STW Zwift WRTL race series

Right so I threatened to throw my hat in the ring on this so here we go…

Those who are interested will no doubt be aware the Zwift have launched a race series in association with WTRL who organise the TTT. Thanks to @savoyad we’ve been fielding a team for that for a while, for anyone interested there’s a thread here…

Zwift Team Time Trial, Thursday

The new series will take the form of a scratch race one week, a TTT the next, and starts this coming Tuesday the 13th.

I’m happy to organise a team but there are some issues with that which I’ll go into below, the important things to know for now:

First Race Next Tuesday 13/10
Racing will be every Tuesday at (roughly) 19.15
First Race is a Scratch race – course is big foothills, custom 35km distance finishing at the top of the volcano KOM.
A full course list can be seen at https://wtrl.racing/zrl/Zwift-Racing-League.php#times
Racing is by ZwiftPower category.
Its a team event.
Team entries need to be in by (effectively) close of play Saturday.
Race entries will be invite only, not on companion etc.
HR monitors are mandatory.

So by close of play Saturday we need to have decided if were entering a team(s). Picked a captain and a manager (they can be the same person), and put together our team roster.

Teams (at our level) can have as many members as we like but, races are limited to a maximum of 6 riders per race however as well as minimums for each format – 3 for scratch 4 or TTT. failure to field 3(4) to 6 riders in any one race will see the team DQ’d, the assumption there is that means from the race not the season but its not exactly clear.

You can race above your ZP category, you can’t race below. If your ZP category goes up mid season you can ride out the season in the category you started but its intimated they mean an increase of the “oh well done” variety not the “well you should have been an A all along” one.

As mentioned I’m happy to manage/captain a team, the issues I see for us as a group are below, but cards on the table:

I won’t be racing this season at least.

From a group perspective:

First and foremost the problem is whilst I can manage multiple teams I can’t captain more than one, each team needs a captain so some (most by the sounds) of the admin will need to be booted off onto others if we enter more than one team.

Given teams need to be suitable for the highest category rider on the roster, I honestly don’t see a single team working, if we have a single A you’re all racing A, all season, I do just tick over into A and I can’t really hold a(ny) group on the road in A. The Bs and Cs amongst us would be out for a social with the other members of our team. In my opinion we’re going to need at least 4 riders, in each category, in a team of their own, outside of Cat C I don’t think we’ll manage that.

The need for the riders to be by invite, max 6, min 3/4 means there’s very little flexibility which, real world, doesn’t work for a lot of people. We can’t just enter 9 riders and see how we do, we can’t race at all if we can’t make 3.

Along side the TTT which I hope will still be running two nights a week of organised Zwift is a fair commitment that won’t work for everyone, even if the only reason is it doesn’t leave a lot of time for ad-hoc Zwift.

All that being said for anyone who is interested and wants to race, I need By 9am Friday:
your Zwift name (mandatory),
forum name (please),
ZP category (mandatory)
A contact email you’re happy me using for the entries (in case I need to submit one to WTRL/Zwift) (mandatory)
and a yay or nay on if you’ll captain a team happily.

I’ve setup a separate email address to deal with all the admin so please send to stwzwiftwrtl@outlook.com

Obviously feel free to post up here any opinions, options etc, and whether you’ll be in but please make sure you email me the details if you do want to give it a go so I don’t miss anyone as I’ll need to do the back office stuff Friday afternoon.

ta.

I can only make alternate Tuesdays, at best

I’m a slow B currently but may get back to my golden era of “middling B”, given time

Have a feeling that both the above make me a poor bet for this

What does a captain do, and do they have to do it every week ?

Thanks for looking into this Brian.

I don’t think I will take part but will give the thread a bump for you this morning.

In my opinion the format whereby you are essentially only riding in your Cat and we need to field a team of that category only will be hard to manage. Also having a TTT every other week means that you will be doing two TTTs a week (assuming that you compete in the TTT). I enjoy the Thursday one but not sure I would want to repeat the experience on a Tuesday and that would dilute the Thursday efforts. They would be better having a shorter format of 6 scratch races I think.

If we only have enough people to field a Cat C team that eliminates a number of riders who may want to race. It just doesn’t feel very inclusive. I understand the reasons why but I cant see how the scratch races are going to be any different to a normal zwift race. There is a big difference in speed between the front of C and back of C (or A as you have alluded to in your post).

Going to give this one a miss and wait for Robbo’s series to start again. Looks like this carries a lot of potential for faffage, with work and family commitments I don’t think I could give it the commitment it needs.

Can’t commit to this as work makes it difficult to get back and ready for a 19-15 start time.

Will be watching with interest though and seeing how you get on…good luck!

