September’s Get Rolling ZRacing Series has proved very popular, and Zwift just published the details of October’s ZRacing Series, named “Race Like a Champ”. Let’s dive in!
Series Structure
The ZRacing series consists of monthly sets of weekly races. Each race is on the schedule for seven days (beginning 12:10am 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/zracing
October’s Route Schedule
October’s routes match the “Race Like a Champ” theme, as each course is based on an IRL UCI World Championship route, or has been used in a UCI Cycling Esports World Championship competition.
- Stage 1 (Oct 3-9): 2019 UCI Worlds Harrogate Circuit
- 1 lap (13.95km, 240m elevation)
- Powerups: Aero, Anvil, Draft, Ghost
- Stage 2 (Oct 10-16): Knickerbocker
- 1 lap (22.52km, 366m elevation)
- Powerups: Anvil, Burrito, Draft, Feather
- Stage 3 (Oct 17-23): Watopia Figure 8 Reverse
- 0.7 laps (20.3km, 223m) – ends atop Hilly KOM
- Powerups: Aero, Burrito, Draft, Feather
- Stage 4 (Oct 24-30): stage 4 is actually two back-to-back races, and you must complete both to compete in the monthly GC and earn your badge for October! The second race is scheduled 20 minutes after the first.
- Stage 4a: Queen’s Highway
- 1 lap (5.6km, 82m)
- Powerups: Aero, Ghost
- Stage 4b: Cobbled Climbs Reverse
- 1 lap (8.9km, 119m)
- Powerups: Feather, Steamroller, Ghost
Qualify to Qualify for UCI Esports Worlds
Select special events in October will allow participants to qualify for a spot in the UCI World Championship Continental Qualifiers. More info can be found here, but basically, you need to race specific special timeslots of stages 1, 2, and 3 in October and jump through a few more hoops in order to race in the big Continental Qualifiers event, assuming you haven’t already qualified in another way.
These events will only be available on Fridays (Oct 7, 14, and 21st) in four different timeslots: 00:00, 03:00, 10:00, and 18:00 UTC. It’s worth noting that your finishing place in these events doesn’t matter: you just have to finish them (and dual record with a HRM on ZwiftPower) as part of getting into the UCI Continental Qualifier.
See upcoming pathway events on ZwiftHacks >
Monthly GC on ZwiftPower
Each monthly set of races has a time-based GC (general classification) which tracks riders’ best finishing times for each week’s race. The overall winners in each category for the month will be the riders with the lowest overall time for that month’s set of races.
See October’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.
Note: you must use a heart rate monitor and be on a smart trainer, smart bike, or power meter in order 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 series will have a theme, and you can unlock an achievement badge by finishing each week’s race for the month.
One and Done
Zwift has planned these events around the idea of 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!
Thx Eric for your round-up for the series in October ! Race 1 seems to be a bit short … in my opinion, it should be ~1,5 laps with a custom finish like in Race 3 (Figure8 Rev).
Thanks, Eric! I enjoyed September, even though I’m quite a few pages down on the cumulative results now. I guess I’ve been missing the super fast races considering I’ve finished with the lead pack in each of my races thus far!
I really like the monthly time-based world wide competition ! … but in the end you have luck (taking part in faster races) or bad luck (slower ones) in which events you had been … holding the front group is much more important than a good place at the finish … so, it’s more a big TTT and you need strong guys who can push hard & steady watts at the front … what about some bonus seconds for the first ten places to create some gaps between riders in the same race ? …
ride on everybody
I think that the idea of bonus seconds for the first places is good.
I really started to like this series, but somehow I see a tendency that the races are shortened, or even worse, set up as double races. I don’t like that. I hope that for November the races will be in a time range of over 30 minutes.
No no no. We need to keep them short enough that fitness isn’t a factor, so any tub of lard can put in a good kick and feel like they participated well
If you’re worried about fitness not being a factor, you could ride faster so it is. Just sayin.
Stages 4a and 4b seem to be two separate events. It suggests you do them back-to-back but will anything stop people from doing them on separate days?
there are 5 events in the dashboard on the homescreen – so I guess you can do them on separate days
Yeah, Zwift has no way of patrolling that at the moment.
Anyone else do stage 1 (Yorkshire) of this series today and not get credit for it in the Home Screen dashboard?
Yes, me !
Thank you for letting me know I am not alone and hopefully Zwift Support can figure out what is going on and give us credit manually (I prefer not to race it again as it was tough the first go round and will probably be even tougher if I have to do it again).
Yes, me too.
Thank you for article Erik. It was understood that League individual classificationis defined by sum of best time on each stage.
What about team classification? It is not clear which results are considered to calculate team ranking.
Do you have any information on that?
I hadn’t even considered the Team Standings side of things, Alessandro. But looking at the ZwiftPower rankings, it appears the Team Standings take your 5 fastest team times on each stage and add those up. (So basically the fastest teams show a time around 5x longer than the fastest individuals.)
Getting the badge will be difficult: Done the 1st stage and still have 0%. It’s like ZA, where you get 0XP for the baseline and fnish ride.
I just let Zwift know… they’re probably already working on fix. My guess is people who raced it will get credit for the activity, just may take Zwift a bit. You should reach out to Zwift support and ask, if you care about getting credit!
Same problem here. Zwift made me jump through the hoops of clearing browser history, uninstalling the app before reinstalling and a forced restart on the companion app before taking it seriously. Turns out it was a fault on their side all along and they sorted the credit manually. Slick.
I did the race again and now I got credit for it.
Race Like A Champ is a series that I joined. I was doing some research on it and it said to registrar and select the 2019 Wordls Harrogate Circuit as the first race. I looked under tomorrow on the Companion app and didn’t see the race on there to schedule it. Did I miss something?
Just pick one of the events called “Stage 1: Race Like a Champ” in Companion. Here’s the first event tomorrow: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/3147039
Where do we see the badges? I completed all 4 stages for September and don’t see anything in the ‘regular’ badge area in Zwift. Did I miss a registration somewhere?
I think these technically show in your profile under the missions area, separate from route and achievement badges.
Is there any way of doing a catch up race if you are on holiday or sick, etc. the same as some of the other events. I have missed week 2 due to other commitments.
There is not.
Howdy. Just noticed in ZwiftPower that races 4a and 4b have time handicaps for grades e.g. +3 minutes for B grade in 4a and +1 minute for 4b. Didnt see that in the fine print on Companion App or on this site. All good but just checking it is as intended?
Darn it. Just realised I’ve somehow missed stage 3
I got the aero helmet in 4B today. Not complaining!