Tour de Zwift 2021 FAQ

General Classification is based on time. There seems to be a crazy point system but I can wait and see if the ZP link gets fixed. I appreciate the attempts to get this going last minute.
In my race (besides the bug where I can’t draft for the first twenty seconds) some riders took off at 4:00 pm (maybe 300) and then 500 of us were let loose four minutes later. It was odd as I was in the lead group(?) and we started passing some of the people who started four minutes earlier. Got a little confusing with traffic jams but I assume this was done to prevent too many from starting at the same time?

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Tour de Zwift Stage 1 glitchy?

Hello…
I did the first stage yesterday at 6pm. Unfortunately, this is not displayed to me as completed.
What can I do? :frowning:

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No. See Tour de Zwift Stage 1 glitchy? - #69

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Please see my response immediately above your post.

I cut and paste the code on the US site but no discount was applied to the cycling jersey.

Do the positions on screen include EVERYONE riding in that time slot - including those in other worlds?

I found the answer to this - it seems yesterday the positions did include everyone, but I rode again today and they only showed the people in the world I was riding. So thanks to @shooj and anyone else who turned that around to being fixed so quickly.

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I ended up doing 25k on my concept 2 bike erg, was on the 18:03 race today and nothing even showing, was bad. 50mins work for 5k lol

same here Dean…

Was ready to check out and now all they have in stock is the XS and the 3XL…

I emailed Le Col directly, received a very prompt and courteous reply. That being said, their suggestion was to “keep an eye on our website for updates” about merchandise availability. Sorry, not doing that. Not having adequate stock for such a highly marketed event in my eyes is inexcusable. They’re either naive about what adequate stock is at best, or at worst they just offered the merchandise as a means to get customers with no intent of manufacturing adequate event stock. Sad, because I really like the shirt, but I feel like I have to do way to much to actually get one. I’m out.

I ordered the T-Shirt just after Xmas and received it in Australia today. They did say on their website that the stock wouldn’t be available until mid/late January, so maybe they got some in early and just waiting for the next shipment. The sizing is quite generous.

Hello, I am new to Zwift, completed stage 1 and had a blast. Looking at stage 2, the “c” group distance is longer than the “b” group. I thought the “c” was generally a shorter distance, am I missing something?

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The B route (Innsbruck) includes a really serious long climb compared to the C ride (Harrogate). In terms of overall effort the categories are probably right.

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Hi @Jeff_Pustelak, and welcome to Zwift!

You’re right that C is generally shorter distance - and Zwift describes the A, B and C rides in the TdZ as “Longer”, “Standard” and “Shorter”, even when distances aren’t in that order.

What Zwift really means is A is the “Harder” ride, B is the “Standard Ride” and C is the “Easier ride”, once you take distance and gradient into account.

With the Innsbruck & Yorkshire routes, while they have similar amounts of climbing, the Innsbruck route is deemed to be harder because almost all the gradient comes in one big mountain, compared to the rolling hills of Yorkshire where you get some breaks.

@shooj & Zwift, to avoid confusion and make things easier for new Zwifters to understand, would it be better to change the naming convention of rides like this to something like:
A - Harder
B - Standard
C - Easier

??

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@Jeff_Pustelak
It’s good feedback. I’ll pass it on to our team

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Thanks Paul,

That explains it perfectly, I was at first thinking it was elevation but when I saw they were close is where I got stuck. I will be sticking with the “c” group and the rolling hills to give the legs a chance to recover a bit between climbs.

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@shooj Even better, don’t use the same letters for both rider categories and types of event.

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For those wondering about the descriptors we chose (Longer/ Standard / Shorter), we’d like you to know that a lot of internal discussion has been spent to choose them.

Rather than using these adjectives to solely describe the course length, we’re accounting for the time commitment you should expect for the A, B, C categories.

We arrived at this way of looking at it because at one time, Zwift did use “hard / standard / easy” descriptors. That led to people getting annoyed that the “easy” ride was super intense and hillier than they were expecting. For example, one of the shortest-distance routes in Zwift is Road to Sky at ~17 km, but it’s one of the most unrelentingly challenging climbs, so “easy” is not appropriate.

We no longer want to make assumptions about the effort required because effort is very subjective to each individual. Instead, we chose the more time-quantifiable adjectives. While that’s not a perfect model either, we feel it’s better.

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On Zwiftpower (probably an error or a change) the B/D course looks to have been 32 km with a partial climb up the hill a second time ( with 800 meters climbing)?

It’s good to hear a lot of thought has gone into it - subtle differences of wording can make a big difference, and it can’t be easy when you have to replicate them in many languages!

You’re absolutely right - terms like “Hard,” and “Easy” are too subjective and should be avoided, whereas relative terms like “Harder”, “Easier”, “Longer” and “Shorter” are much better because they describe relative levels of effort or energy for comparing routes to each other.

I think the problem with “longer” and “shorter” will always be that if you put these terms next to distances - without specifying that you’re talking about time needed - many people will assume they relate to the distances.

That’s why I think talking about relative challenge of routes is a better way to go.

Another bonus with doing this is it’s more consistent with the power categories - whether you choose A, B or C based on a route or a power band, “A” always means most difficult, then B, C, etc.