The fourth race of Zwift Racing League 2024/25 Round 3 happens Tuesday, February 4, and we’re in Makuri Islands for a rather straightforward TTT course.
Let’s dig into crucial route sections, bike choice, and more.
Looking at the Route: Wandering Flats
The Wandering Flats route in Makuri Islands begins in the Yumezi countryside at the start pens near Village Onsen, descending down to the Countryside Sprint then heading over for a flat lap around Neokyo before coming back through the tunnel into Yumezi, up into the Castle area and back to the start/finish banner:
All categories will be racing 1 lap for a total distance of 25.2km with 146m of climbing.
This is one of the easiest routes on Zwift for team time trials, as it is almost entirely flat. The road may look twisty, but it’s the pitch changes that really determine the technicality of a TTT.
Apart from figuring out your pacing in the flats, your team will need a plan heading into the one climb on this route, which happens around the 19.2km mark. This climb up into the Castle area is 2km long, averaging 3.2%. That means it’s very draftable and will take most teams 4-5 minutes to complete.
Read more about the Wandering Flats route >
Bike Frame + Wheel Choice
This week, bike choice is easy: grab your most aero TT setup! The CADEX Tri is the fastest frame in game, and the DT Swiss disc wheels are the fastest wheels. If you don’t have access to that setup (level 40+) then see this post to determine the fastest TT setup available at your level.
Whatever you do, do not use a road frame. Even a “slow” TT frame is faster than a road frame, so now that we’re able to use TT frames and get a draft in TTT events, you’ll want to take advantage of that!
More Route Recons
Lots of recon events are scheduled on upcoming ZRL routes, led by various teams. See upcoming ZRL recons for this race at zwift.com/events/tag/zrlrecon.
John Rice
The Syco-List
J Dirom
TTTips
Team Time Trialing on Zwift is a challenging mixture of physical strength, proper pacing, and Zwift minutiae like picking a fast bike and understanding drafting in a TTT context.
Flatter courses like this week give valuable seconds to teams who can keep their speeds high over false flats and short rises. If you typically run your trainer difficulty setting pretty low, we advise you to raise your Trainer Difficulty high enough that you can feel false flats and automatically increase power to keep your speeds high.
Your goal in a ZRL TTT is to get four riders across the line in the shortest time possible. That means every team’s pace plan will differ based on the abilities of each rider. We highly recommend having an experienced DS on Discord directing your team, especially if your team contains some inexperienced TTT riders.
If you really want to go down the TTT rabbit hole, check out Paul Fitzpatrick’s zwift-ds.com site. We also highly recommend using Dave Edmond’s Zwift TTT Calculator tool.
Your Thoughts
Any insights or further thoughts on this race? Share below!
