So this week we had the very sad news that DRS won’t be continuing in September. The Sprocketeers have had more fun than you can imagine in DRS and we’re very grateful to the DIRT Crew for putting it on. But for the Autumn (Fall if you prefer) season we’ll need to find something else. I really like racing in vELO categories and as a middling B in CE, I don’t fancy going back to ZRL. I’ve also had great fun in the new Zwift Racing Score races I’ve done. So here’s my thinking…
Team racing is awesome fun, but it adds a level of complexity that I don’t have the capacity for. I know how to administer an individual league on ZwiftPower (from Cyclopathy Friday Smash and DRS experience) so that seems to be the way to go. So here are my thoughts. I’d be keen to hear if YOU or people on your team would be interested to take part. Please leave a comment below.
Individual Weekly Series
It’s an individual series to test your abilities on different kinds of courses. I’ve called it Cyclopathon (like a cycling Decathlon).
One weekly 30-50 minute race. Each month there would be a Flat, Hilly, Rolling, Mountainous and something random for 5-Tuesday months e.g. a short smashy race, double-header or iTT.
One FTS segment per race to be (normally) in the first half of the race, (but not on mountainous)? No FAL – the finish is the FAL.
Tight Categories
Single Categories where possible, probably something like Silver/Gold, Platinum, Amethyst, Sapphire, Emerald/Ruby
Each race based on current vELO. If that gets abused we’ll switch to 30-day. (Or ZRS).
FIN points 100,90,85,80,76,72,68,65,62,59,57,55,53,51,50….1
FTS points 20,17,15,14,13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,3,2,2,1,1
ZRS if we can get it
The other alternative – if we can get it – would be to use the new experimental Zwift Racing Score categories. (The limits can/could be tweaked for each month.) The big advantage of this is you would get pen enforcement. I would try to get the category boundaries right for the best fun races.
Either way, these are the first four routes for September that I envisage
3rd Sept: London Classique 3 laps (flat)
10th Sept: Castle Crit 5 laps (rolling)
17th Sept: Roule Ma Poule 1 lap (hilly)
24th Sept: 2018 UCI Worlds Innsbruck 1 lap (mountainous)
Leave a Comment
Please leave a comment to let me know if you are interested in racing. I was thinking to do Atlantic time zone (0945 UST, 1045 BST, 0545 EST) initially, but if there is a lot of feedback could do others (e.g. EMEA / USW) as needed.
14th August Update to add:
We will run an EMEA time slot at 1950 CET and a USW slot at 1815 PST – this mirrors what DRS SoC is currently doing.
It looks as if we probably will be able to use ZRS, which means pen enforcement. That carries with it the compromise of being scratch races only (no segment points). I’m OK with that. We can still have a ZP League of Scratch races based on Finish Points.
ZRS category thresholds will be chosen to offer the best fun racing experience, and they will be varied from month to month so that sometimes you’re near the top of category and sometimes you’re not.
Other decisions made: steering and power-ups will be OFF.
I’ll share with our Coalition DRS Captain now that he is jobless! He’s done one or 2 Friday smashes with you, so lets see if we can get some interest from Coalition DRS racers.
Thanks Neil
Im interested as ZRL just isn’t a pleasant alternative to Dirt. I’m retired so can race any time but a 19:00ish UK time race would attract a lot more I’m sure. Best of luck getting this going. If it’s half as good as DRS it’ll still be 4 times better than ZRL😂
You had me at 5:45 ET.
Happy to support and I will circulate amongst the No8 racers…also happy to help out in whatever way I can. Just shout up.
Happy to support and share on the No8 eRacing server. If you need any help just DM and we will help all we can with anything we are able.
how about adding onemore slot-0745EST?
Thumbs up!
Hello, some riders from the Foudre team would be interested in this event on an EMEA time zone. And maybe on another day than Tuesday?
But if a time slot is made on our time zone, we will surely be there.
See you soon
Would really love a USW friendly option if possible. Really like the idea of something other than zrl. Have you thought about another day outside of Tuesday so if someone wanted to do both, they could?
Would also be big on a USA West time zone if it happens. Tuesdays is great as it worked well with the Coalition group for DRS last season.
Thank you for taking this on. No8 was disappointed with th news about DRS. We would like to participate in your series. Thank you for taking this on!! Just let us know what we need to do next.
Rick Trojanowski
Interested!
This sounds really interesting but the times wouldn’t work for me unfortunately.
I’d be hopeful of getting a herd platinum team together in an emea time zone!
Anything not ZRL, based on eVELO or similar – YES PLEASE!
Did not do any ZRS race – looking forward to it!