Last week’s all-Scotland Tiny Races were a blast, and those Sgurr climbs were especially spicy! This week we’re in London, but before we dig into the route details let’s congratulate our first-place podium winners from last Saturday:
Last Week’s Results
Overall Winners
A: Joakim Lisson (POAUTO – CeramicSpeed)
B: Marc Swatton (NoPinzR3R)
C: Florian Müller (R2 NoElite)
D: Tobias Lundh (SZR)
A: Jody Jochems (Toyota Cryo RDT)
B: Eduard Kobak (SISU)
C: Craig Olman
D: Martin Björgvik (SZR)
A: Jeremy Briand (Zwift Quebec)
B: David Squirrell (DIRT)
C: BroFessor (SISU)
D: Cody Chandler (DraftingDinos)
Women’s Winners
A: Marine Maugé (HEX)
B: Sandrine Etienne (Foudre)
C: Duonporn Daffner (Race3R)
D: Judith Raskin (SPSD)
A: none
B: none
C: Josée Rossignol (AEO)
D: Julie Brownbill (BAKPDL)
A: none
B: Charlotte Ireland
C: Jen Nelson (TBR)
D: none
This Week’s Routes: London Loop Variations
This week every race takes place on London Loop, but the routes get longer with each race. You only get one powerup (near the start) each race, so use it wisely!
- Race 1: London Loop (3.72km, ending atop climb to Trafalgar Square)
This is a mostly rolling race, but the punch comes at the end! Turn a sharp right to hit the short climb up Northumberland Ave, and the race ends at the top as you enter Trafalgar Square.- Powerup: Ghost
- Race 2: London Loop (6km, ends in tunnel exiting Underground)
This is the only route of the week that we’ve raced before, and it’s a favorite because of the pell-mell high-speed finish in the Underground station. Wait too long and you’ll get left in the dust!- Powerup: Aero Boost
- Race 3: London Loop (7km, ends just after start of Box Hill)
Going a bit further, this time we end on the first straightaway of the Box Hill climb.- Powerup: Feather
- Race 4: London Loop (7.7km, ends further up Box Hill)
Our final race ends on Box Hill’s second straightaway, on the steepest portion of the climb just a bit before the left-hand hairpin.- Powerup: Feather
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, 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 (9am GMT/4am EST/1am PST)
- Zone 2 (3pm GMT/10am EST/7am PST)
- Zone 3 (9pm GMT/4pm EST/1pm PST/Sunday 8am AEDT)
Rules
Tiny Race rules are simple, but still every week 8-10% of registered ZwiftPower racers get disqualified and removed from the final results. Don’t let that be you! Four races, four rules:
- You must have a ZwiftPower account, because final results are processed by ZwiftPower (learn how to sign up)
- No skipping then returning. These races are meant to be raced as a set of 4. If you need to leave early, that’s fine… but once you miss a race in your hour’s set of 4, don’t come back and race another or you’ll be disqualified from that race since you rested while others were racing! (Example: racing only races 1 and 2 is fine. Racing 1, 2, and 4 is not – you will be DQ from race 4. And if you race 2, 3, and 4, you’ll be DQ from all those races, since you skipped race 1!)
- Heart rate monitors are required for podium finishers
- ZPower/Virtual power is not allowed. Smart trainer/smart bike or power meter required.
Pack Dynamics v4 Testing Continues
We’ve been using Zwift’s experimental Pack Dynamics v4 since the first weekend in March, and will continue to do so.
Got feedback on PD4 after your Tiny Races? Share it on this forum topic.
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 their legs together and chat about how it all went down. Find them at zwift.com/events/tag/tinyraces.
Questions or Comments
Post below!
Nice idea, it can be challenging for some Ds
The final race may go over 15 minutes for some Ds, but that’s not a big deal in my book since it’s the last event of the 4.
Even if race 3 is less than 15mins, it still can’t be fun recovering for the final race with only 1-2 minutes rest… Are you able to customise the staggered start times? In which case building in an extra minute rest for Ds (and Cs) may be beneficial to the overall experience? E.g. Have all categories start race 1 @ 9, then race 2 a-c at 9:15, d at 9:16, race 3 a/b 9:30 c 9:31 d 9:32. Presume something must be doable as chase races for example have custom start times. We’ve all been on IRL rides where we… Read more »
It’s the 3rd race that worries me, not the 4th
Do any of the 4 races capture the entire box hill climb ? Thanks
Not even close. No way to do that within the 15-minute time window.
Check the category start times – I modified them this week so they start in this order:
Race 1: D, C, B, A, E
Race 2: D, C, B, A, E
Race 3: D, C, B, A, E
Race 4: C, B, A, D, E
That way, races 3 and 4 can be a bit longer without (hopefully) Ds missing the time cut.
Thanks Eric!
Thanks for hosting these Eric! One piece of feedback – the breaks between Cat D races last week were pretty brutal – I finished top 20 across all of the races and only had ~40 seconds between Race 2 and Race 3. It would be great to have a little bit of buffer next week!
What I do, is when there is a race in which is going to be tight, like this week 3rd, race, I do races 1 2 3 in A category, and 4 as D. In my case, as I do not aspire to wining or doing a particularly high position in D cat, does not care for the GC.
Yeah, last week was brutal — especially since my mouse battery died during race #2 and I with less than a minute between the two, I didn’t have time to fix it in order to get to race #3.
Anyway, it is an awesome format and I look forward to hanging on to the back of the Cat D’s again this week — hopefully for all four races.
Check the category start times – I modified them this week so they start in this order:
Race 1: D, C, B, A, E
Race 2: D, C, B, A, E
Race 3: D, C, B, A, E
Race 4: C, B, A, D, E
That way, races 3 and 4 can be a bit longer without (hopefully) Ds missing the time cut.
Any bike recommendations for the different races?
Aero is king, I reckon.
That starting climb is going to get old for this Cat C Clydesdale