This Saturday we’re spinning up the first in a set of weekly races dubbed the “Tiny Race Series”. Each week will feature four short events raced back-to-back in under an hour. It’s a great way to earn ZwiftPower ranking points, get a solid VO2 workout, and just have fun going all-out in a different sort of Zwift race!
The idea is to race all four events, earning points in each event based on your finishing position. The overall winners (available on ZwiftPower) are the riders with the most points across all four races.
With three timezones and four categories, we’ll be crowning twelve winners each week.
Just One Powerup
Each tiny race will feature just one powerup, given each time riders go through an arch. That way, everyone knows what everyone has, and there’s no “luck of the draw”! (See powerup details under “Route Details” below).
Schedule
Each race is on a different route, all around 5km long, so they’ll each take 6-10 minutes to complete. Races are scheduled 15 minutes apart, so you can sign up and race all four in under an hour.
There are three timezones/leagues set up so Zwifters can find a time slot that suits them well.
These may shift in coming weeks, but for the kickoff races this Saturday, here are the start times for each timezone:
- Saturday, July 30 starting at 8am UTC (6pm AEST/4am EDT/1am PDT)
- Saturday, July 30 starting at 2pm UTC (midnight AEST/10am EDT/7am PDT)
- Saturday, July 30 starting at 8pm UTC (6am Sunday AEST/4pm EDT/1pm PDT)
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/tinyraces
Categories
- Category Enforcement is being applied to enforce a minimum category for each rider
- Each category starts 1 minute apart, with faster categories going first
- All riders will be visible on course
Route Details
Each week will feature a different mix of routes and powerups. Here are the route details for our first week:
- Race 1: Neokyo Crit Course
- 1 lap, 4.7km total
- Powerup: Draft Boost
- Race 2: Bell Lap
- 2 laps, 4km total
- Powerup: Ghost
- Race 3: LaGuardia Loop Reverse
- 1 lap, 5.3km total
- Powerup: Aero Boost
- Race 4: Volcano Circuit
- 1 lap, 6.9km total
- Powerup: Feather
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/tinyraces
ZwiftPower Results + League
As usual, Zwift will display preliminary results when you cross the line, but final race results will be on ZwiftPower.
Riders will earn points based on finish position in each of the 4 Tiny Races. The category winner of each week’s series is the rider with the most points across their timezone’s 4 races. Here are the links for each timezone’s results on ZwiftPower:
Note: HR monitors are required if you want to show up in the final results.
Zwift Insider Kit Unlock
Complete any of the race events and unlock the Zwift Insider “Ride smarter, ride harder” kit!
Questions or Comments?
Post below!
Thinking about 4 short hard races, my legs are already crying 🙅♂️🥵 … but I ignore them during signing in 🙈🤣
Is there a way to disable auto join? Don’t want to get pulled to another race accidentally.
I had the same question – so I tested it. In my tests, the event prompt didn’t even pop up until AFTER the events finished. Not sure if this is something Zwift changed recently, or an anomaly on my side… but it worked nicely.
Guess we’ll find out after this week! Autojoin only kicks in with around 3-4 minutes to go anyway, so it shouldn’t be an issue for most riders with this week’s fast courses.
Eric, in a similar 4x 15min short race format earlier this week, we had issues with auto-join causing some riders to be teleported to the next race before finishing the race they were on (because they didn’t click to cancel auto-join).
Zwift HQ has now configured a 1min auto-join delay for our short races next week, you might want to request the same. Unfortunately, there’s no way to disable auto-join altogether.
I look forward to doing this tiny race series on Sat. Thanks for organizing!
Good info, Steve. I may just do that.
It’s weird that auto join behaved how it did in the events I tested.
We had some riders go beyond 10mins for the race, and then the auto-join kicked in at 5min (default I think) before the next race. I think they were too focused on punching the climb, that they missed the cancel popup.
Update on this: I got James @ ZHQ to modify the events to delay the auto-join further, so it will happen just 1 minute before the next race. I realized today that I hadn’t tested the auto-join functionality correctly… because I hadn’t waited until that 4 minutes to go mark. What I noticed is that, if you’re more than 4 minute out, the next event’s info doesn’t even pop up at the bottom-left. But once you hit that auto-join window, it pops up and counts down. Which isn’t ideal for this sort of race, so now that should only happen… Read more »
What is the point system?
Haven’t entered it on ZwiftPower yet, since the new events aren’t in the system yet. 🙂
But it’s just finishing points. I’ll probably do points like this: (50, 45, 40, 38, 36, 34, 32, 30, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20, 18, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
Okay, I’m all signed up and I’m going to be chasing the points title! What kind of title do I get if I come in dead last in every stage?
You would have to cleverly manage that so that you don’t miss the start of the next event. It could be a funny challenge actually.
How about “Biggest Loser”?
So you’re actively trying to kill us now
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
if surviving is possible has to be verified at Saturday 🤷🏻♂️ … I think I will better quit Time Zone 1 to check this out first 🤣
Hahaha … that’s Eric’s smart strategy for his future posts “How the race was won” … 😉
Charlie, Richard Vale, the DIRT Admins, and now Eric, on a not so clandestine mission to bean most racers of Zwift.
