I totally agree. 6 or 7am is one the peak times for eastern Australian zwifters and there is not a single stage in this time slot. Other tours have had far more options. Will have to give it a miss.
Just wondering if anyone else is having an issue with the start times for Tour of Watopia? I live on the east coast an the “early” time is around 8:00 am - which I can’t do because of work.
Just noticed this same topic here:
Dennis
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Yes, it’s an issue. Zwift HQ has been silent so I guess they dont give AF.
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This is likely one of the few tours I probably won’t even try to do because of the start times. The tour de zwift was so much better with 2 available days and start times every 2 hours (even hours on one day, odd hours on another day). To make this work, doing the tour would have to be priority for the week trying to find 1 or 2 times I could make work.
I realize there are less people zwifting now since the weather has warmed up but there are likely more than enough people to have a lot more times. I’m disappointed in the scheduling for this one.
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Even if you CAN make the events, some of the choices of times are still really bizarre. There’s one day (think it might be the Thursday for Stage 2), where it is scheduled just three times, but they are ALL in consecutive hours (e.g. 5pm, 6pm, 7pm). Surely if you’re only going to schedule an event three times in a day, you’d want to gap them out a lot more than that?!
Also, what I keep noticing (and this goes for ALL Zwift events, but the Tour of Watopia does seem to do this particularly) is events are always scheduled at certain hours and never others. Just looking at the first three stages, if you can ride at 5pm (in my time zone), you get the choice of 11 different events you can ride in and another 9 at 6pm. However if you can’t ride until 8pm like me, you get nothing across all of the first three weeks and also nothing at 9pm and 10pm too. Would it not hurt to just maybe to randomise it a little? Even for the people who can make 5pm, maybe they’d appreciate the ability to get on a little earlier or later one or two days a week. Oh, and don’t always make it the same day every week either - variation here is the key. Some of us can’t keep to rigid schedules when it comes to work and kids and other life duties!
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Another disgruntled UK zwifter here. For working people with small children you want something starting between 7:30pm and 9, 9:30pm at a push, when the kids are in bed. Times not suitable at all. Fingers crossed they add more start times otherwise I will probably swerve this one. Shame as it looks great
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Could not agree more with all the above. Really hope Zwift HQ is getting wind of this discussion. I’m not able to get on the bike until at least 8pm EST during the week. Really a bummer the cutoff for the event is so early!
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Not many great options here in Australia too. Unless you like to ride your bike at 2am or 3am or you are jobless then it’s going to be hard to find something that is suitable…
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Concur. Since most of the events (other than maybe Alpe) should take about an hour, recommend 5 am a couple of times a week. I know there is a conscious effort to avoid other popular event times to not detract from them, but these times are popular because people are available then.
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The whole scheduling is not very good at all. I asked what the problem was. Here’s a copy from Insta
me_is_decky @gozwift Love the Tour but what’s with the available times? 1pm and 6pm on the Tuesday and 1am, 6am and 5pm??? Does it cost to host these events? I’ve noticed in the past, there have been more available time slots throughout the day…? 
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gozwift @me_is_decky We have adjusted the scheduling for ToW for a number of reasons. We believe the change benefits the entire Zwift community outside of those who wish to participate in the Tour of Watopia. We also believe it benefits the great community groups who run their events week in, week out providing an invaluable Zwift group experience. We want to enhance the overall event schedule rather than take away.
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me_is_decky @gozwift I sort of get what you’re saying, however, I fail to understand why a few more times within the day can not be rostered. The communities will ride, when they ride outside of the times. I can’t say I understand the logistics within the times or code the Devs put together in order for it to run seam less. Case in point, I missed the TdZ due to technical, now if it been hosted again, either the same day or the day after, well, it would saved a wasted few months. I know this is first world issues and we shouldn’t cause issue. I’m merely suggesting an improvement imho. If it can’t been done due to technical, fair enough. Not sure how putting more times can hinder the community
Seems at least a couple of people are happy with Zwift idea of scheduling. Bit of nonsense to me…
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Yeah I was pretty excited about doing this tour, but the scheduling here is confusing at best. I can’t ride during working hours (because I work doing normal working hours). If you don’t want to compete with the other popular rides then maybe reconsider hosting big tours like this all the time.