I can commit to all the October races, but will struggle to make many Tuesdays come November. As an upper/mid B cat there’s pretty much no chance of points in the scratch races in A though, which could be demoralising. But I’m happy to fill in if you don’t get enough A’s…I’ll just do my domestique bit for them.

I don’t think I can commit to the whole series which makes it difficult so I’m probably out. I’m upper mid pack Cat C but I’m only riding for taking participation certificate based on the scoring they’ve set out so.

Just as a heads up 7.15 is ladies, men’s races go off at 7.45 based on the info I’ve seen so far.

I don’t think I can commit to the whole series which makes it difficult so I’m probably out.

as I understand it you can have an unlimited pool of riders? Since we’ve got lots of Cs it would be great to have a reasonable pool so we can field a team every week but without the commitment of anyone having to ride every week.

I REALLY like the idea of this series and think it would be awesome to have a “proper” race only with team-mates & team tactics e.g. supported surprise breakaways! Something you just can’t do in the normal Zwift races where you’re pitched in with a load of randoms; I really think it would bring an extra dimension to the racing which would be exciting & different.

Judging by the numbers we’d definitely be able to field a C team, and a B team as well I’d have thought if enough were interested? Plus potentially a mixed team including anybody else who were just in it for the lols as it probably wouldn’t be optimally competitive!

HOWEVER I also really enjoyed the RRS (Robbo Race Series 😃) and wouldn’t want to miss out on the Xmas one, so I guess as that is going ahead on Tuesdays I’m happy to skip the WTRL for now. Would be cool to have a shot at this team series though in the future if it could possibly be arranged…

Sorry its taken me a while to respond folks. I posted this crawled into my pit and passed out last night, I think I was likely asleep before nixie crossed the line in Robbo’s race.

Have a feeling that both the above make me a poor bet for this

I’ll be honest scaredy, we’re in the same boat, just a cat apart and given the nature of the series I can’t see it attracting a spread of riders like a normal zwift race, I think I’d struggle to hold my own in B here. YMMV of course but I think unless you’re pretty damn good in your category this will be a lonely and demoralising series.

What does a captain do, and do they have to do it every week ?

I don’t believe a captain has to race at all, let alone every week, but what they do have to do is arrange who will race, get invites to those folks, ensure the team fields an appropriate number of riders etc. The manager is by the sounds of it all about compliance.

A few of the above echo the reasons I’m not going to race, I wanted to keep those separate from the “bigger issues” I’ve tried to cover in the OP but a separate post e seems a reasonable place for it…

1) I like the TTT on a Thursday in part because it’s something different, I don’t like the idea of doing one twice a week every other week.

2) for other reasons I can’t commit to 2 nights of zwift a week. In practice I might make them but, realistically it’s a choice of every Thursday ant what ever else fits week by week or every Tuesday and what fits. I’m sticking to Thursday.

3) i think the cat split for teams is a bad idea, one reason sports clubs work is the social side of it, I’d be happy enough doing cat a scratch racing to make 4 entrants this week if that 4 could be 2cs,1b and me, even if that were across different races. I’m not interested in having to race by cat in a more restricted format than I already can via normal zwift races. I can see it working well enough for big teams, I can’t see it being very good for less fun clubs. (fwiw I think they’re looking at the wrong models, they’re trying to be a real sport so they’re looking to real world examples like cycling football etc when they should be looking at things like league of legends, counterstrike or fifa).

4) it’s all a bit serious.

2) for other reasons I can’t commit to 2 nights of zwift a week. In practice I might make them but, realistically it’s a choice of every Thursday ant what ever else fits week by week or every Tuesday and what fits. I’m sticking to Thursday.

This goes for me too, with work and young family commitments. I will definitely commit to Robbo’s race series on Tuesdays once they are back on in November, plus do the Thursday TTT when I can but it won’t be every week.
Best I don’t put this on the agenda too, however I’m happy to be put in a “C” pool and join when I can (if spaces are available that week!)

I’m a bit disappointed with this. It could have been brilliant for us, but now the details are available I am not at all surprised to see the reservations being expressed.

It’s basically going to work best for teams who can rotate, informally, a fairly large squad of riders. And the category splits mean this is quite a demanding threshold – a large squad per category is quite an ask. Maybe it will work for the setups we see fielding multiple teams each week in the TTT (but adding it to that? I’m really not convinced).

So, as a B, I’m out. Sorry. I might be wrong, but I don’t think we have the critical mass to make it work in our category. And, for what it’s worth, the B races look too much for me both physically and time wise. I would never enter a 50km race round big foot hills normally, even with the intention of riding as a teammate to some of you lot. I certainly can’t do a race that long midweek! The C/D races look a bit more fun though, which makes me think…

…maybe it can work for us in C? We might have a critical mass there to make rotation according to taste and availability work and the shorter races might be more attractive than the A/B ones. The TTT element is daft, but just fortnightly scratch races are half the commitment. There’s no need to try and win the league. There might be fun available from just racing as a team in the scratch races. I don’t mean to pressure the C’s. I just mean don’t be put off by the negativity emanating from us B’s in this thread.

