Zwift enthusiasts know that regular riders reap rewards of many sorts. But did you realize that Zwift acts as a time machine? #ReadOn.
A study published in June 2015 by the Healthy Urban Living research program at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) attempted to estimated how much the death rate in the Netherlands decreases through regular bicycle use.
Data collected for the survey shows the mobility of approximately 50,000 Dutch people. Researcher Dr Carlijn Kamphuis notes: “… we were able to calculate that on average, for every hour of cycling people live about an hour longer. For Dutch people, that equates to living for about six months longer for every 75 minutes of cycling each week.”
Did you catch that? For every hour of cycling, people live about an hour longer.
That means when you climb onto your steed in your pain cave and spend an hour sweating your way around Watopia, you’ve actually spent no time at all. You climb off your bike with just as many minutes left to live as when you climbed on.
We could debate the vagarities of the study as long as we’d like, but instead let’s just tuck this little nugget away for the next time our spouse complains about all the time we spend riding.
Monthly Challenge for June 2016 – Time Trial Navigation
Zwifter Al Clewly has announced June’s challenge–details below.
Time Trial Navigation
In response to those whom wished for a “more inclusive” challenge!
First of all, as the previous challenges have been, well – challenging, the June one is starting early and running alongside May’s tough Everest challenge. This means that there will be just over 5 weeks to get an entry in by 12:00 GMT on 1st July 2016.
The route:
Starting at the usual “Ride Now” point before the Start banner, reverse your course and head anti clockwise for a short warm up.
The TT route starts at the Green Jersey sprint banner at the end of the bridge.
From there navigate to the underwater island with the tree (Right Turn and Straight) and then take the Right turn towards the Mountain.
Having emerged from the tunnel, at exactly the last unbroken arch, reverse course and then navigate to the Spruce Goose aeroplane (Left and Left).
At exactly the end of the bridge, again reverse course and navigate back to the underwater tunnel towards the small Watopia island hill. (Right, Straight, Left).
Go around the 270 degree climbing turn and at exactly the end of the bridge reverse course and head back to the underwater tunnel (Right turn).
Now navigate to “Hanks” (Straight, Straight, Straight) and at the start line for the reverse KOM (just by Hanks) reverse course.
Now navigate back to the Clockwise Green Jersey sprint banner (Straight) which is the finish line!
The TT route is 13.6 miles
Rules for entry.
In order to be entered you must upload your ride to Strava.
Your turns must be accurate enough to place you on the segment “MC June – TT Navigation”
All riders listed on this segment will be entered into the draw for 2 Zwift bidons
The challenge will be for you to get placed on this segment. No other means will be accepted! The segment can be viewed here. (Consider making it a favorite to find it more easily.)
There is no prize for being KOM, but don’t let that stop you trying!! There is also no time limit. Hopefully this one will enable many more to have a go!
JZRA is hosting another team time trial on June 8, 2016. This is their third such event.
Team Time Trials are rarely held on Zwift, probably due to the logistical challenges of forming teams of comparable riders. These events have received very positive feedback though, and participation continues to increase with 12 teams entering the first event and 19 teams entering the second.
Teams consist of 3-5 riders, and if you don’t have a team you can sign up as an individual and JZRA will place you on a team that should work nicely with your abilities. You must pre-register to take part in the event.
Zwift began in late 2014 with a small group of beta testers riding around an island called Jarvis. As the number of riders increased, virtual races were organized and became a part of the weekly ride calendar.
Since the first days of Zwift racing, organizers have battled a small set of difficult challenges:
Starting the race: how can you enforce a fair start? A standing start requires all riders to follow a properly synced clock so they can leave on time (since there is no in-game clock). And neutral starts have been challenging because riders have a hard time spotting the leader so they can stay behind them (or they don’t care and try to jump off the front to gain an advantage).
Finishing the race: how can you figure out who crosses the finish line first? Short of actually parking your avatar at the finish line and recording each rider as they come across, organizers had no way of knowing exactly who crossed when, because of the pesky clock sync issue. (If my system clock is 10s faster than yours, when we upload our rides to Strava it could appear that I crossed the finish line at the same time as you did, when in fact I was 10s behind you.)
