Are you interested in racing on Zwift? ZRacing is a great place to begin. These events are popular because they’re made to fit anyone’s schedule, delivering a solid 1-hour workout (including warmup and cooldown) on an ever-changing set of courses.
Here’s everything you need to know about Zwift’s “ZRacing” – the platform’s most popular ongoing race series.
This Month’s Schedule
See upcoming Race Watopia events >
ZRacing is a monthly series where each month’s routes are chosen based on a theme. Each month is broken into 4 or 5 weeklong stages, and races are scheduled ~15 times daily.
Here are the routes we’ll be racing in October. Note that stage 5 features one of the new routes created by the upcoming Watopia expansion (we’ll add details ASAP)!
- Stage 1 (Oct 2-8): Beach Island Loop (Watopia)
- 2 laps (25.9km, 96m elevation)
- Powerups: Aero Boost, Draft Boost 🛈
- Stage 2 (Oct 9-15): Flat Route (Watopia)
- 2 laps (21km, 122m elevation)
- Powerups: Aero Boost, Draft Boost 🛈
- Stage 3 (Oct 16-22): Two Bridges Loop (Watopia)
- 2 laps (14.7km, 160m)
- Powerups: Aero Boost, Feather 🛈
- Stage 4 (Oct 23-29): Volcano Circuit CCW (Watopia)
- 4 laps (21.3km, 80m)
- Powerups: Burrito, Ghost, Feather 🛈
- Stage 5 (Oct 30-Nov 5): Route To Be Announced (Watopia)
- 1 lap (16.4km, 63m)
- Powerups: Draft Boost, Feather 🛈
Learn more about October’s Race Watopia series >
Racer Categories
These races use Zwift Pace Groups for categorization, so (for example) you cannot enter C category if your historic power numbers qualify you as a B or A. You can always race up a category if you’re looking for an extra challenge, but you cannot race down.
Learn more about Pace Groups/Category Enforcement >
Monthly GC Competition
Every race event is a competition itself, but each month’s series is also a time-based GC (general classification) competition based on riders’ finishing times on each stage. Overall category winners are the riders with the lowest overall time for that month’s races.
Current GC results can be found on ZwiftPower.com under “Leagues.”
Important ZwiftPower Notes
- You must be signed up for ZwiftPower to be included in the GC results. Need help? Read How to Sign Up for ZwiftPower (and Why Every Zwifter Should Do It).
- You can race each stage multiple times to improve your finishing time. Hint: the fastest times usually come from the largest race fields!
- To be included in the final ZwiftPower results, you must use a heart rate monitor as well as a smart trainer, smart bike, or power meter.
Earn the Badge
Each month’s ZRacing series has a unique achievement badge you can unlock by finishing every stage. There are no makeup events, so if you miss a stage, you miss the badge!
Zwift Community Live(stream)
Nathan Guerra and his team at Zwift Community Live provide commentary and live streaming of each Monday’s 5pm UTC/1pm Eastern/10am Pacific race. Here’s a sample of one such race:
Click for the playlist of upcoming broadcasts >
Questions or Comments?
Post below!
I didn’t realise that it counted towards the Tour of Watopia, I was quite surprised to get the cap after stage 1. I don’t know whether this had an influence on the riders. I did my normal 6:10 Tuesday race, and was delighted to finish 4th, which is far higher than usual. Then when I looked at the results, saw that the normal people that kick my butt weren’t there.