“Welcome to my favorite and least favorite time of the week…”
That’s how Titanium Ben starts off his latest VO2sday race video (below), and I think that sums up how most riders feel about these races. They’re so hard, but also so rewarding. (I also included a video from Bike Bonk Biff, where you can watch him experience VO2sday for the first time and regret his choice repeatedly.)
This week, I’m excited to announce the launch of beta race results hosted by Leadout Esports. But we need your help! More on this below…
Sign Up for Race Results from Leadout!
Leadout Esports, created by OG Zwifter Nathan Guerra and his team, is a platform that enables high-level esports competition on Zwift and other platforms. They’ve mostly hosted individual elite races thus far, but I’ve been working with them to build out a results engine for VO2sday since ZwiftPower can’t handle results for time-based races.
VO2sday races are 4 minutes long, and the goal is to get as far in each race as possible. The overall winner across the 5 races is whoever travels the furthest. These are the results Leadout enables – a ranking based on your total distance across all 5 events. You can also click to filter results by category or gender, and drill down into individual race results. Amazing!
We’ve got the beta results pages set up, and they look so good:
Tomorrow’s races will be our first live beta of race results with Leadout. But we need your help! Because of how Zwift’s API and privacy work, you must create a Leadout account and link it to your Zwift account. This will allow your details to appear in the Leadout results… otherwise, you’ll just show up as “Unregistered User” in the results.
Creating an account is free and easy – just click “Log In” on their site, then click to create an account. Sign up now >
See June 16 race results at leadoutesports.com/vo2sday/7 >
Disclaimer: results are still in beta, so there may be some issues that pop up this week.
June 16 Race Details and Signup
We’re back in France this week – here are this week’s courses:
Races are held at three different times each Tuesday:
- Zone 1: 11am UTC/7am UT/4am PT
- Zone 2: 5pm UTC/1pm ET/10am PT
- Zone 3: 11pm UTC/7pm ET/4pm PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/vo2sday >
VO2sday Distinctives
VO2sday Micro Races are unlike any other Zwift race you’ve experienced. Here’s a complete list of what makes them special:
- 5 back-to-back races in less than an hour – that’s 5 hard VO2 max intervals.
- Time-based: While the vast majority of Zwift races are distance-based (eg, race one lap of a particular route), VO2sday races are time-based. Currently, each race is 4 minutes long. The goal? Ride further than your competitors by holding the highest power you can muster across all 5 events.
- Important note: Because these are time-based races, ZwiftPower will not display results properly. The individual race results you see on the finishing screen in game, in the Companion app, and at zwift.com are accurate. For overall results combinging the 5 events, see Leadout (more info above).
- 5 races in less than an hour – that’s 5 hard VO2 max intervals.
- Compound Score Categories: Race categories are based on Zwift’s Compound Score, which factors in your 5-minute power and body weight. Compound Score categories for these events are set to:
- A: 1600+
- B: 1200-1600
- C: 900-1200
- D: 900 and below
- Mix of courses: Each week’s race courses feature a mix of flat, climb, rolling, and even downhill parcours. Riders with lots of pure watts have the advantage in some races, while riders with strong w/kg have the advantage in others.
- Mass start: While riders are broken into categories for results, these are mass-start events with all categories starting together, so everyone has riders ahead to chase. (Again, the goal is to push as hard as you can for the duration of the race, not to sit in the pack and conserve so you can sprint to victory in the last 15 seconds!)
- Drafting is disabled, so these are effectively time trials. (Yes, you’ll want a fast TT setup.) Hopefully this forces you out of the “sit in then sprint” mindset, and into “hold steady high power for the duration” mode.
Questions or comments?
I’d love to hear your feedback after you’ve completed the latest set of VO2sday races. Share it below, along with any questions or comments you’ve got beforehand!
Shhh, keep the results page a secret for a little while, I’m okay with winning by default lol
Interesting that you’re going to use total distance across the five races.