Spotting Cheaters: if cheating happens in real-world cycling, it is bound to happen in virtual cycling. Riders can change their weight, height, or miscalibrate their trainers to report higher power numbers. Additionally, some riders simply don’t understand how to set up their trainer properly, resulting in inflated power numbers. Riders can also “cheat” (on purpose or inadvertently) by choosing too easy of a race category or neglecting to include the race tag in their rider name.
Release the zlogger!
In January 2016 as part of the Zwift Coders Facebook group I started hearing about the “zlogger,” a tool created by Zwifter Jonathan Lemon to log Zwift rider data and generate race results.
This tool takes advantage of the fact that, as you ride in Zwift, the game is collecting and displaying data on all nearby riders as well. Lemon’s zlogger uses active Zwift accounts parked at various locations throughout the course. Each of these accounts acts as a “chalkline,” and every time a rider crosses the chalkline a snapshot of that rider’s data (including current distance, heartrate, trainer type) is saved to the database for further processing.
Thanks in large part to Glen Knight‘s efforts there are twenty-three active chalklines, with plans to add more. The more chalklines in play, the more granular (precise) the data will become–but each chalkline requires a separate computer to run, so this is no small feat.
All of this “live” rider data opens up a universe of possibilities including accurate race start/finish tracking and live mapping of riders on courses.
Precise, automatic race results? Yes please!
ZTR and KISS races have been using zlogger data for months now (see a sample of recent ZTR results here) and I would assume that nearly all future races will make use of this tool unless Zwift HQ rolls out something better in-game.
ZTR’s Christian Wiedmann, a coder in his own right, did a lot of the work to build the infrastructure so the zlogger data could be distributed and used by other tools developed by the Zwift community. KISS’ Glen Knight has done the hard work of setting up all the hardware for the chalkline riders to run on, as well as the database storing all the information.
Live race status? Don’t mind if I do!
James Hodges of ZwiftPower.com has created a live page (edit 4/12/2022: now defunct) which shows the current information for all riders on course. You can also watch “live” race results.
There is even a “replay race” feature which merges the live zlogger data with Strava data.
Interested in working with this data?
Developers who are interested in using the infrastructure should ask Glen Knight for credentials to the RabbitMQ server and/or mysql database. At this point there is no documentation, but Christian is willing to answer any questions on software integration. (He has also stated that if there is enough interest, he will write up some documentation on what’s there.)
What’s next?
In talking to Jonathan, Christian, Glen, and James it looks like the future roadmap for this toolset includes:
Adding more watchers (chalklines)
Integrating chat monitoring
Running multiple watchers on one machine and making other improvements which will reduce infrastructure load while allowing for more data throughput
James Hodges (zwiftpower.com) plans to start saving sprint and KOM times for all races historically and assigning winners jerseys automatically be category. There will also be a monthly/daily/hourly scoreboard for all riders in zwift, filtering out zpower and mis-calibrated power.
Mapping everyone’s location onto a live version of the Zwift Insider map, perhaps making this available as a screen overlay.
Dropping the hammer – CycleOps’ new high-end smart trainer
USA-based trainer manufacturer CycleOps announced their latest trainer just a few days ago. “The Hammer” is CycleOps’ first direct-drive, electronic controlled trainer.
Details are still a bit sketchy since the trainer will not be released until the fall. But we know that the stated power accuracy is +/- 3%. Also, CycleOps states that the Hammer can handle up to 2,000 watts at 20 mph and simulate grades up to 20%.
With the same MSRP as the Wahoo Kickr ($1199US), the Hammer is competing with both the wildly popular Kickr and the newer high-end kid on the block, the Tacx Neo (which retails for $1599). I’m sure we will see and hear much heated debate between owners of these three trainers this fall when the Hammer is available for purchase and many Zwifters in the northern hemisphere begin to ride indoors more.
CycleOps claims the Hammer is the quietest flywheel-based direct-drive trainer, which appears to be a true claim since the Neo (which is quieter) uses a virtual flywheel (so it doesn’t qualify). See what they did there?
Direct-drive trainers require that you remove your bike wheel and attach your bike directly to the trainer. In theory the direct-drive design provides more accurate power readings, since they aren’t affected by tire pressure, temperature or slippage. They usually are also quieter, and you don’t have to worry about wearing out your tires.
