Following the first race in the new Zwift Duathlon League (ZDL) race on February 17, we caught up with Martin Carew, the mastermind behind WTRL and the ZDL latest series, to see how it went.
Martin says the event was a “resounding success.” There were some 2000 registered participants, making it one of the largest running events ever on Zwift.
The event format was praised. The 35-minute bike segment was challenging, followed by a 10-minute transition period which allowed people sufficient time to change from their cycling shoes to their trainers. The run event of 15 minutes made it accessible to all participants of differing ability. In some cases people opted against using a treadmill, instead wearing a footpod and running outside, Zwift in hand.
It is clear that WTRL have got the balance correct in terms of timings of the components with one participant stating that that they “love the fact it is only an hour. Just long enough to be painful but short enough to fit into most schedules.”
Across the growing community, helped by the launch of the new WTRL’s new Zwift’s Duathlon Facebook page, the feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive:
“The Zwift Duathlon series is the perfect way to motivate yourself back into racing, with a nice short sharp race time and accommodating race slots for all athletes.”
“The hardest I went in a long while! It might be “only” 35 and then 15 minutes, but there is no pause during the race, no downhill, no draft, no help only biking as hard as you can and then running even harder. Brutal. Awesome. More please.”
Results Issues
The only issue is that there has been a delay in the official results, which the WTRL team summarized to competitors in an e-mail:
WTRL and Zwift have been working together to streamline the process in which Zwifters race and participant data is exchanged. This will lead to faster, more accurate results in the future and we are keen to ensure the whole of season 1 is working from this data. Please bear with us while we transition and as soon as the Race 1 Results are available (aiming for before Race 2), we will be in touch!
We appreciate this isn’t ideal and thank you for your patience while we work on getting this right rather than have issues later in to this brand new format of racing that is only going to get bigger!
WTRL recently posted an update on the results processing to their Facebook page:
At the current time we are STILL not in a position to provide results for Race 1 nor Race 2 results for the Zwift Duathlon League.
Despite many weeks of very successful event testing jointly with Zwift, discussions, web and software development – the current state of Zwift game/race data available is (in all honesty) very poor to non-existent making results almost impossible at this time.
There were hopes that this would have been resolved last week with a new data source for us to use (since ZwiftPower is fundamentally broken) but the latest update received by WTRL (yesterday) from Zwift engineers is that another issue has taken priority. This is incredibly disappointing news to us here at WTRL and to the Zwift team that have been working very hard collaboratively to bring this brand new event format to Zwifters.
We are still hopeful that we may be able to rescue the situation but this remains very firmly in the hands of Zwift’s engineering team to fix. We will bring you a further update by Friday of this week.
Yours very sincerely,
A very disappointed WTRL and Zwift crew
So, some very concerning delays/issues with results data but ultimately, the event itself went to plan and the format was well-received. Once the data exchange process is fixed, the event should be very efficient and results posted quickly.
Here’s hoping Zwift’s engineers can get race data flowing to WTRL quickly!
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
Honestly, I’m not so sad that the results aren’t posting. I don’t need to know how many internet strangers are significantly faster than me!
Don’t worry about that, you did better than me as I didn’t even do it. I just bought a running pod to see if I can participate in these events.
I did better in race 2 than race 1. That’s what counts for me! Very cool series! Even if I need to do it at 9pm!
I’ve enjoyed it so far. This is the first time, virtual or IRL, I’ve ever participated in a running “race”. This series is giving me the perfect opportunity to figure out how hard I can go.I did the first one at a pace that I knew I could maintain. Last night I stepped it up a notch in both the ride and the run, and it got a little uncomfortable. Next week I’ll push into the red and see what happens.
I am disappointed that official results may never exist.
i would have liked to do this; but the WTRL website is a total mess – lack of results and a spaghetti maze of information turned me off WTRL events altogether.
Hi, I am sorry to hear that. Perhaps drop the WTRL an e-mail as I am sure they would be interested in feedback like that. The issue with results is something WTRL are aware of and as mentioned in the post, they are reliant on data from Zwift. I wrote an article about the Duathlon event which simplified all the information, perhaps if you read that, it might help. I have just bought a foot pod so I can participate in the events as they look fun and a good way to get into the running side of Zwift, which… Read more »
We would welcome your feedback on the website as we have never received any negative feedback about it. We would love to know what device you are using too.
Was really excited about event #1, enjoyed the cycling portion, then had to stop and re-pair my HR monitor during the 10 minute transition to the run did me in. Never paired. I hope in future iterations they can improve the transition so others don’t have the issue I did.
Brian, make sure that your HR monitor doesn’t connect to another device during the transition. Once you shut down and restart to switch from Cycling to Running it would more than likely “pick up” a new connection elsewhere (iPad/iPhone etc).
I shut my external devices from bluetooth during the transition phase for this exact reason.
Good luck with your future events…RideOn
Participants were receiving email updates but this appears to have been abandoned; why? Also the ‘Results’ tab has been recently updated and a ‘Results Submission’ tab has been added yet there is no guide or explanation provided; again why? Sorry WTRL but in the eyes of many participants you’re at fault for launching a program with insufficient proof of concept testing.
Well, it’s somewhat straightforward – you out in the distance you rode and ran in each of the events during the event time (35 mins biking and 15 running). The problem is Zwiftpower is showing no distance data, and Zwift companion is showing “cool down” or “lead out” distance. For example, in week 2, for the run, I did the 15-minute race, plus a 12:30 cool down. If I look at the event, it shows the full 27:24 and a distance of 3.75 km. But, obviously, we’re not meant to include the cool down distance. By looking at the timeline… Read more »
An email came out today (27 Feb). As article above notes, there have been issues with the data sent from Zwift. Work around (at least for race 1,2) is to log your distance to the results submission spot at WTRL site
Unmentioned in the article is the age-group format. With 11 categories in 5-year increments, this more closely resembles the IRL experience for this 72 y/o triathlete.