How to find, sign up, and strategize for a Zwift race 101
Hello and welcome to my post about how to find, sign up, and prepare for a Zwift race. These handful of steps will give you more than half of what you could ever hope to figure out in preparation for a Zwift race.
Find An Event
There are a few main places to search for events. To save you time you probably only want to actually check out the last one.
One place is on www.zwift.com. You can scroll down for a long time and see each event in start time order. If you are looking for a specific type of event you can click the “FILTER EVENTS” button on the right. There you will see just a few basic filters to choose from.
Another location is on the Zwift Companion App. Open the app and press “Events” on the lower left of the screen. Here you will see the events very similarly to www.zwift.com. One difference here is that you can filter events to ones that only friends are signed up for. That’s neat. That and the convenience of the app is why I would never use the website over the app.
The best place to find events is at www.zwiftpower.com. The difference here is the there are way more filters to choose from. You can filter events based on their distance and profile (hilly or flat), what world they are in, and much more. This is where I search for events 99% of the time.
Sign up for a race
Most of the time you will sign up for races on the Zwift Companion app. You can also sign up at www.zwift.com. There are some races that are different. One example is the Echelon Racing Series. Just like most IRL races in America you would sign up for them at www.bikereg.com. Another example is the Zwift Racing League. You would sign up as a team on www.wtrl.racing and get a “Race Pass” which is a link that you press that signs you up for the race.
What category do I sign up for?
Zwift categories used to be a little more simple to understand. A little while back they changed how they were calculated. As I started to learn about it I realized that I wasn’t going to take the time to dive into it. Basically, categories were and still are based mostly on your power to weight ratio. Sometimes you will see a rider with a high power to weight ratio in your race. This can happen when a rider is lighter. You also need to get to a certain absolute power in order to get placed in a higher category. The more power to weight and power you have the closer to category A you will be.
It’s not so important to know how it is calculated because your category will be automatically calculated for you. Some races are “category enforced,” which means they will only allow you to sign up for your category (or higher). They do this so people don’t sandbag and dominate lower categories. Sometimes a race will let you sign up for any category. If you sign up for a lower category you will most likely be removed from results on www.zwiftpower.com. It’s also not fair to the riders who are in their correct category. Don’t be that person.
How do I find out information about the course? What bike/wheels are best for the course?
Zwiftinsider.com is everyone’s favorite place for all of this information. Just like in the real world Zwift has uphills, downhills, flats, and different road surfaces. Here is an example of a course recon. They give you a lot of information about the course including a suggestion of what bike/wheelset to use.
Just like outside the equipment that you use makes a difference in your speed. Zwiftinsider will suggest a bike to use but if you want to dive deeper into the equipment, numbers, and tests, you can. This is where you start that rabbit hole.
Power ups
Power ups are a gamification bonus that make you faster somehow. Every time you pass an arch you’ll have a chance at getting a power up. The aero reduces your aerodynamic drag, the anvil makes you heavier and faster downhill, and the burrito eliminates the draft for anyone behind you. The power ups aren’t strong enough to make it feel like you’re on an e-bike compared to everyone else but they can definitely be the difference between 1st and 10th at a race finish. Sometimes it’s possible to know ahead of time what power ups will be available in the event. Sometimes you’ll know the percentage of chance you have to get each one. Sometimes, like in Zwift Grand Prix, specific power ups will be assigned at each arch. Sometimes power ups are turned off and you won’t get any! Here is a list of the power ups and their effects.
Race results
Race results can be found on the Companion App or www.zwiftpower.com. If you wanted to get crazy you could check your race ranking against every other Zwiftpower user in the world. But that is the 201 class.
A little deeper
Here is a video using some of this information that I made to help out a newer team prepare for the Zwift Academy Race #2 Cobbled Climbs that will take (or took if you’re reading this in the future - whoa 😵💫) place on 12/8/23 at 8 am eastern standard time.
