First, a confession.
While I published a post about the the Zwift Club Ladder back in May of 2023, I never jumped into a Club Ladder race until recently.
Why? Because it wasn’t as easy as simply clicking to join a Zwift event. I had to find a team and wrap my head around all that Club Ladder racing involved strategically and logistically. So I kept putting it off, until several weeks ago when I finally took the plunge.
And I’m so glad I did.
What Is the Zwift Club Ladder?
The Club Ladder is a community-powered league using a team-vs-team race format. Two teams of five riders show up at an agreed-upon place at an agreed-upon time and go head-to-head! You earn points based on your finish position: 1st place gets 10 points, 2nd place gets 9 points, and 10th place gets 1 point.
The team with the most points wins the race. Your goal is to move up the ladder of teams by winning, and there are three timezone-based ladders.
How big and active is the league? The current round has 181 active teams, with most teams (I assume) racing at least once a week.
Curious how it works? Check out the Club Ladder Race Book >
Organizing the Race
The Club Ladder website includes a captain’s area where team captains log in and challenge other teams to races. I don’t know how all the scheduling logistics and rules work, but I know my own team’s flow goes something like this:
- Captain Diogo will ping us on Discord about a week before the potential race with a question: who is available to race on X date at X time? (We basically only race Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, right around 11:30 my time.)
- If we have enough to make a team, Diogo confirms with the other team that we’re in. Then a course is chosen. (I’m not sure how that choice is made, but I know Diogo often asks us to vote on which course we’d like.) For this race, we chose 7 laps of Scotland’s Glasgow Crit Circuit.
- Once the date/time and course are locked in, a private event is created and both teams get the private signup link.
This particular race was against SRT Surströmming, and once the riders had signed up, the Club Ladder website generated power charts for the teams to use in their planning:
Based on the other team’s power numbers, Captain Diogo put together our team plan. I won’t copy-paste that here, but basically our goal was to keep the pace high and attack each kicker, with the goal of dropping SRT riders. As Diogo says, “The sooner we leave any opposition rider behind the easier it gets.”
The Start
This was my sixth Club Ladder race, and I think every race has started out the same: hard! Zwift races always start out with a solid effort, but Club Ladder races are different. Someone always sprints off the line, which forces the other team to chase since a single rider can get away and stay away when there are only 5 riders (the opposition) willing to chase.
We call sprinting off the line “doing a Chilly” as our teammate Chilly is known for this move. But my guess is, every Club Ladder team has a Chilly. Sprinting off the line seems to be table stakes for Club Ladder racing, and occasionally, someone gets dropped by this hard push. That’s a tough way to start a race!
Today, I was the Chilly. So I pushed pretty hard, leading the pack out of the pens. But it was clear before we even reached the Champion’s Sprint arch that I wasn’t going to drop anyone in this opening stretch. So I sat up and caught my breath to prepare for the first Clyde Kicker.
The Clyde Kicker is the key feature of this circuit. It’s only a 15-20 second climb, but it’s the most common place for attacks to launch, legs to get softened, and riders to get dropped. I used my feather powerup on the first Clyde Kicker, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself finishing the climb in 5th, with no major attacks going away.
As we hit the little kicker after the chicane near the end of the first lap, teammate Josiah (our strongest rider) put in a big attack and went off the front. Once that happened, it was our job to sit in the wheels, forcing the other team to do the work to reel Josiah in. Classic racing tactics.
As SRT riders pushed to bridge up to Josiah, I pushed to hold their wheels, ensuring that we’d still have the numbers if they were able to bridge up.
The Middle… and Steering
Teammate Benjamin got dropped as we finished our first lap, but one of their riders was dropped with him, taking the sting out of it. Hopefully Benjamin could outsprint him in the end. That left 4 riders from each team in the mix!
Josiah was caught on the next Clyde Kicker, then Diogo attacked on the descent, steering to the far right.
Can we talk about steering for a minute, in the context of Club Ladder races?
Nowhere in Zwift is steering more useful than these races. With so few riders on course, you can’t count on a massive peloton’s draft. Steering ability lets you make attacks that are harder to follow and optimize your line in turns. Simply put, if you don’t have steering in these races, you’re at a disadvantage. And the more riders who do have steering, the bigger a disadvantage it is to not have it!
