage so you don’t drop away from the pack. Keep in mind that riders just ahead of you may alsohave their draft disabled by the burrito, which means they may let a gap open up to riders ahead. Keep your eyes open, and bridge that gap before it becomes a problem!
As a female cyclist, commuting, riding for pleasure, training, and racing, I’ve often wondered: where are all the other women? After some research on the topic, the main concerns that prevent women from getting on bikes are safety concerns and socio-cultural limitations. As a bike commuter in the city of Chicago, I can relate to and understand the safety concerns. In training, I have gotten used to being the only or one of very few women on group rides. In contrast, I’ve frequently heard statements like “My wife is at home with the kids”, “My wife is scared of traffic” and such during coffee stops. As a bike racer, I see the small size of women’s fields in bike racing. Oftentimes I’ve asked myself: “Do I belong here?” or “Is it worth it?”
A Safe Space
Jasmin in Canyon/SRAM kit after completing the women’s Zwift Academy
The emergence of eRacing and virtual training opportunities brings forward a safe environment for women — both in terms of physical safety but also as a safe and convenient space to be a female athlete in a supportive community. Initiatives like large women-only group rides or the Zwift Academy have been empowering experiences for women who don’t have the luxury to enjoy those environments in real life (IRL).
As a bike racer in Chicagoland, women’s fields have been fought for hard, but numbers are still low across the categories. Weekend travel to races across the Midwest is the norm to encounter larger, more competitive fields. The time and financial investments are a large boundary to women specifically, and here is where eRacing makes all the difference.
The Power of Accessibility
This ease of accessibility is a tremendous help for female riders of all ages, for mothers, for time-crunched professionals. The number of opportunities for riding and racing for beginners to pro cyclists is encouraging and motivating, and likely provides an environment few women have experienced on the road before.
Jenn Real at the end of a rainbow in Hawaii
The first thing I was positively shocked by when joining Zwift was the sheer number of women riding. Instead of a handful, the rides had hundreds of participants. Team manager Jenn Real knows the advantage of eRacing’s accessibility and opportunity for women all too well: “As someone living on the Big Island of Hawaii, where we have exactly one road race a year, Zwift is my competitive outlet. Zwift enables me to race at a very high level, while living off the grid on a farm in the mountains of Hawaii. It’s at least a six-hour flight to find a big women’s road race IRL. Without Zwift, I doubt I would still be racing bikes.”
I entered the world of eRacing as a wildcard for Team Fearless in their annual Women’s Team Championship 2019. Ultimately joining the powerhouse of Team Saris + The Pro’s Closet was a true game-changer: all of a sudden, I’m racing a field stacked with up to 100 women, many of them pros from all corners of the globe — a level that I would very likely never have experienced in real life as someone who picked up cycling in their late 20s.
Anna Russell with her husband Hayden and kiddos.
The eRacing community is large and competitive but also cordial and inclusive. Our team itself counts racers of all ages and backgrounds, and from more than 5 countries. I truly enjoy the community the team provides as much as the motivation to support my team and compete with the best. Many of my teammates are mothers or retired professional athletes, and eRacing gives them the unique opportunity to keep competing at a high level without many of the downsides that professional racing comes with.
Teammate Anna Russell, a former professional triathlete, sees Zwift as a lifeline in both a social and competitive way: “Zwifting through pregnancy and the newborn days was an amazing way to keep active but also have social interaction. Now I am able to regularly race while the kids are sleeping, something I never thought would be possible.”
Teammate Caroline Murray adds: “Even though fielding a homework question on Pythagoras’ Theorem isn’t ideal at the best of times let alone when you’re seconds away from the final sprint of your race, having such an accessible platform for training and racing whilst juggling working life and being a mum (mom) is an absolute godsend. Having a community of amazing people who totally get it when you’ve had to cut your ride short because your kid couldn’t find the blue bowl for their cereal solidifies my love for Zwift even more!”
Caroline Murray throwing down the watts
The Growth of eRacing: Strength in Numbers
The sport of eRacing has been growing for years, and platforms like Zwift have broadened their cooperation with national cycling associations to establish national (and ultimately world) championships as an additional discipline of bike racing. The support of Saris, The Pro’s Closet and our fellow sponsors has been instrumental for setting our team up for success in this movement as we compete against the world’s cycling elite.
ERacing has certainly experienced another boom due to the recent coronavirus pandemic. The opportunities emerging from this rapid growth are endless-for the individual and the sport of cycling as a whole: when the numbers of female Zwifters are rising, why wouldn’t organizations and companies support women on bikes IRL? When equity is possible virtually, then why wouldn’t the real world follow suit?
I’m hoping our actions in eRacing will complement and strengthen the work that’s been done by advocates for parity in cycling. We are very thankful for our sponsors Saris and The Pro’s Closet who believe in our athletes and support us on this next level of eRacing. Follow Team Saris + The Pro’s Closet on Instagram and Facebook and make sure to connect with us on Zwift too.
Zwift has just rolled out a weeklong event series in partnership with DT Swiss. Centered around the newly-launched revamped ARC 1100 62mm wheelset from DT Swiss, the “DT Swiss Reborn Faster Festival” features races and group rides led by pro riders. All rides will auto-assign the new DT Swiss ARC 62 wheelset to riders.
