If you’ve signed into Zwift in recent days, you’ve probably noticed the prominent Party Crashers banner:
What is this event, and how should you approach it? Dive in and find out…
Party Crashers Basics
While Party Crashers events are essentially chase races, they are technically classified as group rides on Zwift’s calendar.
When you sign up, you choose which group you want to be in:
- Category D: You’re here for the party. Keep it casual and social in whatever costume Zwift has placed you in for the week. But also, try to stay away from the Party Crashers!
- Category E: Party Crashers. You’ll start 5 minutes behind category D, and your goal is to catch them before the ride ends.
Party Crashers Strategy
Many of the D “partier” groups are led by community riders who hold to a stated pace and keep the party going. If you’re joining for the party, stay with the beacon and help pull on the front if you’re able. This shared workload will help your group stay away from the crashers as long as possible.
Party Crashers: you’ll want to stick together as well, working together by rotating pulls on the front to keep your speed high so you can reel in the partiers.
When/if the two groups merge near the end of the ride, all bets are off. Partiers who are feeling strong can up their power and try to hang with the Party Crashers. And some Party Crashers may choose to sit up and hang with the partiers! It’s not a race, so you can do whatever you’d like. Just have fun.
Schedule
This is a 4-stage series running through October 4. Events are scheduled every 2 hours throughout the day.
- Stage 1 – Battle of the Space Invaders – September 14-18
- Route: Neokyo All-Nighter
- 24.3 km, 168 m
- Stage 2 – Cowboys vs Aliens – September 19-23
- Route: The Magnificent 8
- 28.9 km, 156 m
- Stage 3 – Dino Chase – September 24-28
- Route: Canopies and Coastlines
- 22.6 km, 124 m
- Stage 4 – Man vs Machine – September 29-October 4
- Route: Island Hopper
- 31.1 km, 257 m
Sign Up
See upcoming Party Crashers events at zwift.com/events/tag/partycrashers >
Bonus XP and Silly Costumes
Whenever you ride through an arch, you’ve got a 1/3 chance of landing the big XP bonus (250 XP). That can add up to a lot of XP during the ride, as Gerben shows in his recent video:
Each week’s rides place riders in a costume based on the theme. This week, for example, is Cowboys vs. Aliens. You can see the costumes in Gerben’s video above… space suits for the partiers, and a space kit (and maybe a cowboy hat?) for the crashers.
Improvements
I love that Zwift is trying a different sort of event. Keeping them as group rides and recruiting community leaders keeps it fun, too.
But could these events be better? Zwift Insider reader “Bob” had this suggestion:
…if Zwift would just add an on-screen tally showing the number of riders in the opposite group that you have passed/held off, it would really take those events to the next level. It’s a neat idea but hard to get too excited when you have almost no information about the opposing group.
I agree with Bob. On top of that, I would love to see a time gap displayed, so you know how close you are to the other group. This suggestion would really enhance chase races as well, which is why I mentioned it years ago in Zwift Chase Race Basics, Strategies, and More.
Come on, Zwift. Let’s take chase races/rides to the next level!
Your Thoughts
Have you ridden a Party Crashers event yet? Were you partying, or crashing? How was the experience? Share below!
If Zwift could somehow rubber band the partiers then it would be more inclusive. The watt monsters get to pull, the lesser mortals such as myself contribute but also get to pardy-on 😜
that would actually be pretty simple i think. Although with no category enforcement you might never get catches as you also get watt monsters in the D pen that barely get time pulled back on them
Actually, think it should be the other way around. Did one of these last week and it was boring as hell. Was in the chase group, but about 1/3 of the group took off at like 3+ w/kg and I couldn’t keep up. Ended up in no man’s land with like 15s to 2 or 3 people in front, 35s to another small group in front and like 30s on 4 people behind me. The entire chase group was spread out with zero team work, so people just cruised along.
The partiers should have distinct groups, with leaders going at a distinct speed, doing everything they can to keep their group together and up to speed. With the crashers in a banded group, the watt monsters can’t run off from the main group and they help pull the rest of us along. It would be great if Zwift could show the avg power for the entire group, help the chase leads motivate people to lift the rest of the group.
Broski if you’re not keeping up in the draft of someone doing mid 3wkg you’re not really helping the chase group and would only slow them down if banded.
