I’m just getting back into it as well so I don’t have a favorite race as of yet. I did enjoy the series a third party offered last year. It was fun to start to recognize names, know who you’re competitive with, etc.

I’ve found that two races per week is a sort of sweet spot for me. I’m struggling to ride on the trainer but it’s pretty easy to get 1-2 hours in a couple of times per week if you include a warmup, race, and cool down. I try to ride at least one other time during the week, although that’s usually pretty easy. Long rides on the weekend, preferably outside, although there is a regular 100k ride on Sundays that has helped me get through some three hour trainer rides.

I have to be done on the trainer by around 6 AM on weekday mornings, so that unfortunately rules out a bunch of races for me. A lot of the races I've ended up doing have been me and a bunch of folks for Europe. I've done some of the DBR (Danish Bike Racing) races, and they have a high level of competition. On Saturday mornings I need to be on the trainer by 4-4:30 AM, so I'm again often in races that are mostly folks from Europe.

One of the things that I look for when joining a race is the level of competition. I like to have at least 10 people in the A group to make it a good workout. My overall power is pretty solid, but I'm still getting crushed in the sprints. I often have one of the highest w/kg at the end of the race, but I can't recover fast enough from the spiky efforts on the hills to sometimes stay with the front group.

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I race anything that happens to be available during my training window, mostly the 3R & Kiss series. I'm racing 3 times a week with an added group recovery ride and an Alpe du Zwift climb in there if it lines up (want that Tron bike). The races and group rides make all the difference for me. If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't use Zwift. Zwiftpower vital in my mind. It levels the playing field and gives you a chance to win races which for me is what makes it fun. There are always people in every race WAY above the watts per KG category limit and Zwiftpower weeds them out in the final standings.

Tuesday Midweek Crit at 19:30 ET

I like it because it is full 60min (30min is not enough for me) and because it is later on at night not in the morning, I can't race in the morning...This thing is full gas, literally 60min FTP test :)

That sounds like a fun one! Unfortunately bedtime for the kids is in the 7:30 - 8:00 window, so it wouldn't be even worth mentioning to my wife!

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I am less partial to the series, and more partial to what is available when I plan to ride... I've found that most that I have done tend to be well attended, and have competitive fields. In terms of courses, I prefer the shorter flatter circuits with a couple of short punchy climbs, as opposed to the longer climbs... That said, I'll race whatever is available when I want to race, I've still managed really good results on races with more climbing, it's just a much harder path to get there with a lot more suffering... Obviously as a heavier rider, I am at a huge advantage on the flats, since raw power comes into play, more than watts/kg, which favors bigger powerful riders...

I just started racing on zwift and think it's probably the most fun you can have when you're on the trainer.

If you go to zwiftpower.com you can look at the regular races and see how the competition stacks up in each one. It's interesting to look at the results after a race too.

As somebody else mentioned earlier, getting used to the hard spikes/recovery is something that is foreign to most of us who don't come from a bike racing background.

For me, I will probably only do a race on Saturdays as I have structured training on my other rides. I could see how it could become addicting and how some people could do 3-4 races a week if they are 20-40 min long.

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How old are you? I race the ZHR masters series and it's great, categories are age, not power based, races are on Tuesdays (a lot to choose from) but they also do a weekender series, a 'hare and hounds' race and more.

Outside of that, I just do whatever is convenient for my schedule, every organized ride seems to turn into a race anyway.

I'll be 35 in April. I'm right on the border between cat A and B. I'm decently unfit at the moment, but once I'm back to where I'm expecting I'll probably spend most of my time getting my ass handed to me by the A group.

Welcome to the world of Zwift racing! It's pretty cool and has been life changing for me. I hated, hated, hated the trainer and now really love it.
I try to get a SS effort in at 40-60 minutes once/week and a 20 min FTP/vo2max effort; both done during a timely race. Sometimes, I'll throw caution to the wind if the body is feeling good like this past weekend with: Saturday-First Norseman series race (Fire and Ice) and then Sunday-my first 100K race (yes, I bonked).