That’ll weight, relatively, uphill courses less heavily than downhill courses.
Good news for overmuscled riders.
That might go some way towards offsetting the advantage that light riders get with Compound Score categories.
“Welcome to my favorite and least favorite time of the week…” Amen to that!
On weekday mornings, most of us have limited flexibility on ride times. Let’s get these added to a few more early AM time slots!
Later time too please! I’d love to try these. (After work pdt)
There’s something funky going on with the category results on https://leadoutesports.com/vo2sday. I signed up for the cat C races (that’s where I get the best competition, although leadoutesports says “Your compound score is 834, so your category for this event is D”). So, I’ve won cat D there, but I didn’t enter that cat. I’d have been 8th in C.
Working on this, Howard. We’re having trouble getting the actual “signed up” category from Zwift’s API, vs the “detected category” based on your compound score. That’s the issue. But we’ll get it fixed…
Thanks for another great set of micro races this week Eric. I signed up on Leadout which looks fab but I made the error of not linking to my Zwift account before the races so not showing up in this week’s results 🙁 Next week 😀
If you link it up, I think it’ll get synced eventually. Working on automating that…
Thanks Eric 🙂. I’ve linked it as it’s given me my race cat figure so 🤞
Been an ever-present for these. Really has invigorated my training and made Tuesdays a top night with some great folks. Nice that we have some scoring now, too. Had a look and found myself on the podium, so I’m sure that hitch will be ironed out soon enough 😂
Ha ha! Nice work.
These races are genius! Like feeding a dog a nasty pill wrapped in bacon, they are done before you realize you’ve just been subjected to a dreaded VO2max interval. Thank you Eric!
I’ve created my lead out account and it shows as connected to Zwift (note: I don’t see it in Zwift Connections)
I don’t see my name on the Results tab. Did I have to activate before the event? In that case no specific result this week but will be okay next week? Should be mid-pack D for the last round (4PM PT)
Likely User Error but figured maybe impacting others so advice appreciated.
And a separate issues is Zwift seems to not save some of the races. Several were observing on it last night. They all show in Zwift power but not on my Companion App actives (and not on Strava. Any recommended practices at the end of each race to avoid this
And, of course, thanks for all the effort to get this off the ground. It’s my favourite, least favourite hour of the week.on the bike.
Looks like there is a problem with the Zone 1 results, I’m guessing some of the races weren’t included in the total distance. Any chance this will be fixed?
Unfortunately they’re not going to be able to fix it for this week. Next week we should be good though.
Yes, you are correct. Beta test still working out a few things. Poor zone 1 got the first go at it, sorry guys and gals!
how do you find your compound score?
It’s not displayed by Zwift anywhere. But if you try to sign up for an event that uses it, Zwift automatically picks the right category for you.
Hello Eric! I have joined the ranks of masochists that really enjoy this 4 minute race format.
Thanks for posting the ranking formula (5 minute w/kg)*(5 minute watts). Is there a bug in there ? I’m 3.37×263 ( I’m 88 kg) which gives me 886.
shouldn’t I be D?
Also, I can’t see where to allow the link to leadoutesports.com? In the companion/settings/connections I see Wahoo, Strava, WTRL, etc, but nothing for leadoutesports.com?
In the overall you can click on your name and it tells you your distance for each of the races, would it be possible to include both your distance compared to the best racer at that distance as well as your rank for each of the races? Ie my picture
June 30, 19.00, Zone2, B. Very odd that M.Thomsen appears from nowhere after 56 seconds into the race, at first position. He was never visible until that time when looking at streams. Bug?
Probably just an internet connectivity issue on Thomsen’s end. I just checked my recording, but couldn’t see him in the rider list anyway because I was too far back 😆 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-JyU2n257w
I don’t see him in the finisher list for that race, either…
I can’t see any results from yesterday’s race on the Leadout pages yet. Have they been published?”
Yes, they’ve been available since right after each race finished.