Rolling Collective (RollCo) has launched Rolling Tide, a new year-long Zwift race series built around a simple but demanding idea: start small, build big.
Rolling Tide begins with a short, sharp opener and increases in distance by 1 kilometer every week, culminating in a full-distance endurance race at the end of the year. More than just another race on the calendar, Rolling Tide is about commitment, momentum, and shared growth, a collective journey where improvement is earned through consistency.
What Makes Rolling Tide Special
A Race that Evolves
Most events test riders on a single night. Rolling Tide tests them over time. Early weeks reward explosiveness and sharp efforts, while later races demand patience, pacing, and resilience. The format naturally evolves, mirroring the way real fitness is built.
A Reason to Come Back
Rolling Tide is supported by an ongoing ZwiftPower leaderboard, encouraging riders to measure progress, track rivals, and build season-long narratives. It’s not just about today’s result, it’s about where you finish after riding the entire tide.
Fair, Competitive, and Inclusive
Each race is run as a categorised scratch event, ensuring competitive racing at every level while keeping the shared experience intact. Whether riders are chasing podiums, rivalries, or personal milestones, everyone starts the journey together.
A Shared Story
Rolling Tide is designed to create familiarity. The same names. The same time slot. The same rising challenge. Riders will remember where they started and who they rode alongside when they reach the final weeks of the season.
Race Schedule and Details
Events occur weekly in 5 timeslots:
- Wednesdays at
- 6:50pm UTC/1:50pm ET/10:50am PT
- 11:50pm UTC/6:50pm ET/3:50pm PT
- Saturdays at
- 11:05am UTC/6:05am ET/3:05am PT
- 5:05pm UTC/12:05pm ET/9:05am PT
- 11:05pm UTC/6:05pm ET/3:05pm PT
The first race kicks off Wednesday in France: a 1km sprint on Macaron. There’s no lead-in, just a hard, straight start through to a harder finish. Can you be quick off the line without the benefit of building up momentum first? Is your pre-race warmup to scratch?
See upcoming Rolling Tide events at zwift.com/events/tag/rollingtide
About Rolling Collective
Rolling Collective (RollCo) is a community-driven cycling club built around shared momentum and riding Forward, Together. Through races, rides, and creative events, RollCo aims to build long-term engagement, meaningful competition, and a culture that celebrates showing up.
A one of a kind racing series that i think ZWIFT has been missing in their lineup!
Thanks! We’re super excited to offer something different and have some more exciting things in the works for in the coming months!
Woop, looking forward to this!
I’m ready for you to humble me until about week 40…
Is there a full list of the routes for the year anywhere?
We’ve posted the initial first 6 weeks on our discord where we have a dedicated Rolling Tide channel. There is a list with a framework of all the routes for the full 52 weeks, but we’ll be constantly reviewing based on any new routes added and also how the leaderboards are shaping up, we want to make sure it’s fair and tight competition that doesn’t favour certain ride styles more than another so we’ll make adjustments as we go!
Cannot wait for this series! One of a kind Zwift event!
So everyone starts at the same time, but is it truly like a mass start where an E rider like myself can see riders in higher categories and try to draft off them, or will I be limited to only seeing other riders that start in the E pen? Either way sounds fun, but I might have to think about strategies if I can either hang on to faster riders or consider leading people out?
Everyone starts in the same pen, everyone is visible. So yes you can definitely grab onto higher groups and that is what a lot of plays are going to be built around especially at the later stages!
That first race was wild, hard, and a great challenge! I have more questions: it looked like the draft indicator was off, is drafting turned off for the series (TT style), or did it just not show up for me? I loved having competition from all levels visible, but I’d love to see what division everyone around me is in? That way I can know if I’m gonna blow up after trying to stick with a bunch of A tier racers once the routes get a bit longer, or see if anyone in my division is leaving me in the dust up the road.
Glad you enjoyed the first race!
So there’s no draft for the first few weeks, just with them being so short we didn’t want it to be a case of who can sit in and then drop a 300m sprint. These early weeks are to help build that engine for the later races. Once we hit week 4/5 draft will be turned on and powerups will start to come in to effect!
You should be able to see what category everyone is in on the mini map by the colour of the dot, each classification has their own colour.
We don’t have the ability to turn on any other kind of indicator without forcing jerseys and we don’t want to do that!
The aim is to try and get people to push themselves and improve overall, so if you can stick with a higher group, do it!
Keep an eye on the GC boards and see how you stack up as the weeks go on!
I did the first race (poorly), and it does show up in Strava, but it doesn’t show in my ZwiftPower profile. Is this happening with anyone else?
Yes with it being such a short race some people are experiencing issues with it showing on ZPower profiles but it appears from first glance all results did make it onto the leaderboard.
Apparently I’m told people sometimes experience this with the Velos click 1km TT events.
It shouldn’t be an issue from next week with the course being long enough to formally register as an event on zwift activities
I missed the first stage, because I accidentally thought that there is an option to ride it on Sunday. Is there a chance to do it individually to get into the leaderboard? I was really looking forward to this event and missing the first one is really disappointing.
Thanks!
So on the ZwiftPower leaderboard, it says “Your best 52 results count. Best result every race will score points” and lists 20 points for a win, 19 for 2nd and so on, so if you miss a week, you’ll of course miss out on those points, but it looks like you can still be included in the overall leaderboard. I’m banking on this as there’s no way I’m gonna be able to race all 52 weeks with a 2 year old and a 6 month old at home.
So the descriptions there are stock based on some selections on the settings which are a bit confusing but think of it this way
– each “race” is an event and each “result” is a week, so you can enter 3 races in the 3km week but your best one will go on the GC board. As for the points, don’t worry too much about the numbers there, it’s not fixed at 20 etc it’s much more complex in the back end, I just couldn’t get it to remove that box! The guys over at Zwift actually helped us set these GC boards up for this event with it being so long running just to make sure it works as intended.
You can indeed enter as many or as few weeks as you want, you won’t get points for those weeks but it’s doubtful everyone can make every week, I know I’ll struggle too!