Here’s a comparison chart between the “big three”:
Team dZi may be the most active team on Zwift, organizing events, racing as a team and helping to get the word out about the dZi Foundation they support.
Here is an interview with Hugo Vegter, who (as you will see below) is just one part of this very active team.
Tell me a little about yourself–how long you’ve been riding, what sort of riding you do, when you discovered Zwift, where you live, etc.
I’m a single father of two boys (18 & 14) and still live in Leiden (Netherlands), the city where I followed my university education in the Social Sciences. At this moment I work for the Province of North Holland which is based in Haarlem. Regularly I commute this ride by bike because it’s a perfect 30 km / ~ 55 minute ride. Further I’m a WAHOOLIGAN and proud member of their Beta test team.
I bought my first race bike at the age of 18, mostly for summer holidays with friends and an occasional ride. When I became a father I started riding more frequently and for 8 years now I have been riding more seriously after joining the local club (LRTV Swift) and riding with a social group (De Roode Speer). Swift (almost the same 😉 ) organises a weekly evening criterium that I sometimes join. In the beginning I was happy I could follow the big pack now I try to get in a break. As on Zwift, I can’t depend on a strong sprint. Riding these races still scares me today because of the accidents that happen so often. In this I’m really happy with Zwift, no risk on falling!
My change in cycling came about two years since I first experienced the Wahoo KICKR which I could use from a friend of mine who’s the retailer of Wahoo in the Low lands (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands). I immediately started to train more specific and loved to race on Kinomap or use the TrainerRoad workout modes. In March last year I’ve got my own KICKR and joined Zwift. From day one I was hooked by riding on Jarvis but also soon after by the friends I made within the community on Facebook and in game chat. Meanwhile the Zwift effect happened. Instead of riding 5-6 hours outside I added easily 5 more hours to my program and some of them where more intense than I could do outside on the road.
At the moment Watopia opened, riding on Zwift got a new dimension, the weekly race season opened by the races Christian Wiedmann and James Gill organised on Tuesday and Thursday. As an almost regular to those races, the after race chat on Facebook was almost as important as the race itself. In the chat with Frank Garcia, James Gill, Chris, Kevin Conners, Francois Coppex and some others the idea launched to see if team tactics could have its effects on Zwift. Just by random choice I joined Kevin’s Team dZi, otherwise it would have been Team X.
What was first an experiment soon became serious and a team identity really has grown.
I know “Team” dZi isn’t just you. Who else makes up the team, and what roles do they play?
Cassie, Kevin and Hugo
Team dZi on Zwift is part of the (real-world) cycling teams that ride in the USA and UK with the dZi Foundation logo on their kit.
dZi Foundation is an American-English charity organisation that offers help on demand of vastly remote communities in Nepal.
Our team consists at the moment of 19 riders of whom Cassy, Frederic, Bruno, Jernst and me operate as regular ride leaders for Zwift events.
When we started as a race team we wanted to have visibility of the Team dZi: Riding for Nepal in every race category but also if possible have the power to be dominant in those races. Our most prominent racers in the A category are without a doubt Jernst Tempelaar and Alexis Louge and our big talent Christopher Durham backed by the very strong Peter Klein and Kevin Conners. In the B race we have Matt, Charlie, Frederic, Cassie. In C Mogens and Stewart play a big part.
Besides being prominent as event leaders for Zwift and being visible in the races we also want to be visible as Team dZi: Riding for Nepal on the platform and in the community. We do this by organising our race events but also by trying to protect sportsmanship within the community. At this moment we focus on delivering one quality race event a month with Prizes that are supplied by our sponsors Marmot and Le Col. As support to our events and races we recently launched a website www.teamdzi.org. The team behind the website and also the race results are Bruno (B.R. in Zwift), Frederic (F.J. in Zwift) and Jodie. Kevin (K.C. in Zwift) as founder of the team has strong relations with our sponsors and we play the role of team captain or domestic, what suites best at the moment of need. We try to keep the pack together and aim for the highest visibility of our team.
Kevin, Hugo and Sean
How would you describe your team’s philosophy as a race organizer? What is most important to you when organizing Zwift races?