Mucho fun though. Especially if there are people you know IRL who are racing with you. I'm often on my phone texting one of my friends during races as we encourage each other. I know many others that communicate to time their breakaways...

So to answer the question-twice weekly racing for me and my favorite is the Volcano Climb as it's about 35 minutes of suffering for this 'C' level guy. A short warmup and cool down = a nice hour of solid training. At that distance/effort; I try to be above my FTP so it's really solid training for raising the FTP and relatively quick recovery.

I'm old and do not think I could handle more than two races per week for very long. You can be lulled into racing too often so rest must be worked in. Get used to spinning at the easy pace and being OK with people zooming by on these rest days or you will build way too much fatigue and not progress in your training.

you should check it out then, really broad variety of ability levels across each category and generally a fun group to race with

I just race Tour de Zwift.

My FTP/kg is 4, and I get absolutely shredded in the B races. The 2 and 3 minute efforts completely destroy me and I can't recover. I guess bike racing really is an entirely different beast.

I don't want to jump to C, but I think I might have to.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

Maybe the race I did wasn't highly competitive, but I was able to come up 3rd place in my first race. Though, when riding in real life with my buddies I always make hay on the short punchy stuff... so maybe it suits my style. Either way... they're a ton of fun.

That's the difference between a road race and a TT... The ability to ride for short stints of high intensity and recover... My FTP is in the 3.8w/kg range, and I am very competitive in B races... It's not just being able to lock into a power range and hold it, it's doing a mixture of short and punchy intervals, and longer efforts, that help build the capacity to handle the dynamics of a race. I know that I'm terrible when it comes to TTs, but I've always had the ability to throw down massive watts for a short period to make a pack, or to claw back in at the top of a climb. I tend to suffer on the courses with longer climbs, where being heavier is a distinct disadvantage...

That being said, you have to be smart with your effort too... the start always rolls out fairly hard, so you want to move up into the top 20-30 in the race, but it's really not until the first climb that the fireworks tend to start, so it's being ready to suffer all the way to the top to make a good pack (often the decisive moment in the B race is right before and after the top of the climb, where you have a lead pack (mainly A riders) and some stragglers and then a bigger peloton... If you can ride into a chase group behind the break, you generally end up in a group made up of mainly A and B riders, and if you can get the group moving well, you're generally in contention for a good result in the B race).

If your FTP is at 4w/kg, you're technically an A rider, and would get DQ'd in most races if you registered as a C and rode anywhere near that. Rather than downgrading, maybe try doing some targeted workouts at those types of efforts, and give the B races another go (not sure if you can find them, but the sprint and climb workouts from the Power Up Training Camp they ran in the late fall were perfect for some of these types of efforts, especially the sprint where we did 4 or 5 sets, that effectively had an threshold type effort, than a 3min wind up to a massive sprint... you can also look at the Zwift Academy workouts, particularly ones from 2018 called lactate shuttling and also race day, they simulate some of these race dynamics really well).

At 4 w/kg I would not enter an A race against seasoned bike racers. I'm relatively new to triathlon overall but especially new to the bike. I cannot hit my FTP during a race because of those punchy intervals. I am getting better at those and like doing that training but spend the last 2 years putting out steady power and can maintain constant power more than hit the high peaks and recover. My technical FTP is 4.1 watts/kg (based on 20min test) but have never done better than averaging 3.8 watts/kg in a race. Also, the longer the race the better I do. Races are great training but just have to look at them like that.

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most bike racing is predicated upon 3-8 min power.

i'm barely at 4 w/kg right now and can do decently well in most non-climbing B races, but that largely comes from my background as a bike racer

a month back (before I rode almost nil for 2+ weeks), I was at ~4.2 and did decently in the A group as well.

look at the courses you are doing and identify the features that cause separations. In Zwift, these are mostly 2-4 min long hills. So if one wishes to do well, focus on those efforts and recovery from those efforts. The down side is that such a training may take a bit off of your FTP.

as for favorite courses, park perimeter of Central Park. Nothing overly long, but enough places to punch clear over the top