There were a lot of competing pressures on WTRL (including presumably from zwift themselves) here, and I can see some of them playing out in unfortunate ways in the rules as published. If it works, that means substantial numbers of zwifters are getting something out of it – just not us, at least not as a STW collective. I don’t think it’s churlish to hope that there might need to be changes in future series which bring it back into our range though. Let’s see.

The TTT element is daft, but just fortnightly scratch races are half the commitment. There’s no need to try and win the league. There might be fun available from just racing as a team in the scratch races. I don’t mean to pressure the C’s.

haven’t actually read through the rules yet! would they throw you out if you didn’t turn up for the TTTs, only the scratch races? 😂

THAT SAID, we could get 99% the same out of it just by entering some random Zwift races together when we felt like it/schedules allowed, bumblebee-ing up, getting on Discord & trying to support each other/team tactics etc and just trying to smash up random people, only AS A TEAM 😃 Could even semi-formalise it, e.g. say we’re always going to aim for the same couple of races every week, then whoever happens to be free can just turn up & join in?

I’ve entered during October but via our club.     They’ll be max 8 of us based on availability at the time a mix of A’s and B’s but we’ve agreed to ride to help each other out and might identify some sprints, KOM’s and Primes to go for and try our luck, likely with the B’s leading out the A’s for as long as we can.

That pretty much leaves me as a Sprinter/Domestique but who cares it’ll be a laugh.    I’ve done longer races – Newbury Velo at 1:45 – and they are OK but hard work.

I think teams can just skip races – or at least this is implicit in the rule requiring participation in a minimum number of races to be eligible for promotion (or indeed relegation!).

THAT SAID, we could get 99% the same out of it just by entering some random Zwift races together when we felt like it/schedules allowed, bumblebee-ing up, getting on Discord & trying to support each other/team tactics etc and just trying to smash up random people, only AS A TEAM 😃 Could even semi-formalise it, e.g. say we’re always going to aim for the same couple of races every week, then whoever happens to be free can just turn up & join in?

That sounds like a good idea to me.

Can you weight dope the wrong way? If Brian put his weight as 180kg I think he could complete in C?

I’m going to give the formal Zwift series a miss because it sounds like an admin nightmare but would def be up for entering another regular series as an ad-hoc team.

Can you weight dope the wrong way? If Brian put his weight as 180kg I think he could complete in C?

Absolutely, and in my case I wouldn’t even have to cheat per se, I could easily manipulate when I weigh in to kick me into B, without it being any real hinderence. Usually the difference between A and B for me is a rounding error, at 79kg I’m an A, at 79.1kg I’m a B… I’m quite literally a shit A.

Struggling a bit to get riding in at the moment but interested and will try. Thanks Brian

I like the idea of turning up at a specified race and working as a team.
My shifts rule out TT racing regularly as the moment. When I retire in 24 years I’ll be up for it 😂

When I retire in 24 years I’ll be up for it 😂

I didn’t realise you were in your late 50s… Or do I need to break some bad news to you?

I’ve thrown my hat into the ring, such as it is. If we don’t make a team I’ll try to find another one via Facebook, maybe with a time that could let me do anything Robbo does too, although even as I type it, that sounds like a stoopid idea.

Evening

As is I’ve only the one email (I’ll reply shortly!) and a few on here that have voiced interest but I don’t think there’s enough interest to warrant a team this season.

I’m going to keep an eye on the results as best I can and will look at something for next season maybe.

I’m not convinced a mixed category team will work with their framework, though I think it would be most fun and certainly work better for us lot.

In the interim i might have a think on something that may work well for us lot following some ideas raised here and in other threads

Late to the party here, but think I’d prefer hold off for Robbo’s next series rather than this. Up for a team outing in some normal Zwift races though as Zilog suggests.

Who went in for this, and is anyone interested in a space on a team for occasional riding as I could do with beefing up our rider pool a little.

We currently have a group of 6x Bs and 6x Cs which doesn’t give much flexibility for call offs, our B team has been pretty reliable but we only fielded 4x Cs yesterday and couldn’t get enough for a team at all the week before.

To tempt you we have a gin sponsor and a nice little bonus structure in place courtesty of our sponsor!

@tenacious_doug if you’d’ve posted last week (or even yesterday) I’d have given it a crack, but the RobboRaceSeries™ starts up again next week!!

Yeah I did see that, shame it clashes as I’d liked to have done both myself.