If you’re going to host a big tour, don’t completely neuter it by putting it at the most inconvenient times throughout the week.
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That’s hilarious. They want to benefit the entire Zwift community outside of those who choose to do the event? So, they want to hinder those who want to do the event?
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Well I’m in the minority here.
Firstly, the times work for me. A couple of the days dont but most do so I have choice.
Secondly, taking TdZ as an example, those events drained people away from the normal events so that in races where I would usually race with 15-25 others in my grade, I would only have 5 or so. So I couldnt wait for TdZ to finish as I enjoy the banter/rapport you build up with regular events.
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Unless I am awake in the middle of the night, or do not have a job during standard bushiness hours here in Melbourne Australia, there’s no way I can ride any of these during the week without firing up my shed computer the night before, logging into an event and wasting electricity.
Scheduling on a rotational basis with starts every hour or two like last year would be much better for the subscribers. As it is, I’m not going to bother with the tour.
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How about Saturday 6pm or 7 pm or Sunday 7pm
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I have to say, I’m genuinely confused by this move. The central premise behind this scheduling change appears to be for the following reason: the group rides that normally take place throughout the week suffered lower than normal turnout. As a result, Zwift is thinking that by making the ToW tours during less-popular times, the group workouts will be placated. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t appear to make sense.
The TdZ appears to be the primary motivation here - TdZ had roughly 24 events over 48 hours (one event every 2 hours, for 2 days - this is ignoring the makeup days). Apparently, TdZ tapped into the attendance on the weekly group rides during the popular times. This bit of information is crucial for not understanding why this change was made. In the overlap of riders who normally join in on a group event and instead decided to go to the TdZ, they already had the option of delaying their TdZ participation. They could have chosen any other event at any given time throughout the day, since the TdZ stage was running every 2 hours throughout that day. Instead, they decided that they wanted to participate in the TdZ rather than joining the group ride. This tells us pretty clearly that in that subset of people who the group rides lost, they had a clear preference for joining TdZ over the group workout, and the ability to do 2 rides on a given day was not a viable alternative.
If doing two rides on a particular day was not a viable alternative, then what does moving ToW times to less popular times actually accomplish? The people who would have ridden ToW at more convenient time still probably won’t ride twice on a given day (they already had that option, and declined it). Now they’re left with choosing the group ride (which we’ve shown is a lower preference) or still not riding with the group, and now just choosing an awkward time to ride.
As best I can tell, this move appeals to those who are in the particular subset of people who want to participate in regular group workouts, but have no interest in joining the ToW. This change was made at the expense of people who are in group workouts who had a preference for ToW, and the rest of us who have no affiliation to any regular group workouts at all and only participate in the Zwift tours. This is why I’m left confused.
Zwift is free to do whatever it wants - it’s a private company and I can’t / won’t demand they make changes on my behalf. That being said, if this is the type of motivation Zwift is using to make choices moving forward, it seems pretty clear that I’m not in the target audience of people for the platform, and I’ll have to figure out how to move forward myself.
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Hi Gerrie. That’s why I was referring to the week, not the weekend. Normally I’m shagged from IRL racing on the weekend 
As an Australian, I agree that the schedule sucks. Most of my options mid week are early morning or 8-9AM when i’m already off to work. Basically no evening sessions at all.
Looks like i’ll be doing all mine on Saturdays when I can actually ride in the morning…
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They’ve just responded on the Zwift FB page saying that the team are looking at more times. Fingers crossed!!! 
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I guess Zwift will not be able to please everyone. when we had rides every 2 hours there was still people asking for makeup days.
More of these comments are from the riders perspective.
Lets look from the Community leaders and Ride leaders perspective.
When these big tours are on the schedule the number of riders drop significantly sometimes to the single numbers, so ride leaders and organizers take time out of there training to prepare and lead a ride that is poorly attended. Tings like race series get interrupted. Group rides take a lot of planning and promotion to make it interesting fun. It is hard to keep the momentum during these big events.
I don’t have a good answer for this. This times does not fit into my very specific training time, but there is at least one time slot during the week that I can make it work, so for the next 7 weeks I will have one day a week where i will need to go out of my normal routine. I don’t think this is to much.
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