This was clear when Diogo attacked. Their one rider with steering followed Diogo’s line, while their other three riders were out of Diogo’s draft, having to work together to keep pace. Nobody got dropped, but it’s these efforts that pile up and lead to riders getting dropped down the road.
Next came Josiah’s kicker, where he kicked again. Their team chased, and we covered the chase. Over the Clyde Kicker Josiah kept a 4-5 second gap, and SRT’s hard chase dropped one of their own teammates! Now we had a decision to make – do we push hard to keep that rider dropped, while potentially catching Josiah up the road? Or do we keep surfing the wheels in hopes that Josiah can stay away?
We pushed the effort, with teammate Fred pushing hard on the front of our group and Captain Diogo reinforcing on Discord “They have two off the back, we need to keep pushing.”
We kept the speed up, and at the end of the third lap Josiah was still a few seconds up the road, and we had a 3v2 rider advantage in the chase group. Now we eased, trying to strike a balance between staying away from the two chasing SRT riders without closing the gap to our teammate who was off the front.
SRT’s strongest rider on the day (aptly named “D. Speed”) closed the gap to Josiah over the next Clyde Kicker, and I just sat on his wheel to ensure he didn’t get away in case Josiah was tired and dropped off the front.
Then we hit Josiah’s kicker again. And Josiah attacked. Again! What a beast.
This time SRT didn’t chase. Josiah had worn them down! Now the three of us in the main pack just had to sit on the two SRT riders’ wheels, forcing them to do the work to try to keep Josiah within sight.
Only one rider in the front pack lacked steering at this point. We kept steering towards the center, leaving the non-steering rider in the wind. I felt for poor “B. Shannon”!
The Finish
Josiah had 20 seconds heading into the last lap, so we were pretty confident that he wasn’t getting caught. Now it was time for some team tactics to take advantage of our 3v2 situation.
But before we could make our move, SRT’s Shannon fell off the back at the bottom of the Clyde Kicker, and his only surviving teammate, D. Speed, attacked hard as soon as it happened. (Probably the right move, since a 3v1 is tough to win!)
D. Speed didn’t have enough to get away, though, even when he attacked with an aero powerup on the descent and steered to optimize his line. Teammate Fred chased him down, while I chased Fred. Captain Diogo fell off the back, but with no one nearby, had an easy run in for 5th place.
The final 500 meters were cagey indeed. Fred and I knew D. Speed had already used his aero powerup. D. Speed swerved off the front and onto our wheels, then swerved right as we turned onto the finishing straight and began sprinting.
I activated my aero boost and stayed in my lane, not wanting to give any draft to D. Speed. Fred had swerved over to D. Speed’s side and activated his aero boost as well! I swerved to Fred’s side, making our two avatars meld together as D. Speed dropped back to 6…7… 8 meters behind.
Fred and I crossed the line at virtually the same time, with the game giving me 2nd place overall.
See activity on Strava >
See results on ZwiftPower >
Watch the Race Video
Results and Takeaways
Rider | Points |
Josiah (Spellbound) | 10 |
Eric (Spellbound) | 9 |
Fred (Spellbound) | 8 |
D. Speed (SRT) | 7 |
Diogo (Spellbound) | 6 |
B. Shannon (SRT) | 5 |
S. Pallister (SRT) | 4 |
Hulett (SRT) | 3 |
L. Firms (SRT) | 2 |
Benjamin (Spellbound) | 1 |
In the end, we won 34 to 21. Our best win yet!
~615 watts for ~17 seconds… that’s what it took to hang on up the Clyde Kicker each of this race’s 7 laps. Typically the effort is so high on the last lap that I have nothing left for the final sprint. But this race was different! Since SRT was forced to chase, I could sit in the wheels and recover. My legs were fresher than they’d ever been for the final sprint, and it showed in my power numbers.
Every Club Ladder race I’ve done has felt very different from the others, but they’ve all been much more strategic and interesting than a typical Zwift scratch race. This race was, though, was the most strategic-feeling one yet. Josiah’s attacks made it interesting and laid a solid foundation for the rest of my team’s strong performance.
As a result of our win, we moved up the Club Ladder rankings. I also got a ZwiftPower ranking boost. Hurray!
Questions or Comments?
Have you tried Club Ladder racing yet? What are your thoughts? Share below!