Zwift’s “ZRacing” is the platform’s most popular ongoing race series, and in December we’re racing some of the best routes used in the past year of the series. Enjoy the sights: sequoias, castles, pavé, and even a monster (Nessie) if you get lucky!
Read on for details about race routes, the overall monthly GC competition, and more.
Best Of – December’s Route Schedule
Here are the routes we’ll be racing in December (click route for more details):
- Stage 1 (Dec 4-10): Sand and Sequoias
- 1 lap (22.5km, 180m elevation)
- Powerups: Lightweight (Feather), Draft Boost, Anvil 🛈
- Stage 2 (Dec 11-17): Castle to Castle
- 1 lap (23.2km, 140m elevation)
- Powerups: Lightweight (Feather), Aero Boost, Draft Boost 🛈
- Stage 3 (Dec 18-24): Rolling Highlands
- 2 laps (23km, 183m)
- Powerups: Feather, Cloaking (Ghost) 🛈
- Stage 4 (Dec 24-30): R.G.V.
- 1 lap (24.8km, 133m)
- Powerups: Draft Boost, Lightweight (Feather) 🛈
Zwift Community Live(stream)
Nathan Guerra at Zwift Community Live is providing commentary and a live stream of each Monday’s 6:10pm UTC/1:10pm Eastern/10:10am Pacific race. Click here for the playlist of upcoming ZRacing broadcasts.
Series Structure
The ZRacing series consists of monthly sets of weekly races. Each race is scheduled for seven days (beginning 1:10am UTC on Monday and running through to the next Sunday). Timeslots are consistent week to week and month to month.
Races are scheduled ~15 times each day, so there are plenty of available times to find a race.
See upcoming events at zwift.com/events/tag/zracingdec2023
Monthly GC on ZwiftPower
Each monthly series includes a time-based GC (general classification) tracking riders’ best finishing times for each week’s race. The overall winners in each category for the month are the riders with the lowest overall time for that month’s set of races.
See December’s GC on ZwiftPower >
With over 100 weekly timeslots available, riders can race each week’s event multiple times and try to better their finishing time. Tip: the fastest times usually come from the largest race fields!
You must use a heart rate monitor and be on a smart trainer, smart bike, or power meter to show up in ZwiftPower results for this series.
If you aren’t signed up for ZwiftPower, check out our post How to Sign Up for ZwiftPower (and Why Every Zwifter Should Do It).
Get the Badge
Each month’s ZRacing series has a unique achievement badge, which you can unlock by finishing every stage for the month.
There are no makeup events, so if you miss a stage, you miss out on the badge and competing in the GC.
One and Done
Zwift has planned these events to deliver a solid 1-hour workout, so each race should only take around 1 hour to complete, including your warmup and cooldown.
Questions or Comments?
Post below!
Hi Eric, ZHQ announced a few months ago that the new Racing Score would start at the end of November. Will this come into play for this Series ? And also for other/all races ?
Zwift isn’t saying for sure, but I know they’re trying to get some sort of a soft launch done in early December. Stay tuned – I’ll write more as soon as there’s more I can write about!
Perfect … thanks as always Eric
Hopefully something changes soon. Yet another month of flat and rolling courses with pack dynamics that encourage sit and sprint tactics. The same people can win these races over and over again without ever having to put in an effort that triggers an upgrade.
RGV links to Sprinter’s Playground, Eric
Fixed!
Hi Eric,
I think it’s 6pm UTC–as I tried today but I was one hour early ;o)))) How do you know which cat will be broadcasted? I thouht it will be A–like one week ago if I remember correctly–be it appears “only” B, C, D got coverage.
Ah, right. Fixed!
Not sure how to tell who will be covered. I think they try to cover all cats…
Thanks Eric: I’ll try again, in my (B) cat ;o)
Rolling Highlands as a Zwift academy race, as part of the Zwift ride series and the Zwift race series. Seems a bit uninspired unless the idea is that everyone despises the route so much by the end of it that no one will ever do it again.
There seems to be some confusion/mistakes about Stage 3 – it was announced with 1 lap (as in February) and the first instances had only one lap. But now 2 laps are scheduled. That means the GC is wrong … Zwift HQ should at least comment on this …
Yes, how is this going to be resolved? The series positioning is skewed terribly now for both individuals and teams.
Still no comment on the thread in the Zwift forum by ZwiftHQ, created ~24 hours ago. Eric’s post clearly shows stage 3 is supposed to be one lap with correct ~14Km distance, but all runnings of this event since around UK Monday lunch have been incorrectly changed to two laps. And in the meantime, the GC table has race 3 times from one and two lap races.
The anouncement was changed to 2 laps and as far as I can see results with only 1 lap has been deleted from GC.