Decided to join Zwift for the winter, after doing a trial last winter. To do it all nice, created a zwiftpower account, linked it to my Zwift account, and all along this tedious process, thought - what is this whole thing all about? There’s a whole racing concept in Zwift, but you need a second profile in a second web app that connects to your first profile in the app, and you need to register in that second web app while you can already register in the app, but then the other app won’t see it, and…
Wow. For a company that has raised >$150M in funding, why is there such a hack system to manage races? No offense to those who have designed and maintain zwiftpower - what they have done is awesome. But why is all this (needed!) functionality not part of Zwift?
Just try to explain to a newbie the process from start to finish to create a Zwift account you can race with - when you get to the “… and then take these 4 digits, and add them to your surname in your Zwift account name…”, imagine the face of the person you’re explaining it all to.
Probably because racing is organized and run by the community. Zwift does not organize any races.
Think of it this way Zwift is the tow that manage and built the roads. Then race organizers create races on those roads and they use ZwiftPower to do the Timing.
Regarding the registration process: You can thank the EU General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ) .
I understand the (historical) reasons. The difference between your analogy and Zwift is that these road builders advertize the races, and provide an interface to enter said races. Integrating the system to allow the community to organize and run these races would make the process 20 times simpler (and keep GDPR issues from duplicating over 2 databases).
Ok, I’m off my soapbox. I’ll just go and get bashed by 99% of the other riders on the (virtual) road now.