After leading the Thursday Pizza Burner 100km for over a year (sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/blameeric), I’ve started wishing for longer Zwift routes that are also fairly flat.
- I want longer routes because seeing different sites and riding different roads is more interesting/engaging than riding multiple laps of the same circuit.
- But the routes need to be fairly flat, because the Pizza Burner is about putting in a longer, steadier effort with a group.
Here’s the thing about Zwift’s current route library, though: all the long routes have too much climbing.
The mega-flat Tempus Fugit has only 1.5 meters of climbing per kilometer of distance, and routes typically feel “flat” to me if they have around 5.5m/km or less. But all of Zwift’s truly long routes (100km+) are over 12m/km (save the France Classic Fondo at 7.6km, which has two Petit KOM climbs early on, so that’s a no-go). And even if I wanted to do multiple laps of a shorter ~50km circuit, these medium-length routes typically have way too much climbing as well, or a key longer/steeper climb that would break up my group ride. (Watopia’s only exception is The Big Ring, and even that route takes us up through the Jungle each lap.)
So I got to thinking: surely we could piece together a 100km flat route using Fuego Flats, the Southern Coast, and the rest of Watopia’s flatter roads. We could pull various tricks to make it happen, including starting from a higher elevation and riding big flat sections in both directions.
What I’ve settled on is a non-loopable route with only 489 meters of elevation gain over 102 kilometers (so 4.8m/km). That makes this the 13th-flattest route in Watopia, and by far the least climby “long route” in the entire game.
Or looking at it another way: there are flatter routes in Zwift, but they are all much shorter (the longest is around 36km). Unless you include Litus Fugit, a 60km 4.4m/km loopable Rebel Route I created which hasn’t yet been added to the game but really should be.
I hope you enjoy The Marvelous Metric. And I hope someday Zwift adds it to the game, so I can lead The Pizza Burner on it!
About Rebel Routes
“Rebel Routes” are Zwift rides not available on Zwift’s routes list, thus requiring manual navigation.
The reward for your rebel ride? Exploring a new route, knowing you’ve gone where few Zwifters have gone before. And a Strava segment rank in the tens or hundreds instead of the thousands! Rebel Routes are also included as a separate category on our Veloviewer Route Hunter leaderboard.
Route Description
A complete turn-by-turn tour of this route would be too much, so I’ll summarize it instead.
You can set yourself up easily by selecting the Mountain Mash route. This puts you at the route’s start point near the Jungle start pens, heading toward Watopia. (Starting from here is a tricky move on my part, as it lets us start with a bit of descent, making the start more gentle. It also gives us a faster overall speed, since we’ll descend more than we’ll climb.)
Cut across the Epic KOM Bypass (one of my favorite stretches of road in Watopia), then head down to Ocean Boulevard and out to Fuego Flats for a ride through the desert in the “forward” direction.
At the LAX Roundabout we’ll turn onto the long Southern Coast road for an out and back which quickly racks up 45 rolling kilometers. We use the bottom of the Jungle, and the Mayan Bridge Cutoff, road, for a quick turnaround at the end of the Southern Coast, allowing us to come back the other way.
When we arrive back at the LAX Roundabout, we’ll head up the Col du Saddle Springs and get onto Ocean Boulevard for a trip through the Marina and out around the Volcano into Downtown Watopia.
Head back out Ocean Boulevard and up into the edge of Titans Grove to hit Fuego Flats once more, this time in the “reverse” direction. By the end of the Fuego Flats road you’ll be over 95km in.
Wanting to make the final ~5km interesting, I’ve routed us across The Esses, down the Dirty Sorpressa, and out to the Volcano. Turn the first right to head into the Volcano for the route’s finish at the Volcano Circuit arch.
Turn By Turn Directions
Begin by choosing the Mountain Mash route, which starts you at the Jungle Pens, heading in the right direction.
- Straight to Epic KOM Bypass
- Left to Sequoia Circle
- Straight (Left) to Sequoia Circle
- Right to Downtown
- Right to Desert Flats
- Straight (Left) to Desert Flats
- Left to Ciudad La Cumbre
- Right to Ciudad La Cumbre
- Straight (Left) to Jungle Ruins
- Straight (Left) to Jungle Ruins
- Right to Mayan Loop
- Left to Mayan Bridge
- Left to Mayan Loop
- Straight (Left) to Jungle Loop
- Right to Ciudad La Cumbre
- Straight (Right) to Ciudad La Cumbre
- Straight (Right) to Fuego Flats
- Straight (Left) to Fuego Flats
- Left to Epic KOM
- Straight (Right) to Epic KOM
- Left to Epic KOM
- Right to Sequoia Circle
- Left to Italian Villas
- Straight (Right) to Italian Villas
- Left to Italian Villas
- Left to Volcano Circuit
- Straight (Left) to Volcano Circuit
- Straight (Right) to Volcano KOM
- Left to Volcano Circuit
- Straight (Right) to Volcano
- Left to Downtown
- Left to Downtown
- Left to Ocean Blvd
- Straight (Right) to Ocean Blvd
- Left to Epic KOM
- Left to Desert Flats
- Right to Desert Flats
- Straight (Left) to Desert Flats
- Left to Downtown
- Straight (Right) to Ocean Blvd
- Right to Downtown
- Right to Downtown
- Straight (Left) to Sprint
- Right to Volcano Circuit
- Right to Volcano Circuit CCW
Route details:
Distance: 102km (63.4 miles)
Elevation Gain: 489m (1604′)
Strava Segment
See on ZwiftMap.com
Rebel Route Suggestions
Got an idea for a great Rebel Route? Share it below and maybe we’ll publish a post about it!
