We are excited to announce some exciting updates for ZRacing Monthly in 2025!
During the ZRacing Monthly Series, we offer a consistent schedule of races lasting less than 1 hour including the time it takes to warm up and cool down. Categories utilise Racing Score and category enforcement… Every month there is the opportunity to compete for overall monthly GC hosted on ZwiftPower, and unlock the monthly badge for completing all 4/5 stages (depending on the month).
ZRacing January Updates: A New Era Begins
This January, ZRacing gets a major upgrade with new category ranges and enhanced scheduling designed to deliver fairer, more competitive racing for everyone. Here’s how it works:
Introducing the ‘Advanced’ Category
For Riders with a Racing Score of 650+ we have created the all-new ‘Advanced’ category.
These events will run 5 times a day to focus participation and facilitate great competitive fields at the top level.
Initially these times will be 1015 | 1215 | 1815 | 1915 | 0015 (UTC). We will evaluate the number of times ongoing according to demand
Please note riders with a score in between 650 and 700 will also be able to participant in ‘Range 2’ events as outlined below
Tighter, Alternating Category Ranges
For all riders below 700, ZRacing will feature 5 tighter categories to ensure more rewarding and competitive racing.
We have put together this handy guide to help you work out the most competitive ZRacing Monthly category for you according to your racing score. Many riders now have options to take part in races where they are much closer to the top of a category boundary than before!
As your racing score improves you can switch between the category races to ensure that as you progress, you still remain competitive!
Looking to register for the event? Sign up in-game on the homescreen or on https://www.zwift.com/racing/monthly-calendar#individual:. The monthly race event calendar is updated on the series start date; to learn more about the upcoming theme, click here (theme’s will be updated on a monthly basis).
The ranges are for ZHQ events. Organizers can still create their own ranges and quite a few do. That said, I like the direction here for the official ZHQ ranges - at least on paper. Between getting zrCS setup for seed score, cleaning up the race calendar, and now these new ranges, I think ZRS and Zwift Racing in general are setup well going into the new year. Thumbs up / Ride on.
I sure love the fact that, still, I, a 3 year cyclist with no prior experience and a 260w FTP, continues to be grouped with elites and pros with 350-450w FTPs
(If Zwift is trying to understand why the numbers are so small during events… it’s because this is why; it’s the exact same issue that happened with Cat A.)
If we (users above 700) are restricted to a few « élite » races, would it be possible for you to make dual record and zwiftpower inscription mandatory?
And more important to have différent pen for old A and A+ CE?
Because with 236w zftp, riding with those 80 kg 5wkg beasts is getting absurd.
At least with 80kg 4.5 wkg beasts i have a possibility to draft them…
I assumed that custom ranges would continue to be possible, However, I’m more asking if that these new groupings are now defaults that community organizers can select from easily, without going a custom/special setup? ie. like the current defaults that exist in 2024
Community organizers can’t select any ranges easily. They have to file a support request for every change to the ranges. I don’t think it would be practical to apply this setup to all community events since most of them don’t have enough race times for it to be helpful.
I assumed that yeah, community organizers aren’t going to do all 3 scenarios, but whether they can easily select one of them to run with. Put another way, in 2025, if you don’t file a support request, and want to use “default” ranges, are they the same in 2025 as they are now? Or will it be enabled in 2025 that you will have to select your event to be one of the following defaults: Advanced, Category1, or Category2?
Is your curent 719 boosted above your seed score from good results since 25th September? If so, you aren’t far off a drop into the range 2 pen A.
Your 5mins 325W 5.48W/Kg and 20mins 277W at 4.62W/Kg are far from shabby at 58.6Kg, surely those numbers would stand you in very good stead in range 2 pen A on hilly to mountainous routes?
These seem like good changes. I would also test making “Advanced” an open mass start in the future.
Please don’t over react to initial attendance for these. The routes selected for January are universally dull to race for higher cats. I will be attempting to avoid them with any other option. Hopefully we get something more interesting in Feb
Cant think of another word than boring for January.
They will all be sprint smash fests.
Looks like I will have some time off next month cause I really cant be bothered much with these routes eventhough they suit me as a sprinter.
I am not unhappy about my zrs.
I am unhappy about having only a few races for my category, having to ride with fake accounts riding at constant 400w without even any dual recording…
If we (700 and more) have to go to différent races, please Zwift, control more these events.
If we have learned anything from this last 6 months testing and going live it is that we need more variation in routes and not a whole month of the same.
We’re back to last year with this where the pure sprinters will win every race.
Even that I could compete for the win in most of the races I could do next month I am going to skip most of them since a month of flat races is too boring for me.
You can modulate the power to create breakaway now on flat routes now. Because power gaps are so wide, it’s easy to attack, draft, attack, draft. And even push seed floor power of 5 min to 20 mins on a climb, creating some unnatural but explosive attacks.