Inclusion and sportsmanship are most important to us. This means that for our main event: The Nepalese Summit Event, the race must be accessible for all that want to race. Especially with bringing prizes in the game, the discussion about the reality of a performance is always there. By awarding in different categories but also by giving random prizes based on attendance we try stay out of this discussion. Furthermore we try to encourage riders to choose for the race category that maybe is just to hard than to play it safe.
The dZi Weekend Competition is part Zwift event and part dZi race event. The Zwift part is the fast paced group ride for about 45 minutes. After three rounds of a consistent high pace between the 3,5 and 4 w/kg the last lap or a part of it is a race to the finish. You can recognise the events by the event tags: AWR, OSS and WGR.
As it is with our name giver dZi Foundation (they travel days on foot through to mountains to assist remote communities), we believe personal improvement and strength is also achieved by setting your personal bar high. We succeed in our events when riders are pushed to their limits and return to our events because they feel it helps them in getting stronger. And of course we are very happy if the name of dZi Foundation and the work they do is spread and the Zwift community actually visits the dZi.org website and leaves a contribution to the charity.
Except for the races we are also proud on our new event the Breakfast and Tea (B&T). The B&T group rides take place on Tuesday and Friday morning for Europe and afternoon for Eastern Asia and Down Under. These B&T are medium paced with some small intervals called off by event leaders Bruno and Frederic.
What race(s) are you currently organizing on Zwift, and how long have you been doing them? What makes these races different than other Zwift races?
The Nepalese Summit Event started with the release of the Epic Mountain route.
The dZi Weekend Competition started in February and our ride leaders helped Zwift out with their events since autumn/winter 2015.
The Weekend Competition races can be best compared with your local cycle club competition or criterium. Because you start as a group ride and the race part is short, the fun factor is high. We see that we have a very loyal riders group joining these rides. These riders follow each other on Strava and chat during the group rides. After a few races they know perfectly well which riders to follow and to beat and you see most of them develop tactics to beat their closest rivals this time.
The Nepalese Summit event is different because it’s only organised once a month. We want to make it something special for the riders if you compete in the Nepalese Summit Event.
In a short time Team dZi will release with the help of Zwift HQ something special for the riders which join our events. Check our website regular for updates on our events and maybe for a surprise. Next to that “special” we will shortly announce our collaboration with a former world class pro and now a world class cycling coach. His advice and views on specific power training will be introduced in our group events.
What suggestions would you give to someone interested in joining your races for the first time?
Our events are not about ranking but are there to encourage you set to your personal bar high. Our events are social, feel free to ask for assistance during the ride by using the in game chat or directly to the event leader. If you have questions before or after the race you can always ask us by mailing to [email protected] or me or Frederic personally on [email protected] or [email protected].
If the folks at Zwift HQ could add one feature to Zwift to make your job easier, what would it be and why?
We are very lucky with our collaboration with Zwift HQ in the attention we’ve got from them with our events. The first impressions of the Event Module are good but we need more time with it to see if it really works well. As a race leader we would like to have more tools to validate the performance of the individual riders during a race and also to track the individual position of the riders on the circuit (this will also help in broadcasting the race).
A welcome addition for event leaders would be that you can select multiple riders for a message instead of just one or the total group. Even better if it has an audio option to for the event leader.
Many users have reported problems with Watopia routing since the latest update. Specifically, users are selecting particular routes (such as the Mountain 8) but not being routed as planned.
IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING ODD ROUTE ISSUES WITH THE LATEST UPDATE:
Delete your prefs.xml file (located in Documents\Zwift) and then just re-do all of your selections/settings in the game the next time you log in. The legacy route selection (pre route update) is causing issues and nuking the prefs.xml one time will eliminate the issue going forward.
RICHMOND is still an issue, unfortunately. That should be fixed soon.
If you’ve been paying attention to Zwift racing this year you’ve heard of JZRA (Jones Zwift Racing Association) through their unique one-off races like the Zwifta Bianche and the Team Time Trial events. Recently I’ve been seeing the JZRA name pop up even more often as other races have started to feed into the new JZRA ranking system. Because of all this I decided it was past time to reach out to JZRA and learn more about the people behind the name.
