Zwift Racing League - Where Fun is not at all relevant for some?

Season 3 of the ZRL started this week - and many of us are back for more, including those of us from Chester Tri Club who are partial to a bit of virtual racing fun.  With ZRL being based in the virtual world - its no surprise that social media is a key part of the experience - obviously since I'm blogging about it and post on YouTube, and one of a great many.  However, if you've ventured on to the world of ZRL Facebook pages the past week you would have a completely unfair perception of much of what is good about the racing league (although, to be honest, you might have a pretty good idea about a lot that is wrong).

There has been a recent, and in my opinion, fully justified backlash against the loud voices complaining about the league set-up.  What are these complaints - well, in short people think they should be able to ride in different divisions to those they've been placed - predominantly because they think they are better than those in the division and deserve to be in a different league.  The main tenet of the argument seems to be that they want to be competitive, and also may have done better in a previous season and so have earnt promotion.  (Presumably this means that all the new teams have to start together at the bottom leagues, which means these won't have a fair distribution of abilities, and won't be competitive - but not sure that's been taken into consideration).  Interestingly, if you look at the stats of some of these complainants and their teams, there are examples of anomalies that might lead you to question if they are in the right league or not in the first place...

Now, a couple of things to be aware of about both ZRL and the team I ride with

1. 1. The ZRL is free.  I mean, you have to have a Zwift account to compete, but you don't need to pay anything extra to take part in ZRL.  And I assume that the huge majority of people who use Zwift have no intention of joining the ZRL either.  Therefore, this is something that you choose to do, and you get for free.  My personal view is that, under these circumstances, get anything for free is better than nothing - so if things aren't quite perfect who am I to complain?
2. 2.  There's lots of leagues, divisions, regions...  most importantly regions drive the time zones of when you race, leagues and divisions mean that you should be competing with people of a reasonably comparative ability so don't spend too much time riding around on your own at the front of back of the race.
3. 3.  Chester Tri Club (chestertri.org) is a well established club, and as such we have people who are riding and are pretty competitive.  (I'm assuming here, but my assumption is that if you compete at GB age group you probably deserve a 'competitive' tag).
4. 4.  As our team is made of club members we have a 'relatively' small group of riders - and aren't subbing in people who aren't club members.  (If you want to join us and the club please do - I recommend it at so many levels).  This means that within the 2 teams in the A and B leagues we have a range of power outputs - and its not uncommon for B riders to ride in the A league so we have a full team in both.  Even if that means both teams are weaker...  (I've done one A ride as a B rider - it was a nice solo jaunt at the back after the first 5 minutes or so)

Ultimately, I guess this all comes down to what you want to get out of the ZRL.  As a team and a club we want to have fun, do the best we can, and get better.  Throughout the Corona virus lock-downs a connection once or twice a week with people to talk to has been hugely important to me - and the fact that we all push as hard as we can is great.  This first weeks race was a TTT - 2 of our stronger B riders needed to step-up to the A team to provide a full squad there, and unfortunately - due to far more important commitments than a virtual race - 2 of the riders from the B team couldn't make the start.  We came last in our league... - do we care?  No.  Did we get an immense amount of satisfaction from keeping us all together and supporting everyone to get across the line?  Yes.  Are we in the right league*?  Well - lets see what other races bring - but ultimately I'm not sure that matters anyway...

*For the record we are in the same league and Division as we were last year, and with the same riders - make of that what you will