Tiny Race Series – October 22 Route Details, and Last Week’s Results

Last week’s Tiny Races were a pile of painful fun as huge numbers of riders turned out for our “Downtown”-themed races. Each race began in Downtown Watopia, but went in a different direction. And each race had more climbing than the one before, piling on the hurt.

Here’s a report of what happened last week, and what we have planned for this week.

Anti-Sniping: How Did It Go?

As you may recall, we implemented a “no sniping” rule for the first time in last week’s races. Specifically, if you don’t finish all four Tiny Races in the timezone you race, you’ll be disqualified from ZwiftPower results for whatever races you did finish.

So how did the new rule work out? Pretty well. Or pretty badly, depending on how you look at it. Rather than dig into the details in this post, I wrote up a separate article sharing stats and explaining the various struggles I’m having making Tiny Races behave the way I’d like.

Read the full brain dump here >

As of today, the Anti-Sniping rule is still planned for upcoming races. As always, read the event description or the current week’s Tiny Race update post for details.

Last Week’s Results

I raced the zone 2 B’s last week, and the field was huge – around 160-170 riders in each race. Congrats to all the winners!

Overall Winners

Women’s Winners

This Week’s Routes: Early Climbs

Two new routes this week, and two routes we’ve used before. The theme this week is early climbs. The idea is, what if each race featured a climb early on, with the change for riders to chase back on afterward? Can the strong climbers stay away, or can the chasers bring it back? We’ll find out.

Here are photos so you can see the precise location of the custom finish lines for race 1:

• Race 1: Hilly Route (3.2 km, ends atop post-KOM kicker)
  • Starting off with a bang, we’ll hammer up Watopia’s well-known Hilly KOM, grab our anvil powerups, then begin a descent. The road turns a sharp right onto a short uphill kicker, and the finish line is at the top.
  • Powerup: Draft Boost
• Race 2: Bell Lap (3 laps, 5.7km)
  • Most racers know Crit City well, but have you ever raced just 3 laps? Hopefully somebody will go long on the final twisty climb and really make it interesting.
  • Powerup: Aero Boost (3x)
• Race 3: 2019 UCI Worlds Harrogate Circuit (6.2km)
  • This new route in Yorkshire ends on the straight false flat following the super-steep Pot Bank descent (see photos above for location). Do you use your anvil on an early downhill to chase back on, or save it for Pot Bank so you can hit crazy fast speeds?
  • Powerup: Anvil
• Race 4: Park Perimeter Loop (7.434km, ending at sprint banner)
  • The Harlem Hill climb will stretch and split the field. But with a few kilometers left until the line, some riders may be able to chase back onto the front. This is our longest race of the day, so we put it at the end in case some D riders need a few extra minutes to cross the line.
  • Powerup: none

Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/tinyraces

ZwiftPower Results

Zwift displays preliminary race results in game when you cross the line, but points are computed after all four races are finished, with final results on ZwiftPower. (We have to do some data processing on our side to compute results, so if your rankings don’t show up right away, just be patient.)

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:

• Zone 1 (8am UTC)
• Zone 2 (2pm UTC)
• Zone 3 (8pm UTC)

Rules

Tiny Race rules are simple. Four races, four rules:

• You must have a ZwiftPower account, because final results are processed by ZwiftPower (learn how to sign up)
• You must finish all 4 Tiny Races in your timezone, otherwise you will be disqualified from whatever Tiny Races you did finish. No points sniping!
• Heart rate monitors are required
• ZPower/Virtual power is not allowed. Smart trainer/smart bike or power meter required.

Join a Chat & Chill Cooldown

Immediately following each hour’s racing, we’ve scheduled 30-minute “Chat & Chill” events where riders from all categories can spin out their legs together and have some fun chatting about how it all went down. Find them at zwift.com/events/tag/tinyraces.

Questions or Comments

Post below!