What follows is an interview with Tim Jones, who along with his brother Arnold are the brains behind JZRA. (According to Arnold, Tim is “actually more the driving force and brains behind JZRA” while Arnold handles more of the PR side of things–so Arnold deferred to Tim to do the interview.)
Tell me a little about yourself–how long you’ve been riding, what sort of riding you do, when you discovered Zwift, where you live, etc.
I live in Lancashire (England), I’m a student and I’ve just entered my 6th season of racing. Not many compared to some, but at only the ripe old age of 18 it means I feel like I’ve been doing it a while. I mainly ride and race on the road but I do enjoy cyclocross in the winter. This season I’ve been racing mainly at junior national series rounds along with a trip abroad to Belgium to race the Junior UCI Kuurne – Brussels – Kuurne, and a couple more planned for later in the season, which means quite alot of travelling. So I’m quite serious I would say. For those who are interested I am a cat 2 currently.
I first found out about Zwift seeing Laurens Ten Dam on Strava riding around Jarvis. I was confused at first by what he was doing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but when autumn came around I couldn’t wait to get on the island. I think it was October 2015 I started zwifting.
I know JZRA doesn’t just organize races–but that is part of what you do. How would you describe your philosophy as a race organizer? What is most important to you when organizing Zwift races?
Organising races is probably the main thing we do at JZRA, as an organiser our philosophy is to put them on for great training. Since we also think competition is the best way of training we introduced the rankings, more competition between riders, better training for them, better results in real life. What’s important to us is trying to make our races stand out from the others and making them different from your regular KISS and ZTR type events.
What race(s) are you currently organizing on Zwift, and how long have you been doing them? What makes these races different than other Zwift races?
Well we don’t have a usual slot for our races. We tend to jump around with different one offs. We did our first event (Zwifta Bianche) back in January. We try an make each one different. For example the Zwifta Bianche races are 65km long with a hilltop finish so a bit longer than normal. Other events of ours include the Team Time Trial which really has gone down very well both times with Zwift HQ even sending a team to the second one, and of course the Elimination race! (Which is publicly debuting today, May 11th.)
What suggestions would you give to someone interested in joining your races for the first time?
Our best advice really is to pick a format you’ll think you’ll enjoy. Not everyone wants to do 65km in a race, not all want to go hell for leather for just 30 minutes like the Richmond Criterium series we held. Other than “just enjoy it!” my real advice is read the instructions fully… twice! Make sure you get your head around what’s happening, nothing worse than being at a race and not having a clue what on Earth is going on!
Apart from organizing races, what else does JZRA do? I know you post some written race reports on your site, and you’ve also got the rankings which seem to be catching on quite nicely.
The rankings is pretty much it other than the races and the short little updates on the homepage from the racing that counts towards them, we try and do those weekly along with the rankings. Initially just our races counted but then the dZi Summit Races and now KISS and ZTR are getting involved with too, it has seemed to have taken off pretty well, some riders are really throwing themselves in head first. Helps to raise the profile of our events too which is a bonus! (Note from Eric: we’ll have a separate follow-up article discussing the JZRA ranking system soon!)
If the folks at Zwift HQ could add one feature to Zwift to make your job easier, what would it be and why?
I think I’d have to ask for a filter on the names list on the right, just get those people in the race listed, it works pretty well as is at the moment.
But incorporating some stuff like the logger couldn’t hurt either. (Note from Eric: Tim is referring to the “zLogger” created by Jonathan Lemon which logs race results very accurately in Zwift. It is being used by many of the race organizers.)
JZRA has just announced a new Zwift race with an innovative format. I’m a sucker for races with weird formats!
Here’s how it works:
The format was tested at the Track League. Riders will depart from the start/finish slowly allowing a group-up. Race is neutral until the first sprint banner at 2.5 W/kg – 3 W/kg. Every time the race passes through a banner (sprint, finish or KOM) the last placed rider will be eliminated. J. ELIMINATOR JZRA will give the call as to who is eliminated each time. He will say: “ELIMINATED: A. Jones” if, for example, A Jones is eliminated. Watch out for the shout. It is a true test of endurance, sprinting, bunch positioning and concentration. The last one riding will be the winner.
Should there be a large number of riders we may decide to eliminate the last 2 riders, to prevent the race from being of ridiculous length.
