 Hello Zwifters welcome to this episode of how to run on Zwift in which we delve into the very mysterious world of Zwift race timings. So many of you will have done the Zwift half marathon last weekend it's now March the 1st so you've had time to recover but have you actually looked at your race results in Zwift or on Strava because you might notice some very odd things. So here we are let's start with my particular race result. If I click on this button here I'm taken to my race result which you can see is 89 minutes 36.5 seconds now let's round that up to 37 seconds so it's actually one hour 29 minutes and 37 seconds. That is my time for 21.1 kilometers a half marathon on Zwift the other day. That's all fine but then we click on this button and it shows me crossing the line in a time of one hour 29 minutes and 20 seconds you can see it there on the screen. Where has that other 17 seconds come from in my race result which appears literally moments after I crossed the line it flashes up on the screen one hour 29 minutes 37 seconds. Seems a bit strange doesn't it? Until we look at the beginning of the race now many of you will have noticed at the beginning of the race you start running and there's a little section that you're running which has become known as No Man's Land because the timer and the distance markers do not start clocking up for a little while and then they start clocking up. This is a bit weird let's just have a look at a video so what I've done here is I've recorded a video where I've timed how long it takes from when you start running to when the clock starts in Zwift. So you watch this so here we go there three two one we start running now my timer starts going so we're off and running we think we're running the half marathon now 10 seconds still no timer still no distance look up there but now we come to this banner here 17 seconds and there we go the timer and the distance start moving so it's taken 17 seconds of running before we get the timer and the distance marker to start 17 seconds that's a bit strange isn't it 17 seconds oh if we add 17 seconds to one hour 29 minutes and 20 seconds look what we get one hour 29 minutes and 37 seconds so why is that the other thing to look at check this out we go back to this screen here and you'll notice a half marathon is actually 21.1 kilometers well technically it's 21.98 kilometers I think 21.98 but let's round it up to 21.1 you'll notice as I cross the line here I haven't run 21.1 kilometers I've run 21.06 kilometers why is that so let's dig in a little bit further this is getting very geeky isn't it but I love it all so let's go and have a look at my Strava distance and time so Strava tells us that ignore now just ignore the time I'll come to that in a minute ignore the time that Strava has given me right look at the distance so the distance is 21.13 kilometers 21.13 kilometers now you remember here we have 21.06 kilometers so a difference of 0.07 of a kilometer 70 meters 70 meters now guess what it just so happens that at 14 kilometers an hour which is the pace that I started the race it takes about 17 seconds to run 70 meters 17 seconds to run 70 meters so essentially what we're saying here is that the race and the timing of the race and the distance of the race started then it started when we started running so what is this gap it's ridiculous why why does Zwift have this gap when they don't start the the timing and they don't start the distance clocks until we go under this banner here I've no idea because it's clear from the race result and from looking at Strava that actually the race did start the timing and the distance did start when we started running I don't understand it can anybody please explain it to me no you can't can you you can't explain it okay there's more though there is more right now if we go back to Strava you'll see my time is actually one hour 29 minutes 47 seconds an extra 10 seconds on top of my time that I thought I'd done so we can explain that if we look at my stats for the end of the race you see here that my fastest kilometer was right at the end of the race three minutes 47 seconds for the final kilometer that takes us from kilometer 20 to kilometer 21 but then you can see right at the end of the race is a tiny little section which is very very slow indeed and the way we explain that is because when you cross the finish line you press stop on the treadmill it does take a little while for the treadmill to slow down so you are technically still moving on the treadmill and Strava is counting that and if I look on my video of the race I can see that the timer in Zwift doesn't actually stop until it says one hour 29 minutes and 47 seconds so that explains those 10 seconds there's one final thing if we press on this button here this is my Zwift dashboard and the Zwift dashboard for the half marathon on the 24th of February says that my time was one hour 45 minutes well that's clearly ridiculous one hour 45 minutes is the time from when I stood on the start line to the time I crossed the finish line and that may be well it clearly was about eight minutes before the race started so I'm pretty sure I don't know for absolute certainty but I'm pretty sure that what that is is when you log in and you jump onto the start line of the race the Zwift dashboard starts the timer from then it starts timing your entire activity time not your race time and that's that gosh that was tiring so if you've ever wondered what's going on with your race timings on Zwift then that's a little explanation of what I think is going on thank you very much for watching we'll see you again for another how to run on Zwift very soon please do subscribe to the film marathon YouTube channel if you have a chance and if you've got any comments any questions please do leave them down below take care see you next time bye bye