With the Zwift Games wrapping up, I found myself with just one stage left to finish. But it was a big one! With a name like “ZG25 Queen” I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but then again, I’m always up for a longer race effort. So I entered the 450-570 group once again…
The Warmup
It was Tuesday, and the biggest Zwift update in months had just dropped. I was about two weeks into the busiest week of my life at Zwift Insider, buried in speed tests and putting together posts to help folks wrap their minds around Bike Upgrades.
But that wasn’t going to stop me. I’d raced the first four stages of Zwift Games. Now I needed to race the final stage. And it was a tough one! Held on the new ZG25 Queen route, this race would take me up the Jarvis KOM Reverse, into the Jungle, up the Mayan+Itza KOMs, up the upper half of The Grade, and finally, up the Epic KOM Reverse.
With 44.8km to cover and nearly 900 meters to climb, I knew it would be a sufferfest for my “overmuscled” body. But suffering is good for the soul. So here we go!
The Easy First Half
Looking at the route profile, you can see that the first half of this route is quite tame:
We started the race with 51 riders, and the first real effort for me came as we hit the base of the Epic KOM Reverse 14km into the route. I’ve been dropped here on many a race, but today I was able to hang with the front pack up the twisty climb, across False Flat Bridge (I just made that name up), and onto the continued climb up to the Jungle Pens.
From there it was smooth sailing. Just a dusty descent through the Jungle before hanging a left to make our way out to the Mayan Mountainside KOM, where the real work would begin.
The Tough Second Half
The second half of the route begins with the Mayan Mountainside KOM. I was able to hang with the group to the top of this climb, setting a Strava segment PR in the process. But by the time we went through the arch, I was dangling off the back.
I pulled the plug and stopped chasing the front group’s wheels before we even began the Itza KOM, just a few hundred meters up the road.
Now sitting 25th out of 51, I rode easy until a small group of 5 caught me from behind. We rode together up the Itza at a perfect “tough but doable” pace, then we turned left and began the upper half of The Grade.
This climb is steep – the steepest climb on the route, in fact. It was every man for himself as we negotiated The Grade’s snaking road. There was no hiding in the wheels here! Over the top the rider list now showed me in 25th out of… 35 riders? Did we really lose that many?
Supertucking down the Epic KOM descent, I caught a couple of riders up the road. And soon enough, it was time to begin the final climb: the upper portion of the Epic KOM Reverse. This climb takes me around 20 minutes to complete, so I just tried to pace myself evenly while making good use of the flat spots and short descents on this side of the mountain.
I began the climb in 25th… and finished in 25th. How’s that for consistency? ZG Queen route badge earned, in just under 90 minutes.
See my ride on Zwift.com >
See my ride on Strava >
Watch the Video
Takeaways
I did this one in the middle of a busy workday, and to be honest, my mind was struggling to find the fortitude to push hard. And it showed.
That said, in the end, I was happy I did it. (Isn’t that always how it goes?) I finished all 5 Zwift Games stages, and the fancy new leaderboards show me at 926 out of 59178 overall. Hey, that’s the top 2%! #winning
My final results (as of 2:30pm PDT on March 20, 2025):
- Sprint Classification: 1456 of 44597
- Climb Classification: 2527 of 35395
- Epic Classification: 3832 of 12225
- Overall Classification: 926 of 59178
Overall, I enjoyed racing this year’s Zwift Games, and would certainly do it again. I liked how routes were broken into flatter “sprint” routes, punchy “climb” routes, and a longer “epic” route. I like the new leaderboards and the GC component.
One thing I would change, though, is I’d allow steering in these races. I think it adds a fun dimension to the events, and it feels silly to have it disabled when Zwift is selling Play Controllers.
Your Thoughts
Did you race the final big stage? How did it go? Share your experience below!
Splendid!
It’s a tough course for racing, that’s for sure.
As all frame and wheels are equals / neutralized in the spirit of fairness, it is only logical that steering is disabled. I don’t have play controllers (yet) and I’m pretty sure that Zwift Games should be as fair a fight to anyone as it can be.
I own the Play controllers (and love them for menu navigation, power-ups, and ride-ons), but I’m happy to not have to deal with steering.
Not only is steering unfair to the non-steering competitors, it is super tedious. It’s so unnatural to have to force your avatar to take a straight line through gentle S-curves. I think that Zwift should leave steering disabled in all races until they program the avatars to take natural (shortest) lines through turns whenever that line is available (not filled by another rider).
It’s a fun event but probably needs to be somewhere else in the calendar as there’s a lot on FEB/March, tour De Zwift, ZRL, Big spin & Zwift games.
To be honest, I scouted all five routes, but only ended up racing Stage One on the BMX bike since bike choice didn’t matter. Life got busy a few weeks ago and I missed all of Stage Two and Three dates. I liked the choice of all five routes and was looking forward to racing them. Stage Five was a brute and I would have ended up on the back of the race for sure; I am not a climber.
“it feels silly to have it disabled when Zwift is selling Play Controllers”
Are they even selling these in most countries yet?
Not sure about “most” countries, but in terms of Zwift’s user base, their US/EU/UK store coverage hits probably 80%+ of their subscribers.
I guess tell that to the unlucky 20%? They probably wouldn’t be so happy.
Like for like description of my race earlier this week :). Missed stage 2 so looking forward to the catchup races
I did do the final stage, and wasn’t happy about it. I’m an E rider and Zwift predicted it would take me 2.5 hours to complete. I suspected it would take more, which it did. That’s more time than I can usually find in a day. To do it, I had to get up before 4 a.m. on a non-school day and tell my early-waking kid that if she couldn’t find me when she woke up, to look for me in the basement.
I finished, but am not planning to do that level of commitment again. I wish Zwift had offered a less-aggressive route for those of us who are not at the higher levels. I like completing their race series each month, but for me, sticking out the final stage was unpleasant and not worth it.
I enjoyed the Zwift games this season, the neutral bikes and steering off made it fair.
I would however really like to see some tougher rules regarding equipment choices and verification in the “Advanced” category.
Almost every race in “Advanced” has been plagued with blatant cheating and Zwift continues to do absolutely nothing about it.
Did you see the live stream from the community race of Volcano eruption? Two cheaters rode away from Ruben Dohondt like he was some amateur, it was awkward to watch to say the least
Yea, cheating (or riders in the wrong category) seem to be a pretty big issue – in two of the four races I did, I finished second only because there was a rider who pirouetted away half way through the race at some crazy constant and high w/kg. Although seemingly not a big issue in the grand scale of things, still pretty disappointing.
I’d like to see the steering enabled. It’s part of the game now.
I targeted this stage, didn’t do any of the others, pre-rode the route 3X, trained for it and reduced my efforts a couple days in advance, got one of my better results. I let one guy go at the top of The Grade and waited for a small group. That guy did not win and I was too gassed to chase him at that point. A huge number of people were apparently unaware of the single power-up. I used it to not get dropped near the top of The Grade. Nobody who was dropped by more than a few seconds at the top of The Grade made it back to the front. Having a stage like this in a well attended ZHQ race was a rare treat, not to be missed.