Last Saturday’s Tiny Races were a dusty, slug-it-out affair as each of our custom routes featured dirt as their primary surface type. Kudos to everyone who showed up and went all-in!
Congrats to Last Week’s Winners
Overall Podiums
A: Maico Voets (CANYON)
B: Chris Benham (Vision)
C: Paul Smith (ART)
D: Johnny Boy
A: Tony Gumbel (NeXT pb Enshored)
B: Chris Hoelzl (WattFabrik)
C: David Hivey (ART)
D: Michael L10 [BYT]
A: Tim Bradley (Bl13)
B: Sam Atkinson (TBR)
C: Steve Schilling (CRYO-GEN)
D: Dom Sim (Team Italy)
Women’s Podiums
A: Laura Kent (ElectricSpirit.Co)
B: Maria Marb (Beastmode p/b ROSE)
C: Silke Optekamp (WattFabrik)
D: Pascale Zou
A: none
B: Cristina Pires (CRYO)
C: Valerie Pa (ABR)
D: Linn Björgvik (SZR)
A: none
B: Madi Roberts (AHDR)
C: Leanne Dalley (CrushPod)
D: none
This Week’s Routes: Fast Finishes
This week’s theme is “Fast Finishes”! We’re racing four previously-raced Tiny Race routes, all featuring super fast finishes (either on a descent, or quickly following a descent). Aero is everything!
Hint: looking for your most aero bike? Check out Fastest Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level >
Here are photos so you can see the precise location of the custom finish lines:
- Race 1: London Loop (6km, ends in tunnel exiting Underground)
- The one short climb up Northumberland Ave will stretch out the pack and provide a place for climbers to drop some sprinters. Then it will be a pell-mell dash past Big Ben, over the bridge, and into the Underground for the finish!
- Powerup: Feather
- Race 2: Richmond UCI Reverse (4km, ends on straightaway after Libby Hill descent)
- A tough route with two gut-punching climbs. Start with a descent, then a longish climb. Grab a powerup at the banner, then it’s a quick descent into a steep (20%+!), short kicker. Grab another powerup at the Libby Hill KOM banner, then descend Libby’s cobbles and end on the paved, straight downhill that follows. Climbers will get away on the last kicker, but bigger riders may just be able to chase them back!
- Powerup: Burrito
- Race 3: Downtown Dolphin (2 laps)
- Racers know this route well. The question is: who will go long, and can they stay away?
- Powerup: Aero Boost
- Race 4: Rooftop Rendezvous (1 lap)
- The pack will get stretched and snap up the Rooftop KOM, but it’s the descent afterward, and riders’ sense of timing, which will determine who crosses the finish line first.
- Powerup: Draft 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 finish, with final results on ZwiftPower. (We have to press a ZwiftPower button to compute results manually, 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:
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!
My fever dream for an April fools edition
race 1 – Radio tower. From the bottom of the tower to the top of the tower
race 2 – ADZ 6km. But on the descent. the steepest part of the descent
race 3 – anywhere flat. 500m total
race 4 – anywhere 3-5km. race is at least 3km long and the finish is hidden somewhere between after 3km so you dont know where it ends until you hit the finish
I love this.
Unknown distance is quite a common race on the velodrome. You’d need zwift on board to make it work I think though? You would know when it is the bell so if it was to be a tiny race you’d need a pretty short lap.
Love this series! My legs disagree
I love the series, but if I can make a suggestion to the organizer, please avoid races that requires bike change in between. It’s really a disadvantage for Apple TV users where we had issues with the remote control and bike swaps, had to use the breaks between the races to log out of Zwift – in with the phone, swap the bike – log out of the phone – log back in with Apple TV. While others were having their well deserved break in between the races.
Great races if you own a badly calibrated Wattbike Atom, you’re almost guaranteed to win.. the wife and I have both an Atom and a Neo2T to ride together, I don’t race on the Atom as it’s way over-reading my power when sprinting and I want my figures to be realistic. The Neo is very accurate but the Atom gives a good 300 watts more when I sprint so I don’t use it. Almost every race the ART team on the Atom bikes are at or near the top, very skewed races to these unrealistically calibrated bikes.
Sorry, but you are talking rubbish if you bike needs calibrating….. get it calibrated.
I have checked mine with power pedals and it is reading correctly.
Feature suggestion: That dialog that asks “Shall I take you to the next event?” with options “NO THANKS” or “YES”…. well, imagine you are racing hard down from the Rooftop Rendezvous in a leading group of 3, it is easy to ignore that dialog… only to discover 200m from the finish line that the Default is YES and you are whipped off to NYC for the Chill & Chat. DNF for the race. (Yes, it happened to me.)
I wonder if the Default *when in a race* might instead be NO?
That’s a great suggestion. I’ll share it with Zwift!
We DO have these events set to a custom autojoin time, so it’s shorter than usual. I think it’s set to just 1 minute before the event? Been a while since I looked…
I really liked the Richmond reverse race.
Especially the burrito power ups. It totally changed the game how to ride it! 🙂