HOW TO WIN AT ZWIFT
Become a contender in cycling’s newest and most accessible form of racing
Words by JOHN WHITNEY
Don’t be afraid of losing
One of the great things about eRacing, and Zwift specifically, is its accessibility. If you try something in a race and it doesn’t come off, it’s not like it would be on a weekend road race that might only happen once a year – you can just come back tomorrow, log back on and try again. Ed Laverack, a British pro who rides on the road for SwiftCarbon Pro Cycling and on Zwift with Wahoo Esports, uses the game primarily to work on things he’s less good at. “You often hear people say ‘double down on your strengths’ but in sport it’s good to work on your weaknesses. I’m a climber but a lot of finishes on Zwift are flat and require sprints, which allows me to work on things I’m not good at. I choose not to enter races that suit me, which provides good entertainment to people who watch me [Laverack, like a lot of Zwift users, streams his races on his YouTube channel].”
He competed in the British Cycling eRacing Championships final in April and knew, given the competition and the way the race panned out, that he wasn’t going to win, so would burst out of the pack with doomed solo attacks, like you’d see in the last 30km of a grand tour stage, just to put on a show.
“You can try different things in races and it doesn’t really matter,” says Mary Wilkinson, who took second in the women’s British Nationals. “Road races are much longer and they feel like there’s more risk to trying things, like going early. On Zwift you can race every day if you wanted.”
Stay in shape all year round
Laverack credits Zwift with keeping his fitness high year round, because now he races once or twice a week with his esports team and needs a reasonable amount of fitness to be competitive over the course of an hour’s racing. “I used to take a month off, at the end of the road racing season but that’s drifted away, because I haven’t seen the need for it. Instead I take smaller and more frequent breaks all year round, between three and four days. The year’s becoming more dynamic, there’s no need to reset and go back into base training.”
Like any computer game, there’s subtlety to learning to become an eracing master
There’s no doubt brute strength and endurance are prerequisites to Zwift supremacy, but there’s nuance, too, that can only be learned by repeated playing. “Being able to understand drafting, knowing which parts of the course to attack, how your avatar responds – there’s a learning curve in this genre like any other sport,” says Nathan Guerra, the ‘Voice of Zwift’
“You learn to keep pressing hard as you go over the rise of a hill until the gradient goes negative, to gain speed”
who commented on the 2019 British Nationals. “You saw in the KISS Super League [the eRacing league that saw pro road teams compete] that community teams can get the better of pro athletes.”
“Learning how to keep the speed of your in-game character is really important,” agrees Laverack. “How to gain momentum as you hit a little rise in the road, not just riding hard when you get onto it but sprinting into it. You learn to keep pressing hard as you go over the rise of a hill until the gradient goes negative, which allows your character to descend that bit faster. It’s a computer game, but some of this is real-world stuff too.”
Get to know your trainer
If you have a smart trainer, you can programme the difficulty of it, from 0-100 per cent, in terms of how much gradients are simulated. Set it to 100 and a 10 per cent gradient feels like just that. On zero, you won’t feel a change in resistance. The problem in racing with a high setting, say over 75, comes on the downhills – a common complaint is that you won’t be able to generate sufficient resistance on steep stuff. You’ll spin out and won’t be able to match the pace of someone who’s effectively disregarded the descent by setting a low difficulty. Zwift Insider ( zwiftinsider.com), a font of all Zwift knowledge, recommends lowering to 25-40 per cent. “This will make hills seem less steep, and allow you to put more power into the downhills. Give it a try and tweak the setting until it feels good to you.”
Don’t get too confident if you do win
There are always new things to learn on Zwift, as the game’s development is refined by its engineers and new riders sign up. “Because there are so many racers you’re always coming up against new and different situations,” says Laverack. “You never race against the same group people. It’s not like turning up to your local race circuit and Dave’s there, and you know Dave is a good sprinter. You have to read each race as it progresses. When someone attacks, am I going to give them 10 seconds knowing there’s a climb coming up where I can pull the time back? The dynamic is always changing, but that’s what keeps you engaged.”
Master your powerups
Like Mario Kart, Zwift intermittently awards you power-ups – momentary boosters that give you an extra
drafting boost, or aero boosts and decrease in weight, which can be deployed by you either haphazardly to little effect, or judiciously at racedefining moments. “I like the feather,” says Laverack, which reduces your weight by 9kg for 15 seconds. “I know I’m saying that because I’m a climber but it gives you the feeling that you’re flying. Say you sprint at the top of a climb and you’re putting out 9 watts/kg, you pop a feather and all of a sudden you’re doing 11!”
Bring your road racing skills to zwift, and vice versa
Zwift has a lot in common with road racing, which is credit to the clever people who design it. “Like on the road, you save a heck of a lot of energy in the group – or the blob as it’s known on Zwift,” says Laverack. Presuming riders are at a similar level of fitness, “the rider who wins isn’t generally the rider who’s put out the most power,” he says, but the one who’s averaged the least amount of power and has saved energy for the sprint finish.
“You’re constantly trying to see where you need to be in the bunch. If there’s a climb coming up you try and get nearer to the front so the elastic doesn’t snap or you get caught behind weaker riders. It takes a bit of getting used to having to sprint around riders, because it requires a huge effort.”
One thing it doesn’t have in common with real-world racing is in the dynamics of a Zwift sprint finish, says Laverack. “If you’re fifth wheel in a road race you could sit in the draft, not sprinting, until you decided to go. On Zwift, you do need to sprint in that situation, because the draft doesn’t work. If it opens up with 400m to go, you have to go.”
Don’t skip the warm-up
Anyone who’s done a Zwift race will tell you it’s full gas, from the flag. “I’m quite guilty of logging into a game with 15 minutes to go, sitting back in my chair and only spinning my legs for the final two minutes before the race starts,” says Laverack. “I need to change that, because nobody hangs about at the start. A couple of pre-race sprints will open you up. It does help to log on early, because that puts you at the front of the group. Otherwise, you’ve got to spend so much more energy early on coming around people.”
Zwift is currently £12.99 per month, and you can try it for seven days for free. Visit Bikeradar.com and read about their complete guide to the game: tinyurl.com/ZwiftGuide
“Say you sprint at the top of a climb and you’re putting out 9 watts/kg, you pop a feather and all of a sudden you’re doing 11!”