That's really interesting... most races I average above my FTP, because of those surges (going into my last race, my FTP was 323w, and I averaged 340w over the 30km race (40min))... To be honest I rarely can see straight enough to look at my power during a race, I focus on the feel of racing (having a road racing background, and also recently racing a lot more draft-legal on the multi-sport side, I think it's a bit easier to do this), realizing that you will have moments where you're clipping along quite quickly, but sitting well below FTP in the pack on the flats, and then big power outputs on the climbs (and shortly thereafter if you need to chase back in), during the sprint, or in cases where you need to go to the front of the pack to do some chasing (or in my case in some of the accidental attacks after climbs, being a heavier rider, I often have to crest a climb at close to 700w to avoid getting dropped, but as soon as the road levels or turns downwards, a few seconds of continued riding at that effort, launches me through the group and to/off the front into the descent, where bodyweight also kicks in... which is really suboptimal, if said climb is close to the finish line, because inevitably I end up leading out the sprint...). That's what I love about bike races is the chess match type dynamic and strategy, rather than just a flat sustained effort... It's not good enough to just have an engine, you also have to be smart with how you use your efforts...

Thanks for the insight!

I'm 100% a trainerroad guy, but I am dealing with a running injury and have next to zero time to train due work; so I figured I would give some workouts in Zwift a shot.

No way in hell. It had me "recovering" well inside my endurance power (~75% of FTP) from 1-minute intervals at over 140%. I lasted one interval before fading.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

Not sure what timezone you're in, but I host a race series called The Morning Grind Fondo p/b Team DRAFT and Team DIRT on Wednesday mornings at 5:45 AM EST / 10:45 GMT. The race gets live broadcast from Zwift Community Live and we try to have as much fun with it as you possibly can that early in the morning (4:45 AM for me).

It is highly competitive across all categories (particularly large B & C grade fields) and we do some random prizes every few races.

We change courses every week, but the same people show up, so you're always testing yourself against the same group--which makes it so much fun. Developing friendly rivalries makes the game so much more engaging.

We're on race #10 of our 12-race series, but we'll be starting a new series after a week break. Expect a grand prize or two absolutely worth your time for nothing more than showing up and racing (don't necessarily need to win).

Come join us!



Edit: for a little background--I race on Team DRAFT which is one of the top teams in Zwift racing. Most of our team has participated in live, "in-person" Zwift race events--we take Zwift racing pretty seriously and consider ourselves "indoor specialists". Team DIRT (Dads Inside Riding Trainers) is a 1,000 member strong team of like-minded individuals who love to have fun and race competitively--they lead group rides every day and have great camaraderie.

Curious - as a bike racer in the real-world, how would you say Zwift's modeling of bike racing pans out during Zwift races? Any parts that seem 'artificial', or does it overall seem to match your real-world racing experiences with drafting, tactics, etc.?

Yeah, I think that the distance is a little different. I like to do the longer races where endurance is to my advantage. Last race was 29 miles. So, about 70+ min and thus a little below FTP. I still have trouble with sprints because i dont feel comfortable getting out of the saddle on my trainer.

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Definitely interested in that. 4:45am for me as well. As long as I'm done riding by 7am I can make it. I'll keep an eye out and join in. Thanks!

For me - It's different in a lot of ways. Firstly every Zwift race is a TT. There's no coasting or catching your breath when you've chased back on.... or 'sitting in'. As soon as you drop power in a group you're thrown back a long way in the group. Drafting wise there's no 'feel' to it, so you're never quite sure when you're in the best position... and with automatic steering your position isn't within your control. That also means there's no skill or craft in bike positioning... and given there's no virtual wind, there's no gutter action or positioning yourself to let your team catch the draft while putting others in the gutter. No steering means no surprise attacks across the other side of the road, or swapping turns easy. There's a bucketload of real life race tactics and smarts that aren't there. Yet.

What's similar is the 'just hold the wheel' mindset you have to apply. An example of this was a race I did a few weeks ago... I was off the back of a group of eight with three others who were struggling too.. I gave it one last "fck it, get across or die" effort... I made contact with the group and suffered on, the other two were out the back by 60 seconds+ a few kms up the road. So that aspect is similar to racing outside. The draft works.... but it is lacking a few dimensions.

