I’ve been riding the first two rounds of the Zwift Hill Climb Racing Club series and really enjoying it…
The classification, similar to other events like Herd Climbers Gambit, is based only on the KOM times. Drafting is disabled.
However, I’ve noticed that a lot of riders seem to be riding hard before and after the KOM, spoiling their chances of posting competitive KOM times. I’d surmise that they just haven’t read the small-print about how the race works.
This morning’s Volcano Climb race involved 8 or 9 riders tearing away at 5W/kg (probably wondering why the draft felt odd) on the 12km lead-in to the Volcano. As far as I can tell, only one A rider paced himself to the foot of the Volcano and treated it as a short hillclimb TT. (In an event like this, all of the Normalised Power figures really ought to be showing red.)
Wouldn’t it be an idea to make more prominent the fact that this is a non-standard race format? Perhaps if an on-screen banner appeared when you enter the pen to announce that it’s a non-standard race, and give an option to ‘Tell Me More’ which would link to the organiser’s info? This would be useful for points races, enforced-bike, non-drafting races, etc etc too.
Another option might be to make the event description available in the start pen. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think you can pull it up (someone correct me if this is wrong). The info icon only shows the people in the pen. If I designed it, the info icon would be for the event info, and then have a way to toggle between the chat window and the scrollable riders-nearby list while in the pen.
I was laughing to myself while watching the live event data on zwiftpower, more than a few didn’t read the ********** manual (description)!
Bit gutted personally, because the volcano KOM will take me in pen D something like 11-12mins, pootling the 12Km to the climb will likely take me ~35mins and the descent back to the route finish will take ~10mins… And I’m limited to ~30mins cycling per day, with one day per week of ~45mins. Only stupid way I can come up with to post a time is to ride the lead-in one day, keep the race live on my device and resume the following day.
On a separate matter, the ability to have custom start and finish locations would completely resolve this situation for these events. Warm up in the pen at the foot of the climb, race using the TT module so that it can’t be mistaken for a drafting race, finish at the summit.
How are you going to cope with the time demands of the Epic and AdZ, @Steve_Cl ?
Yeah, it’s probably a lost cause, just like the Zwift TT Club series. I was hoping/relying on my long covid clinic letting me start doing more daily exercise as long as I stayed away from anything close to or beyond threshold. Turned out what I was doing earlier in the year, trying to get back towards where I was last year until October by increasing duration/intensity, was too rapid and a really bad idea for my overall recovery.
Anyway, enough of me feeling sorry for myself, the 1230 climbing bunch haven’t read the memo either!
If they don’t read the description then it is their loss.
But @Paul_Southworth has a point it would be nice having the event description in the Zwift game event selection, I was hoping that would happen when the new UI was released.
therefore I never enter a event from the Zwift menu, I use either Zwifthacks or the companion app.
I’ve joined a race on very short notice a few times and then didn’t have a convenient way to read the description, especially since it’s harder to find in Companion once it’s paired to the game and won’t give me a list of the events I’m signed up for anymore. Sure that’s my problem but from a product perspective it would improve the user’s experience. The description is available from the game menu if you click on the event tile and then click again for the description, but not once you’re in the pen.
The information provided in the start pens needs some serious work.
It doesn’t even show the race distance. It will show you the route and the number of laps but unless you have memorized how far every route in Zwift is then you will have to find the race length somewhere else or hopefully you’ve checked the event description on Zwifthacks or ZwiftPower beforehand.
This contrasts with the Event screen in the Zwift app. While the event tiles don’t show distance or route they do show the number of laps which is completely useless without knowing which route it is. I really can’t understand the logic behind that decision.
Clicking on the event tile will show the laps, distance and elevation for each category but not the route. If you want to know the route you need to scroll down to open the Event Description which may or may not show the route depending on if the race organiser has put the information there (which in many cases they don’t preferring to use a generic event description).
It’s just a general all round hotch-potch of information which clearly shows the disjointed development process.
Totally agree @Aoi_Niigaki - I’ve never entered an event on the spur of the moment from the Zwift Event screen - only ever enter through the Companion App or, occasionally, the Zwift website if following a link from Zwifthacks.
It’s interesting how, even when the draft is turned off, riders have been tending to form into groups, especially towards the front of these HC events, when they’re not aware that it’s based on KOM time only. This is a snapshot of the race situation halfway up the Volcano. Note that none of these riders have a red NP value showing…
Willing to bet that the vast majority don’t know that a) draft is turned off and b) it is only a hill climb event - same in mine today despite me sending messages to remind people.
Which essentially proves the point of this thread. Going to try sticking a pace partner (at a slowish pace) in the season 2 events to send out a bunch of messages in the hope that someone will read them.
@James_Zwift , this was the event that you rode - don’t take it personally that no-one seemed to be heeding your messages!
It might also be worth disabling the results display in Companion App. Some people seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that they’ve ‘won’ these events…