My experience was the same as yours David, it got boring for me real fast being in the chase/party crashers group, the main chase peleton was flying from the get go in the start pen, I think some of the not as strong riders in that group used the 2X acceleration powerup immediately to hang on. I ended up being by myself for most of the way, or being in a small group of < 5 riders. Absolutely no team work whatsoever…
If I wanted to do a ITT event, I would have signed up for that.
A great suggestion about having a banded group’s aggregate power displayed, but like with any other meaningful feature idea floated by the userbase, expect the ZHQ wall of silence to continue ad infinitum.
There has been confusion about the D designation – riders joining thinking it is D cat finding out that the yellow leader is riding well above that. Zwift could make that clearer, I think. Otherwise, it has been fun and having a yellow leader has helped make it work so I am grateful for those stepping up to lead.
To add some spice to the chase, they really should do Cat’s A – D as separate groups each with the same outfit but a different color. That way people can join the group with the correct pace and know what speed the leader is going to and the chasers can get a thrill by seeing which group their catching. I’ve seen some other chase races do this, definitely adds a bit of excitement.
Every month “escape collective” do a catch up lap in new york. The peloton are at 2.5 w/kg , the chasers have got 20 mins to catch. It’s brilliant, way better than the party crashers attempt.
Defo should be a Pac-Man themed one where the chasers are Pac-Man and the runners are ghosts
Shouldn’t that be the other way round?
It doesn’t really work well with everyone’s varied power. I did expect the “casual” party pace to be at the higher end of my D pace ability, but the party leader was more intent on racing and winning, and taking the top 25% of the group for a fast race, leaving the rest of of to ride alone!
Party pace should be 2.5w/kg Max until the chase catch
It needs to be more specific about what the pace will be, and in the ride description, not just mentioned in the pen. Or split into 2 rides a B pace chasing C pace party and a C pace chasing a D pace party
Hey @Eric Schlange have a hell of an idea to pass along to Zwift.
Chase races like this need a better way to coordinate / communicate within a group. Given that Zwift has people from all over the world participating, have to wonder how much language is a barrier to that.
What if Zwift could run Google Translate in the background and use it like a universal translator. Pretty much everyone sets their home country, so Zwift should know the language of the person entering the chat and the person reading it. Or let people set their “read chat” language and that’s what Zwift outputs.
The translations don’t have to be perfect to get your point across. Could make it easier for people to coordinate and engage with their fellow Zwifters.
I’ve floated this idea before! Not sure why it isn’t already in place, seems like auto-translation would be really cool.
Its not that uncommon with many different languages in the same country, so it doesn’t work. Adding a “translate to language” setting should not be hard though, but perhaps costly for the service needed.
On the other hand, the descriptions of the groups are not that great, thats probably the problem more than language. The group leaders are the ones that should keep the groups together and from at least two of the reports here they didn’t try to do that at all.
A great idea about time gaps, and I wonder if that could then be introduced into other races too – if would be great to know your peloton is X mins behind the breakaway, without having to go off the front and have a look at the gaps
“time gap”
Anyone else notice that Zwift has created their own “5-day week” for this “4 week series” that completes in 20 days?
If we’re being picky, it could run for 16 days and still be a 4 week series 😉
A “gift” is also missing for the motivation, something like : 1000 drops each time you ovetake an “Alien” and needs to find someting for the opposite ? 1000drops every 5minutes you are not overtaken by a “CowBoy” ?
Did I misunderstand writing this that you do not end up with the costume you’re riding in during the event?
I did feel often and didn’t feel like finishing tonight but I liked the costume/clothing and was hoping I could ride this in the coming weeks rides but it doesn’t show up in my list of shirts etc.
Disappointing
Yeah, Zwift has never allowed riders to “own” the crazy costumes. They’re only available as assigned during certain events.
Thank you for your reply, that’s extremely disappointing as I don’t like normal road kit but extremely liked the brown Brompton kit last night.
I hope we have Brompton racing again this year to get some kit that’s not normal road style clothing as I never wear that sort of clothing in life and I don’t want to have that on my avatar riding game.
I think it needs a few things. 1. Need to know the position of the other group. It’s useless otherwise. 2. The rubber band effect would be good for the chasers. 5 minutes is hard to make up if there are some hitters in the first group. The other way of doing it – there is a aero penalty for the front group. Most of the outfits weren’t aero so would make sense. 3. Let us keep the costumes if we did the events. It’s the best part.