I still don't think these platforms were ever designed for the complexity we're expecting. A lot of features and functions seem to be retro-fitted, which work ok a lot of the time.

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Well described... I wouldn't go as far as saying it is like a TT, because it does have the surge/recover dynamics of a road race, but you can't coast in the pack the way you can sometimes if you're well positioned on the road, you can ease off a bit, but if I dropped to 150w, like I often would in an easier section of a crit, I'd be out the back... Definitely agree with the positioning piece, skilled bike racers are masters of this on the road, but it's completely random in Zwift (if you're not skilled at this, this is a huge bonus riding on zwift, as someone who is fairly adept at moving within a pack, it's a bit of a hinderance). All you can really do is control your fore/aft position by modulating your power expenditures. I'd love to see virtual winds, leading to echeloning, gutter riding, etc. some of these technical challenges are my favorite parts of bike races...

And for sure agree with the hold the wheel aspects, the decision making around burning your matches, and figuring out which gaps to bridge, and when to sit back, this is what gives you the chess match feel of a road race. Also some of the pack dynamics, After all of the talk about nobody escaping on the flats, I raced a flat crit last night, and a few teams were lighting things up tactically and sending riders up the road... We split a breakaway of 17 riders off the peloton on a short 2% incline, and about halfway through, two riders attacked our group on the flats and rode away, they had stretched to almost 15seconds, but then we started to reel them in, but much like a real race, we could see them 10s up the road, and a few guys would go do some good work and claw back a few seconds, but then someone else would pull through and ease off the pace ever so slightly, and the gap would go back out... I got frustrated for sure with the lack of impetus by some, that I ended up taking a monster 2km pull to euthanize the escape with about 5km to go. In hindsight that was probably a bit too soon, in the sense, that we had to endure a few km of relentless attack attempts, before people accepted that it would be a bunch romp to the line (again, also very much like in a real race). I'd also say that the dynamics of a bunch sprint are a bit off, in the sense that because of the random positioning, you can't lead out the way one would do on the road, it feels a lot more like a sprint out of a small breakaway group on the road. That being said, there is very much the dynamic of timing your effort to the line, last night I watched several major reshuffles of our group across the last 5-700m from the line, as people launched their sprints.

I'd say the ebb and flow and dynamics of the race are very similar to on the road, and how the races unfold. The skill element is basically non-existent, in the sense of moving within the draft or the pack, the real skill is managing the amount of riding you do on the front. And you can't recover as truly as you do on the road (although in that sense, Zwift races are great training for the road, in the sense that you have to ride harder to achieve a result).

In terms of courses, I rode a crit last night on the Greater London Flat course, and while primarily flat, still made for a very dynamic and tactical race. I also liked that race because I finally made a main breakaway and took an overall podium...

lightheir wrote:

Curious - as a bike racer in the real-world, how would you say Zwift's modeling of bike racing pans out during Zwift races? Any parts that seem 'artificial', or does it overall seem to match your real-world racing experiences with drafting, tactics, etc.?

From longer road racing perspective: it is not perfect (echelon winds, breakaways, etc. zwift will have most likley higher avg power since you are constantly pedaling) it misses on a lot of real world fun (did anyone figure out how to pee during Zwift race?:), never the less is super cool, better than anything out there.

From 60min Crit perspective is surprisingly close to real crit racing. The only difference is you can't stop pedaling, but when you get dropped it is very hard if at all possible to get back, but you can get back if you manage to catch lapping group from the back. Not the highest FTP/kg wins, but the smartest racer wins. The same as in real world, but slightly different rules apply: you need to feel the race and make the moves depending how people race: if the fields attacks each small hill, use feather power up and attack harder then everyone else. If you are racing with the team, use Discord to communicate (team radio)
People say it is hard to figure out when you are drafting most efficiently, I think (I might be hallucinating) I know when I'm the most efficient in the group, by looking at my position vs group I know if I'm doing just enough to stay with them or too much. Experiment on flat and apply slightly less/more power and see how your position changes, it does change based on power you output, if you are falling behind don't apply massive power or you will end up at the front, 4-5 hard kicks is most of the time enough.