Please update velowiever Zwiftinsider with this new rebel route
Put in the request this morning. It’ll be added today, I bet… along with two other Rebel Routes I haven’t published yet!
I’m guessing one of them is KOMonster v2, since KOMonster has disappeared from the VV ZI leaderboard a while ago!
Eric – Thanks for designing the Marvelous Metric. Well done. Looking at the land mass of Watopia around the Tempus Fugit route, Zwift could easily create a nice long route back there, off of the Tempus Fugit route. Wouldn’t need fancy graphics given those typical of the TF route.
I’d love to see a gravel route, up in the hills!
My favorite long flat 100 km route starts at the downtown pens, goes toward the desert, one lap of tick tock, continue to the lax roundabout, take the coast roads to the jungle, go up to and over the mayan bridge, back down to the coast roads, back to lax, back turn right, back to the stone arch, one lap of tick tock reverse, desert turnaround back to the stone arch.
Not a bad route, but I specifically designed this one to avoid the full Jungle climb, which tends to break up groups.
I agree. It would be great if zwift could put a roundabout at the jungle intersection.
LOVE IT!!! So true, it gets boring after awhile just riding the desert, so glad to see a longer flat route. Also, the pacers lately have alot of climbing!
Whoops. Fixed!
Nice job, Eric. This is much needed and I hope Zwift is listening and gets it added soon as a regular route.
Great route.
Rode this yesterday; great route. Turn by turn cues right on, except line 28; think it should say Volcano Circuit.
Glad you liked it. Oddly enough, turn 28 in game actually says Volcano KOM!
You are correct, of course. My mistake was blowing past the Jarvis turnoff, which was turn 28, then applying that cue to the next intersection, which did just what it said, “Straight (Right) Volcano KOM”; and up I went 🤣. So glad gravel races have gone with GPS routes in place of cue cards. Never could keep track. Always seemed to get off course.
I’ve always assumed Zwift was a virtual world, but they always seem to act as if they pay some municipality real land taxes. Whenever they release a world its always tiny, and then they add all the possible variations of loops and figure 8’s they can possibly do in it.
I’ve never understood why there isn’t a nice 100k route and a nice 160k route, not made up of a zillion loops of some smaller course.
But again, I’m sure the land taxes would be economically devastating.
Zwift do seem intent on creating lots of similar courses now which I’m not a fan of either and the6 don’t appear to be popular based on how many people are on the Strava leader boards for them.
i suspect the reason Zwift doesn’t have a 100+ km route that uses unique roads is because nobody would ride it. People seem to like the short flat routes and not many people would complete a really long route and as a result the roads on this route would be empty making it less interesting to people like me who would ride it s it would be a ghost town.
But just one (this) it’s not to much to ask, also I don’t care if I don’t see any other cyclists since it’s the same irl on long ultra races with less than 20 participants. I’ve done every +85k route in the game and would appreciate a new long distance route without doing +10 laps and this one I would die for.
There’s a big blank zone “northwest” of the LAX roundabout, after taking the turnoff to the coastal road area, before crossing the bridge. I expect something’s going to expand into that area someday.
Though this might be a bit extreme, Zwift definitely needs more long flat routes.
I think the real extreme is having so many similar routes. Significantly differently routes like this one are exactly what Zwift needs.
Works well for a weekend warrior activity. The 100K distance is a convenient, since the time required meshes well with background watching a pair of football, baseball, basketball, or hockey games. Beats being a slug on the couch.
Why does Zwift develop useless Ai crap nobody wants or needs but we still don’t have a custom route creator!
Hi Eric,
This article really shits me because I can’t actually read it. Why because every 10secs a Google advert pops up in the left hand margin and obscures the first 3 words on each line
SHAME GOOGLE SHAME
Boooo… that’s annoying and shouldn’t happen. What screen/device are you using?
Sadly, this is a really interesting route, except that I so despise riding the Esses at any time – even much less in the last 5km.
What do you hate so much about the Esses ? They’re here since the beginning and, even if that’s not the best part of Watopia, I don’t understand what causes you this feeling
IRL I really don’t enjoy riding on rolling terrain. I find the rapid changes of load really annoying. In Zwift, the way the visuals swing rapidly back and forth give me vertigo, so I have to ride that with my eyes closed, and then I cannot see what the terrain is doing. Just basically that segment is no fun for me.