The Tiny Races happen every Saturday, and they’re all about getting a hard, fun effort done in 1 hour. You race all 4 races back-to-back, with each lasting just 5-10 minutes, giving you a short break in between.
C racer Stephen Read took his first-ever win in race 4 last week. It was his 217th Zwift race (now that’s perseverance) – but he also took the overall thanks to consistent high placings. Chapeau, sir.
His friend Warwick was fan viewing the event – see the finish and hear Warwick cheering Stephen on below. Hold on after the finish to hear Stephen trying to breathe while being thrilled with the win!
Got a great YouTube video of your Tiny Race experience? Post it in the comments and we may feature it on Zwift Insider!
Last Week’s Results
Overall Winners
A: Christian Kaldbar (Grit)
B: Jason Sterny (DIRT)
C: Stephen Read (Race3R)
D: B B (NTS³)
A: Kirchfeld [Dragnons]
B: Casey Schumm (Team X)
C: Martin Ward (Titanium)
D: Jen Turbo
A: Dobiacco
B: Paul Dixon (ElectricSpirit.co)
C: Hugo Gomes (ZTBR)
D: Andrew Milling (EVO)
Women’s Winners
A: –
B: Jackie Gilbert (Synergy)
C: Ayako Sakamoto (Evolution)
D: Daniela Haupt (RuhrRiders)
A: –
B: Tiffany Penner [ABUS-SYN]
C: Josée Rossignol (AEO)
D: Jen Turbo
A: –
B: –
C: Moar Shimz
D: –
This Week’s Routes: Getting Flatter
This week’s races start off climby, but get progressively flatter. Watch as the advantage shifts from the W/kg climbers to the pure wattage bazookas over the span of four races!
- Race 1: Everything Bagel (4.076km, ends at NYC KQOM banner)
- This one’s for the climbers. Begin on NYC’s paved roads then quickly transition to the glass roads and attack the NYC KQOM Reverse. First to the top wins!
- Powerup: Burrito
- Race 2: Hilly Route Reverse (5.6km, ends atop first bit of the Hilly KQOM Reverse)
- This twisty route will take riders through the Esses, over the reverse sprint and the cobbles of the Italian Villas, then over the rollers that follow. Catch a quick breath if you can, because it ends just up the road a few hundred meters after the start of the Hilly KQOM Reverse!
- Powerup: Feather (2x)
- Race 3: Champs-Élysées (4.52km, ends at Lutece Sprint banner)
- We’re racing in Paris, but we won’t be here for long as we don’t even complete a full lap in this effort. Just the lead-in around Jardin des Tuileries, then it’s gonna be a hard drag up Montée des Champs Elysées to the sprint banner for the finish. Remember – the ghost powerup stops working once you’re within 400m of the finish line!
- Powerup: Ghost
- Race 4: Countryside Tour (5.261km, ends at Country Sprint banner)
- The flattest race of the week, this one starts with a slight downhill, then it’s essentially pan-flat to the finish. Who will wait for a pack sprint, and who will attack early?
- Powerup: Aero Boost
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/5am EDT/2am PDT)
- Zone 2 (3pm GMT/11am EST/8am PDT)
- Zone 3 (9pm GMT/5pm EDT/2pm PDT/Sunday 7am AEST)
Rules
Tiny Race rules are simple, but still every week 6-8% 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.
- Smart trainer/smart bike or power meter required. ZPower/Virtual power is not allowed.
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.
Zwift Insider Kit Unlock
Finish any Tiny Race or a Chat & Chill ride and unlock the Zwift Insider “Ride Smarter // Ride Harder” in-game kit.
Questions or Comments
Post below!
not sure why someone with a 20 min w/kg of 3.84 is a cat C but hey ho.
That’s a question for Zwift but in this case, the rider in question probably weighs less than 50kg and don’t put down more than 200 watts for 20 minutes. I forget what the cutoffs are for the other cats but for A it’s 250 watts. There’s a coupla guys that manage their power to stay in B so they don’t move up to A and get their butts kicked week after week.
Alrighty. That was a remarkably difficult Race One. Yeah, the NY KOM was for the climbers but the Burrito was for the guys that put down flat road power. I was right in it for about a minute and then everybody cracked open their burrito and just like that, I and a number of others were off the back. Really Eric, what was the point of the burrito power up in that race? Just made it a video game instead of a race.
Zone 3 cat C everyone got kicked right after the start.
Zone 3 Race 1 seems like it was setup as a timed event with 0 minutes. The result: the race ended as soon as everyone left the start pens with the finishing screen popping up on screen. On ZwiftPower there is only one finisher out of all the categories.
Yeah… misconfigured event. We’re tossing it out, so just races 2-3-4 matter for zone 3 this week! Apologies to all…
Eric, could you be tempted to try pen allocation for Tiny Races using the Compound Score option, using all five pens?