Here is power comparison from 1st real crit (outside) of 2018 and first virtual crit on Zwift, I find it surprisingly close, I rearranged my entire training to get one 60min Zwift race every week:

https://twitter.com/sebo_z/status/1075738963896283136


Considering, no yellow lines, no licences, no wheel overlapping, no feed zones, no team cars, no wind, never rains, always kinda warm etc etc. it is still super helpful to break Canadian winter monotony.

my favorite race is the KISS 100km road race

mainly because it makes the hours fly by

more like a TTT rather than an ITT. the AP/NP ratio in zwfit is quite a bit close to unity than what one would see in a road race, though not exactly that close (as one would expect to see in a flat-ish ITT)

it's also similar in the sense that after a hard pull in a TTT one could soft pedal for only so long before required to surge again to get on the back of the TTT train. never a true rest for the wicked

For me, the "best" race is simply any Zwift "event" that is at a time convenient for me and that is not a "ride" or "workout" with pre-set performance parameters (e.g. "tempo ride at 2.5-3.0 W/kg"). You don't want to be the jerk who tries to turn a "ride" or "workout" into a race.

All other events, whether designated as races, fondos, Tour de [Zwift/London/etc] stages, etc. inevitably turn into races, at least for those participants who choose to race the event.

While Zwift races are often compared to TTs, I think an even better comparison is to CX. A big over-threshold effort at the beginning to establish groups, then an over-under threshold effort for the remainder.

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Is the next Morning Grind Fondo (assuming that's what is will still be called) still going to be the same time on Wednesdays? Or has that been decided yet?

We're probably keeping our current time slot--with Zwift's launching of Super League and a few other big race directors (3R, KISS, TT1) filling up the calendar, we really want to keep our slot secure.

I fear that if we added another time, we'd likely split our current group, which could degrade the race.

Does that time not work very well for you?

That time works great for me, so I was hoping it was staying, glad to here it probably is

I end up joining a race or group ride that fits into my time slot for being on the trainer.

I'm fairly new to using Zwift (2 weeks) so maybe I'm missing something, but my initial perception of Zwift and what I find is 98% of any "group" ride turns into a race of sorts anyway......just final results are missing most of the time (or at least accurate results). Group rides that are "supposed" to keep the group together often turn into a kind of semi organized hammer fest or race of sorts at the front. These feel more like your weekend type large group ride hammer fest where you find a group of your abilities and are always looking to catch the next group in front.

Personally I am still struggling to grasp the feel of staying on the front consistently without powering off and then dropping back too far...rinse and repeat. Getting better, but still learning. There is a learning curve of actual road vs vr as well as virtual doping.

You might look at rides that say social ride on them. Zsun and ZHCC do some good 1.5-2.0 rides that truly do keep a nice group together. They are totally meant to just relax and spin and not race. Last night I did a social ride and out of the 42 riders 38 of them were in the big group with the other four just a bit behind.

Thanks, I'm ok with the hammer rides.......I find them pretty addicting and fun. I think the key component is to read a rides description to understand what is should be....usually they are pretty close.

zwiftpower.com usually has 'results' for most rides

My experience with group rides, especially the larger ones, is that no matter what the advertised pace is, there is always a subset of people who race them or treat them as a hammer ride. That always perplexes me, as there is no shortage of zwift races available at anytime of day if that is what you want to do. That being said, just because some people hammer off the front doesn't mean you have too. The majority of us stay with or near the beacon/lead rider and we don't worry about those way off the front.

There is no doubt in my mind that you can race competitively in the B-races. Now whether or not you have the kick to win a bunch sprint, I can't say, but you are definitely strong enough to hold the lead pack in almost any B-group race. You probably need to get the hang of zwift physics and learn how to conserve energy by setting in the draft, the rubber-band effect takes a bit to get used to. It sounds like you mostly plan to stick to trainer road, which is cool, but if decide to take up zwift racing some more, I promise you your strong enough for cat-B.