Hi,
Is there any room for Zwift Racing in a training plan? I have Zwift, just to work my Zwift Cog really, and have done TRoad pretty religiously for over 1 1/2 years now. I’m just wondering if adding a racing league to my routine would be beneficial or harmful to progress.
Depends on whether you’d be sacrificing quality workouts to race.
I think the issue for me would be how different zwift races can be.
Some could look like an OU session with a few spicy bits. Others could be Z2/Z3 with a few surges.
Therefore difficult to know which hard session you are going to replace with a race.
Zwift TT’s on the other hand are easy to predict for time, power, consistency and TSS
You can create a custom training plan that incorporates race days. It’s a bit of manual work as you have to rank A B C priority races ahead of time and estimate their length, but I’ve done it and it works. You break up the monotony of structured workouts but maintain more fitness than you would just by racing.
I did it for the last 2 rounds of last years ZRL season and I thought it was great.
I was doing a low volume with 3 TR workouts a week. Since ZRL is Tuesdays I would still have my 3 workouts ahead of me and I would treat the race as one of those workouts. For example a TTT was more like sweet spot so I wouldn’t do the sweet spot workout that week and do the other 2 workouts as prescribed.
Is it the most optimal way to train? Probably not. But it’s a heck of a lot of fun and a good way to really push yourself so I would 10/10 recommend.
Hey @maytree 
Yes there is! You can add it as part of your training. But like @Un-QuittingBikes, mentioned, adding them or replacing workouts with Zwift races may mean sacrificing your structured training a bit.
If you’re adding the Zwift races as extra the plan will adjust your training as it will take them into account. Or you can add them as part of your training plan, swapping a TR Workout for a Zwift race.
More info here:
I’ve done this before for things like Zwift Games and Tour of Watopia with a fair level of success. It’s not great long term but it’s worked for me for short periods. I like the extra motivation, change in tempo and the chance to go deep.
On that topic I’ve been tempted to get into ZRL for ages but not found a team - anyone have recommendations? I’d be looking for 6AM UK time (sorry for potentially hijacking the thread!)
I started on Zwift last fall, quickly got into racing with a Team (Coalition, highly recommend), and ended up substituting my Tuesday hard workout ( normally VO2 intervals) with a weekly Zwift race (45-60 mins). I was also able to add a bit more z2 as well, and by the spring my FTP was up around 10%(!) after stagnating for several years at 52 years old.
If I had to guess, the weekly race pushed me way harder then the prescribed intervals were to raise the ceiling, and coupled with the extra z2 gave me the gains I’ve seen.
Now my outdoor season is coming to a close, I’ll be doing exactly the same this winter 
Obviously YMMV
If racing on zwift motivates you (I love it!), just add a race to the TR calendar, or just do one whenever and let it update retrospectively. The future TR schedule will update accordingly… You’ll see if FTP prediction goes up or down (you may not care!). Just do the riding you love.
Highly recommend Coalition.