Last winter when I was using Zwift I felt like there was always 2 or 3 races going on for me to choose from when I went to go use Zwift. Now when I get up in the morning to do my ride, there are not races to choose from. Sometimes there is one. I have all of the filters off and the time I am looking for is around 6AM US Mountain time. Am I just looking at a bad time or have there been less races created than what there were last year
Jason
I can see a race tomorrow at 6:10am MST and another at 6:40am MST. Can you see those? If not, try the button to reset your filters in Companion (even though no filters may be showing) - sometimes this does seem to go weird.
Less races than last year.
It is an unpopular race time. The racing schedule purge removed low attendance events. This means you have few options, mostly just the ZRacing “filler” events. I also like to race at a relatively unpopular time. Now I just don’t race much anymore since those changes. I’d be happy to race 5-10 people in a more interesting race, but that option doesn’t exist anymore.
Because that time tomorrow would directly compete with the James and Eric pizza ride?
In general, I would think though this time would be somewhat popular – it’s prework-day (for 9-5ers) in most of the US, and lunchtime in GMT.
There’s no conflict between group rides and races in terms of scheduling, so the only effect would be if people chose to do the group ride instead of a race at that time, which could result in a race being cut due to low attendance. Whatever people choose to do instead of joining a race could result in the race start time going away.
Like you, I have always been able to multiple races within an hour or two. This year? I’m lucky if I can find 2-3 all day. Add in the broken system of pushing “everyone” to a ZRS of 700 and then putting them in a place that has even further reduced events means I’ve all but given up racing.
I think I did around 200 last year.
If we reduce the number of races to 1 per day, then attendance on a per-race basis will be higher.
Product Management 101
I think you only read part of Product Management 101.
It’s also about maximising the overall total number of participants as well as participants per race. If you held two races per day, there would likely be a greater number of total participants than one race per day (and probably the same for 3, 4, 5 etc per day). Too few per day and people won’t join because it’s not convenient timing. Too many and you have a fall off as people want to race in a reasonably sized field in each race.
It’s when you strike the balance between maximising both total participants and participants per race…
We’ve got more races to choose from with the current Zwift Games roster. The Epics are coming back at the end of the month so we’ll be able to pound ourselves into the ground before going to work according to James in the this thread, he’s gonna have a 0330 PT (0430 MT) and a 0530 PT (O630 MT) start for those. And since the Epics are, well, Epic we’re gonna have a coupla hours of solid effort there. Be able to check off that Strava Fondo badge as a plus.
Well, the rest of the book would talk about;
a) accepting customer feedback rather than getting upset that people aren’t happy and quitting the forums.
b) learning to test for why people aren’t racing vs those that are.
c) looking beyond fairly surface metrics like “attendance” and understanding experience.
Size of field is the surface level. Is racing fun in 700+ when you only get a 20-25min race vs the same cheats every day… worth looking at maybe.
Zackly so, Matt. Zackly so…