ZRL, just like the Zwift Classic series, the start times suck for me being on the America West time zone. I usually get on Zwift in the early morning before work; around 5am. I have a choice: 2:30am or 9:30am. I almost never Zwift after work and doing a race in the evening is an impossibility for me. It would be interesting to see if ZRL is better than the Zwift Classic debacle.
As far as getting upgraded in the middle of a series, that happened to me in Absa Cape Epic this past March. I was at the pointy end of C and knew I was bumping up against the top of the cat. I really wanted to win something before I got upgraded but managed to go over in Race 4 so my points in 1-3 went away and I only had the Race 4 points as a B. Like so many things in life, you make plans and the Gods laugh…
IMHO that’s why the Zwift Classic series was a complete failure for so many of us. The organizer did not want to hear ANY criticism about their attempts at Autocat. Literally told me it was “Working Perfectly” (title caps mine) when about half of the fields were vastly outclassed by the pointy end. In fact, some of the time zones had incredibly unbalanced fields with 50 riders in C3 and 15 riders in C2 and C4, for instance. So of course WTRL is going to say, “The start times are perfectly spaced.” It just follows…
That’s great. There is still a 7 hour gap which neatly covers the most convenient morning times for Zwifters on the North American continent. As Gerrie said, “We asked for some morning slots and they ignored us.” Just like the feedback WTRL got for the Zwift Classic.
There are those of us here who fully understand the absolute fact that it takes 60 years of getting it wrong before finally you are able to official claim you are always correct . Something that no amount of replies or attempts by those too young to know otherwise (and of course are still getting it wrong ) are able to dispute or counter .
I suspect the main reason is demand the same reason there are very few TTT time slots during the day/early morning america time but we have seen more slots added recently which is positive.
I very much doubt WTRL are actively ignoring time zones and therefore the chance to increase the popularity of their series but they do need to have enough teams to run a decent. Probably worth sending feedbacto Charlie for future ZRL seasons.
I’m also not even sure if it’s WTRL or Zwift that are the deciding factor. I suspect a bit of both.
They persisted over the summer with a zone that had as few as 5 teams, so I guess that’s your benchmark for sufficient demand. Sorry that seems to be going off topic for this thread. Obviously ZRL would need more, but there aren’t very many teams in the Oceania slot that suits NZ.
I and many from my team asked WTRL per email to please add a NYC 7am slot so that the guys on the west coast don’t have to get up at 3am and the response was
“For many many months now, there are countless riders on the East Coast that race and ride around 5am. This works out well through the summer months when Australia’s evening coincides along with Europe mid-morning.”
So what I understand is: if it does not fit in a Europe slot we are not adding it.
If you look at the huge participation in the Zwift classics in the Western Australia times zone witch is 7am EST you will notice that there was a big turnout.
And it is not like they need a lot of man power to add one more event. It is just a bit more data.
~70 riders per category, as in the Zwift Classics, is only enough for one division. Maybe that is not enough?
Understand me right, I want everyone to have a chance to participate. I’m just trying to hint to why WTRL is reluctant to add this new time slot.
You are correct @Gordon_Rhino-Racing . The zones on their website still show Z2 as NYC. But I remember now that they added a Zone. Although there is still only 14 Zones listed in the results?
Check it out. These times are west coast America: Between the 9:30am and the 11:35am start times, there are 7, count 'em, SEVEN, separate events. That’s seven events in just over two hours. Two pairs of them are 5 minutes apart. I’m not going to go in and see if these events have huge fields so maybe each of them gets 93 teams but probably not. Just does not make sense for there to be this seven hour hole followed by a two hour period saturated with start times.
Oh yeah, this is followed by a four hour hole.
Yes, @OleKristian I’m sure there’s a good reason for this little bit of odd scheduling by WTRL, it just eludes my ancient brain. Like a lot of things.
I’m sorry mate. When I lived in PHX, there were a few times I was racing at 2:30-4:30 am to join the boys. It was bloody awful and I was ruined for the rest of the day. Plus my performance usually sucked as I was still half asleep but pumping caffeine into my system to make it possible.
There is “no demand” for Gerrie’s timeslot as people like you bust a gut to get into a race at anytime. If there was a convenient time I’m sure you and many others would race that instead. It’s a no demand fallacy.
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