Nice kit!
Nice one!
I have an idea where we would loose sight of Eric ^^ Unfortunately, I won’t make it in the first two weeks.
This sounds interesting, for short races in an hour. My doubts as a Low D rider (1.7 w/kg) is if I will have enogh time to finish the first three before the next one started. Because even there is 15 min between races, I know forn the Giant Gravel last June, that the op up for the next race appears on screen from 3:30 to 3 min before the start, so taht leaves less than 12 min to complet each of the 3 courses. But I’ll trya anyway.
Won’t even let me sign up for cat D, and my FTP is about 1.8 w/kg !
Are the points for each week stand alone, or do the points accumulate over the following weeks?
Each week stands alone.
Sounds fun!! Getting ready for Zwift season.
Hi Eric
I did all four Tiny Races today, 30/7-2022 but it didn’t unlock the Zwift Insider Kit so what to do?
By the way, great races, hard but great.
Br
Henrik Abild (DZR DK)
Hi Eric
Is there by any chance an explanation to this?
Br
Henrik
See my comment below…
So how many weeks does this race series last?
I’m not sure! Each week is a standalone thing. I may just make it an ongoing event, who knows? Or perhaps intersperse it with the ZI Rebel Race series.
I’ll definitely be doing it (with a different mix of routes each week) for a few more weeks.
I raced it this week and used each race as a “qualifier” for the next race, the quicker I finish (if I can finish) the more rest I get.
A bit of feedback for you, make sure all routes are on the same world to save on loading times, also as I’m close to time limits can I enter different categories of race by trying plan my best way of beating the cutoff?
Just finished and I had a blast – thanks for organising it and a great idea btw. 👍👌
Hi Eric, great idea! Gave me the motivation to get up earlier than usual and start the day well 👍
One tiny note, I think that in timezone 1 the third race dropped out of the results. Saw only people with 3 events in the standings, and I’m pretty sure most guys raced 4 events 😉
But great racing with a nice big field (around a 100 racers each stage in C categorie). Will certainly try to race again next week!
Yeah, there’s some issue with ZwiftPower where it isn’t picking up all 4 races. Same issue in both timezones that have raced so far. Trying to see if there’s a way to get it fixed…
Got it fixed and figured out a workaround so ZwiftPower calculates the points properly.
Thanks!
Is it best 3 out of 4? Only seeing 3 races on Zwift power for Z1 so far. Thanks
Just saw one of your replies on this. Yeah, hope it gets fixed.
Brilliant Eric….. loved the format…. let’s have more
Will do! Stay tuned for next week’s routes!
That was fun! (Thanks, Eric.) What is the plan for next week? And how many weeks (so that I can see if I need to extend my life insurance policy)?
Next week will be a similar setup, but 4 different routes. Including some custom length ones nobody has ever done! Watch for a ZI post about it…
That was tough work. Especially between 2 & 3, it was a rough recovery.
Suggestion: I would have something that rounded it out a bit for the lighter riders, as for the big hitters, it was rinse & repeat – maybe Hilly Route or something, Start Downtown pens to the bottom of that little KOM next to Downtown. An alternative might be one of the NYC routes that goes straight into a climb. Or maybe that is a hillclimb series 😉
https://veloviewer.com/segment/12109030
Don’t worry, hillier routes will arrive next week!
“Hillier routes” – oh no. Actually, for something completely different, I’d love a race from the top of AdZ on MTBs!?
Cool!
Eric, we have had some good experience with short punchy routes in recent Snap Crackle Pop events, also with 4x 15min format. Would love to chat more with you about this (see my email).
BTW, I had a blast doing the tiny races yesterday! Thanks for organizing, and I will be back again next week!!
What would be great is if they’d let you incorporate some Rebel Routes — I really like the Hilly KOM Bypass one. Great for a snappy crit race.
I would love to, but I can only use routes that are in game.
It was an interesting project. I have completed 4 races, but the kit is not unlocked. Do you need any application?
See my comment below.
Thank you Eric.I am looking forward to receiving the kit.
Really enjoyed the races. Came first in Zone 1 with a couple of wins, a 3rd and a 5th. Cheers Eric
Nice work, Scott!
FYI, all: Zwift has informed me that the event was misconfigured, so the ZI kit unlock didn’t happen. They’re going to go in and manually assign the kit to all finishers. I’ll post another comment here once that’s done!
It was amazing ! We want that at least 4 times a year 🙂
I love this concept. Could we please have some of these races during the week?
Many thanks.
I tried to sign up but it only allowed the option of Category A which I definitely am not. I am a D. Any reason you are aware of?
How do you sign up? I’m normally a cat C but when I try to sign up all categories are frozen except E. what do I do to take part?
If you’re an E that’s Zwift saying you don’t have enough of a power history saved for them to classify you. Do some races and other rides before these and it should change to let you sign up as a C…