As a newish Zwifter, 68Kg and 63 years old starting from the couch 8 weeks ago (no gym for 8 months) it took me 1 hour 20. I’ve put off stage 3 until catchup week so I shall be further along the improvement path but it still fills me with dread! I agree with earlier post on shorter rides for people like me who are keen to take part-maybe a proper category E?
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Hi shooj,
Today I did Stage 3A up Mount Ventoux. Since it was the 1st time I rode up Ventoux, I decided to continue after the TdZ finish to reach the top 6 km further on (at an even slower pace, being ‘toast’ after the really long climb).
Anyways, after I really finished Mount Ventoux I noticed I wasn’t informed about my Mount Ventoux segment time, did not make it to the time list nor did I get the Mount Ventoux route badge. I completed the local round at the top and started the descend, thinking I would probably get the earned rights later on after finishing the ride, or even in the Zwift Companion overview of the ride activity. But no, unfortunately. Must be a bug, however I would like this corrected by Zwift for me and other riders going up. Are there more riders suffering from the same?
@Aernout_Henning: The route for TdZ Stage 3A is ‘La Reine’ and this route does not take in the full Ven-Top climb, which is why you don’t get a time on the board. And you wouldn’t get the badge even if it did because you have to pick the route in order to get the badge.
If you want want to be on the Ven-Top leaderboard you will have to start from the beginning of the climb, which can be reached by starting at the general France spawn point and heading away from the Marina (the climbing starts nearly immediately, but the timed Ven-Top segment doesn’t start for a few K after that). If you pick Ven-Top as the route (which is required if you want to collect the route badge) you will automatically be ‘steered’ in the right direction, but if you are doing this as a free ride you will need to choose the correct turn option when it comes up. (The La Reine route comes at the climb from the other direction and misses the first bit of the timed section, which is why you’re not on the leaderboard.)
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Make sure you update your game, folks.
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Hey everyone - I updated the first post in this thread, but I’m also going to re-post the same info here regarding some of the crashes and crediting issues being reported.
The best way to ensure your ride is counted towards the tour is to save and exit after you see the completion banner at the end of the stage.
Some technical reasons your ride didn’t count towards the tour include:
Game crashes: thanks to your feedback, we’ve identified and fixed a crash related to the large number of avatars that your computer needs to draw. Please update to version 1.0.60640 as it rolls out across all OS platforms. As @Dave_ZPCMR noted - this just went live within the past hour. (iOS is still pending Apple review but we expect that in the App Store shortly)
Logging in on multiple devices simultaneously: Saving & uploading immediately after each session is the surest way to avoid this problem. Swiping the app into the background on mobile OS’s may leave your session open. Additionally, we recommend having the Zwift app installed only on one device.
Working out after finishing a stage or not completing the final lap: Be sure to save and upload the session once you see the stage completion banner.
If you ran into any of the above issues, and completed most of the ride please contact us through support.zwift.com so we can credit your stage accordingly. Please note the date & time of the stage that did not credit when you contact Support.
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I was surprised how similar my times were for the longer, shorter and standard routes of Stage 2.
Perhaps the aim was to make the TdZ longer/more challenging this year, and to build people up for Stage 3?
Last year there were two TdZ routes in Yorkshire - “long” was 2 laps and “short” was 1 lap - whereas this year the “short” is/was 2 laps.
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Unlocked the tour socks after Stage 3. Needed to log in back to Zwift to get the reward (as you seem to need to do with these things).
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@Paul_Dorset The rookie rides are only on Tuesdays and Saturdays (the Sat rides are 11am EST), so that might be the problem you were having. as an IT person, I wish they would make it so that we could filter by the rookie rides. Zwift, please at least put some information on your TDZ FAQs about exactly how to find the rides. I know you have an item saying that they exist, but if we don’t know how to find them that doesn’t really help. Thanks!
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I agree, Lindsay. I’m using the rookie rides to get my other half into Zwift, and we hadn’t yet figured out the pattern was Saturday & Tuesdays only. Zwift could make two quick and sìmple improvements to the TdZ FAQ page by:
- Including a mention of Rookie Rides in the answer to the question “What’s the difference between the ride categories?”
- Mentioning the pattern of when Rookie rides take place in the description of rookie rides. If they’re every Tuesday & Saturday, say this. The sooner people know the pattern, the sooner they can get into a habit.
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Thanks, Lindsay. I agree, it’s a shame there isn’t a separate letter for the rookie rides so that we can easily see them when searching (A, B, C, D, E, R?)
Zwift should make it easier.
Try https://zwifthacks.com/
In “Filter” use the keyword “Rookie”
Works simply.
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Doing the Alpe tomorrow for the first time. Should I change my trainer difficulty to 50%? I always have it on 100% as I got zwift to help me with climbs in the real world. A bit worried I might be biting off more than I can chew with the alpe at 100% trainer difficulty tomorrow. I have done the epic kom on 100% in around 35 minutes
If you’ve generally been riding at 100% I think you should leave it there and see how things go. If it gets a bit rough you can always move the difficulty slider in the middle of the ride.
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Perfect! Didn’t realise I could change it during the event. Thanks Nigel!
Just think of Trainer Difficulty like an extended set of gears; if you find you need more, just turn it down and pretend you changed to your “mountain cassette”. 
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Haha. I’ve just finished it. Managed to complete it in 1 hour 29 minutes and 47 seconds without changing the trainer difficulty. Now to lay down for a week!!
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So, you’re saying to NOT continue riding or running after the completion banner?
2 of the run events were 2.9 miles. I continued to make it a 5k.
Are you advising against doing that?
Stage 4 rides go up the big mountains. Are you advising against doing the descent?
It is safest to save without doing your cool down/recovery ride and especially don’t jump to another event or add a workout.
Pros and cons, I guess, weren’t there problems at some point with too many people ending their activities almost exactly at the same time (making it safer to just keep going for a while after the event finish) as well? But yeah, entering a workout is probably a bad idea.