About the Events
This series includes group rides, races, and group workouts across a variety of routes, with several events scheduled each day. Many of the group rides will be led by DT Swiss-sponsored pro riders (just look for their name in the event title).
Events begin with a group ride on Sunday August 16 at 10pm Pacific, and end Sunday at 11:30am Pacific.
Finish one event in the series and you’ll get the new DT Swiss ARC 62 wheelset added to your Zwift garage.
There’s also a prize drawing: a set of real-life ARC 1100 DICUT 62mm wheels! Each event you finish in the series gets you one more entry into the giveaway, and one man and one woman will each win a set.
Zwift has just rolled out their next major tour event, dubbed “Off the MAAP” since it’s in partnership with Melbourne-based cycling clothing maker MAAP. Here are all the details of this popular event!
Stage Details and Schedule
This is a 4-stage tour which lasts 2 weeks (Aug 15-30). Make-up days are included (Aug 27-30) in case you miss a particular stage.
Each stage includes women’s-only race events as well as an open race (men and women) and a group ride. Group rides include a short and long route option, while race categories are based on FTP w/kg, and all race categories ride the same route.
Finish every stage to unlock the exclusive Off the MAAP in-game kit. You’ll also unlock the ability to purchase a real-life version from MAAP once the tour ends!
Event types can be mixed, so you can race one stage and group ride another in order to complete the tour.
Pro-Am Invitational
Before each stage kicks off, watch top pros and amateurs will battle it out! Racing kicks off at 7pm AEST/10am BST/5am EDT/2am PDT on Aug 14, 17, 20, and 24. Watch each live stream below:
This weekend has a lot of high-attendance events, which is always fun! Raise funds for Buffalo bikes, join a big ride series… or try steering in a race for the first time. It’s all good!
Special thanks to Jesper at ZwiftHacks with his Events app which provides powerful event filtering tools that help us create this list each week.
Ride Like King 12
This weekend the popular Ride Like King celebration is back in Zwift-land, and it includes pro rides, Buffalo Bike donations through WBR, a kit unlock, and prize giveaways! Read all the details here >
This is a 4-stage event. The more stages Zwifters ride, the more Buffalo bikes will be donated!
Stage 1 – Friday at 11am BST/6am EDT/3am PDT: 2 laps of the Tick Tock route.
Stage 2 – Friday at 11pm BST/6pm EDT/3pm PDT: 2 laps of the Tempus Fugit route.
Stage 3 – Saturday at 9am BST/4am EDT/1am PDT: 3 laps of the Greater London Flat route.
Stage 4 – Sunday at 5pm BST/12pm EDT/9am PDT: 4 laps of the Gotham Grind route.
Last week’s Zwift update included the ability to steer on all Zwift roads, if you have an Elite Sterzo Smart steering block. Those Sterzos are now arriving at Zwifters’ doorsteps, so it’s time to try steering in a race! Zwift automatically disabled steering in all scheduled races, since it provides an advantage. But they’ve created two special events where steering will be allowed (they are currently set to “no steering” as we write this, but certainly that will be fixed by race day).
Racers without steering abilities are encouraged to attend as well, to see what it’s like to race against steering riders. Anti-sandbagging (the green cone of shame) is also enabled for these events. Let’s have some fun!
We’re at the end of this three-stage series celebrating the new Specialized Tarmac S7 bike (read all about the series here). This weekend is stage 3, inspired by Julian Alaphilippe and held on the France map. Choose from the long ride which takes you up the challenging La Reine route to Mont Ven-Top’s Chalet Reynard, or do the shorter ride on the flatter Casse-Pattes route.
This big 2-week tour kicks off this weekend with Stage 1 (there are 4 stages total). Each stage includes group rides, races, and a pro-am invitational event. Complete all stages to unlock the exclusive kit!
Looking for a long group ride with friendly support and some hills? Try ZZRC’s weekly Sunday club ride. This week it’s a long one – 167.7km as you cover 3 laps of the London Pretzel route.
This weekend the popular Ride Like King celebration is back in Zwift-land, and it includes pro rides, Buffalo Bike donations through WBR, a kit unlock, and prize giveaways! Here are the details…
About King
In 2007, at age 73, Giant Group company founder King Liu completed a 15-day, 927km ride around Taiwan. That ride sparked a renewed interest in King’s own cycling lifestyle and the benefits that cycling can have on health and fitness. Ride Like King began in 2009 as a small event within the Giant Group family to celebrate company founder King Liu’s passion for cycling, and this is the 3rd year the event has partnered with Zwift.
The WBR Buffalo Bike
Bring On the Buffalos
For each 1,200km completed by Zwifters during these events, Giant Group will donate a Buffalo bike to a rider in need via World Bicycle Relief.
Here’s a little math: all 4 stages total just over 150km. So 8 Zwifters riding all four stages would result in one Buffalo bike donation.
Riders will be assigned the Giant TCR Advanced SL for the open ride and the Liv Langma Advanced SL for the women’s only events.
Kit Unlock
Finish any one of the four rides to unlock the regal Ride Like King 12 kit. It includes dozens of little bike-riding kings covering the front and back.
Prizes
Riders who finish any of the stages are eligible to win IRL prizes. Five randomly chosen riders from each event will win a limited-edition Ride Like King 12 jersey, signed by the man himself.
