Racing on Zwift
Are you looking to race on Zwift. Here Coach Alan has written a short ‘How To’ including 5 Top Tips on how to gain some performance advantages!
Most Zwift Races will link with Zwift Power and you will want to make this your first step into the racing world as it can be necessary to be eligible in the results. Zwift Power is a third party app that connects with your Zwift account allowing the community of racers to track and analyse results and performance. Zwift Power allows searching and filtering of results as well as all your other Zwift activities. On top of that it can also be used to help verify the validity of your results and check for those who may be fudging their data in order to gain an unfair advantage.
In order to connect your Zwift account to Zwift Power there is one challenging step which is finding your Zwift ID Code. The easiest way is via a web browser as you setup Zwift Power, if you log into https://my.zwift.com/ and select one of your activities you will get to a page that looks like the screen-grab below. On this page if you click on the gear icon a pop up box like the one in the image below will appear you can then hover over ‘Download FIT File’ with your cursor to get the little pop up of your address to appear so that you can memorise or write down your Zwift ID from the bar at the bottom, this will be a six digit number.
Once you have this number head back to Zwift Power and click on ‘connect’ at the top of the page entering your Zwift ID when prompted. You will receive a four digit code, which you will then add to your last name in your Zwift settings. Don’t worry once connected you can then remove this number and simply be left with your club (TTH) after your last name. The final step once the number is added to your name is to head back to Zwift Power and click ‘connect to my account’ and you are done.
For the purposes of TTH events if you could add (TTH-) after your name that will help filter results. (The dash after TTH is to avoid errant ‘maTTHews’ getting into the results). After each event you can then specifically look at results based alongside fellow club athletes.
Zwift Power will also help to categorise you for your racing as either A+, A, B,C or D category based on your FTP and weight. Zwift Power will track this and your category will be displayed on your profile page. These will help you you to choose specific events to compete within your category and work on progressing to the next category as your cycling metrics improve.
A+: 4.6W/kg FTP or higher
A: 4.02W/kg FTP - 4.6W/kg or higher
B: 3.2W/kg to 4.0W/kg FTP
C: 2.5W/kg to 3.2W/kg FTP
D: Under 2.5W/kg FTP
Within the companion app, you can then search for suitable races or events via the events tab. In the image to the left, you can see that I have signed up to a race on Friday 17th July at 19:35. So what about race day itself?
Well, events open to join 30mins before the start time and from the world that you are riding in you will be invited to ‘Join’ via a pop up. So when it comes to racing simply log on and start riding and if you are signed up already the pop-up will appear. You will then automatically be ported to the warm-up area pen for the race. This pen acts as a holding area for everyone to gather in. It also sets your starting position therefore if you head to the pen with one minute to go you will be starting at the back! (Top Tip 1: If you join the pen at 30min to go you can then leave to do your warm-up and join again having reserved your starting spot, sneaky!).
Within this area, everybody is held still pedalling away on ‘ghost’ turbo trainers. There is the ability to chat to other riders and you will be able to see how many riders are in the race and perhaps recognise a few names as the camera shots move and change around the group. You will also be able to see a countdown clock to the race start.
This is very useful to help with going through your warm-up potentially but also essential to the race start. Zwift has an ever so slight lag between you pushing hard on the pedals and your avatar responding. This lag when combined, with the ‘traditional’ very fast start to Zwift races, means that you can very easily be dropped immediately if you aren’t (Top Tip 2) bringing your watts up to just above FTP with 5seconds to go.
Once the event starts the events are very much a case of staying with the group, time trial or triathlon pacing this is not! The physics of the game means that groups of riders have a larger draft effect much like a peloton, this makes solo attacks very hard to sustain, but also means that if you are dropped it is nigh on impossible to catch back up. Top Tip 3 is having excellent course knowledge to anticipate where the group may break up. Enabling you to mentally prepare to work extremely hard to stay with the group or even potentially work hard to break up the group and increase your chances of a win.
Next, we need to focus on saving energy the first way you can do this, Top Tip 4, is watching your avatar. Whilst using a (Non-Tron) Road Bike your avatar will ride in the drops whilst they are outside of a draft effect, in other words, you are towing everyone else, or they will ride up on the hoods whilst drafting. Balancing your effort to stay in the draft is tricky and takes practice. Top Tip 3 also comes in handy too!
The second way to save energy is Top Tip 4 supertucking! The supertuck is only possible when all three of the variables below are met but it does give you the chance to sit up, coast and get your breath back as well as possibly wiping down some sweat and/or grabbing a quick drink.
58kph (36mph) or greater
Descent at least 3%
Power output less than 11W
But don’t get too distracted as once any one of these variables isn’t met your avatar will sit back up and you can soon be dropped from the group. Top Tip 5 is simple to concentrate!
The final part of Zwift racing is PowerUps these are collected each time you go through an arch (complete a lap/sprint/K.O.M). Power-Ups, via pressing the spacebar, give you the ability to give your avatar little boosts in the form of increased ability to draft, improved aerodynamics, invisibility, decreased weight, makes you undraftable or simply gives you more experience points. Power-Ups may or not be turned on for usage in events by the race organisers when used they add a tactical element to racing as they are distributed to riders at random and are only awarded if you don’t currently have one. When should you use them or not use them is part art, part skill and part luck of the draw as to which you get.
My final tip is more general and that is to accept and embrace the nuances of racing in the Zwift world, it isn’t the same as the real world, it is different but there are lessons to be learnt and fun to be had. Ride On!
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