Answering the Bike Swap Question for Zwift’s WhatYumeziWe’reLost? Route

The odd-yet-fittingly-named WhatYumeziWe’reLost? Makuri Islands route was recently unveiled for the Makuri Madness ZRacing series, to be raced this week for the first time.

It’s a 17.5km point-to-point route that begins with a short climb, then takes riders over more rolling terrain before finishing on the infamous dirt Temple KOM:

With the route including some dirt sections, riders are asking: does it make sense to swap to a gravel bike for all or part of this race?

The first stretch of dirt on this route comes around 10.7km into the race. Riders begin the Temple KOM, then turn right onto the cutoff road which takes us to the other side of the Temple KOM for a descent back to the Castle area. While this is a dirt section where gravel bikes will be a bit faster than road bikes, it doesn’t make sense to swap from road to gravel when you hit the dirt at 10.7km because you’ll be switching back to tarmac around the 12.9km mark, for a paved stretch just under 2km long.

But then we arrive at the next dirt stretch: the full Temple KOM. The dirt begins around 14.8km into the route, and continues to the finish line (with the exception of some wooden bridge sections near the end). The finish line is the KOM banner in the giant mystical tree atop the Temple KOM:

Does it make sense to swap from a road to a gravel rig for this final dirt climb? The short answer is: yes, if you have the right controller setup. But let’s unpack this, because there are a lot of considerations that go into the bike swap decision.

Key Bike Swap Considerations

Time Savings

This is the first question I always ask when considering a bike swap. All other things being equal, how much faster can you complete the dirt section with a gravel bike vs road bike?

I did a quick test with our standard bot rider (183cm, 75kg, at 300W). Here are the Temple KOM times for a top-spec un-upgraded road bike setup vs a top-spec un-upgraded gravel setup:

• Road Bike (Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL9 with Princeton CarbonWorks Wake 6560 wheels): 6:54.34
• Gravel Bike (Cannondale SuperX LAB71 with Roval Terra Aero CLX wheels): 6:29.47

That’s a difference of almost 25 seconds – slightly more than the time gap I’ve measured previously, thanks to the new Cannondale frame and Roval wheels being faster than the older gravel setups.

Route Layout

It’s crucial that this route ends atop the Temple KOM. If it kept going and ended on a paved section later, we would need to consider switching back to a road setup, since we would be at a major disadvantage sprinting against roadies on our gravel bike. But the route ending on the dirt tips the scales firmly in the direction of the bike swap.

Brakes Required

Are you able to brake in Zwift? Doing so today requires the older Zwift Play controllers, or the controllers which come on the Zwift Ride.

Because the old “pairing screen brake” hack no longer works (you have to unpair your power source now for the pairing screen to stop your rider), the only truly fast way to stop for a bike swap is via manual braking.

Pro tip: Set “Braking Sensitivity” to 100% (see above), as this will bring you to a stop 2-3 seconds faster than the default 50% setting.

Time Cost and Fast Swaps

Of course, bike swapping has a cost, because you have to stop moving before you can swap. Since the race ends atop the KOM, there’s no need to swap back to the road bike. So the major cost of your bike swap is the time lost while stopping at the bottom of the Temple KOM, swapping, then getting moving again. (Of course, there’s also the cost of losing the draft. I discuss that below.)

Doing it quickly takes a bit of practice. But if you have braking controllers (see above), you can go from full speed racing on your road bike to fully swapped and moving ahead on your fastest gravel bike in less than 5 seconds. In fact, I did it today, on my way to an unimpressive 8th-place finish:

Equipping the Best Wheels

One thing that helps make this swap more effective is last week’s game update that saves wheelsets to frames. Now you can equip your ideal gravel setup beforehand, then race on your road setup. When it comes time to swap, just click that gravel frame, and it’ll have the wheels you last used attached.

Where To Swap

You don’t want to swap on the flat and fast start to the KOM, because your effort isn’t high there, and you’re benefiting from the pack draft at those higher speeds of 40+kph.

Instead, wait to initiate your bike swap until the group slows down around the big right-hand turn where the road pitches up to 5%. This allows you to derive maximum benefit from the pack draft at higher speeds, initiate a faster bike swap, and get back in touch with the pack sooner since they won’t be so far away once you get going again.

Losing the Draft

Assuming you’re in the front pack when you initiate your bike swap, you can plan on most or all of the pack going up the road without you as you stop to change bikes. (In today’s race, I think I was the only rider who stopped to swap!) This means you’ll lose the draft benefit of the pack until you catch them again.

This is an added “cost” to bike swapping, but there are two things worth mentioning that reduce this cost:

1. You’re on a climb traveling at 15-20kph for most of the remainder of the route, so you’re not saving a lot of power in the draft.
2. As mentioned above under “Where To Swap”, timing your swap smartly lets you stay in the draft when it’s most helpful and get back in touch with pack riders more quickly once you get moving again.

Bike Upgrade Status

This isn’t actually a key consideration, but I know people will ask, so I’m including it!

Many riders have a fully-upgraded road bike, and a partly-upgraded or un-upgraded gravel bike. Does it still make sense to swap in this case?

Short answer: yes! As shown in our Performance Improvements and Power Savings at Each Stage charts, a fully-upgraded road bike gains ~37 seconds on the un-upgraded version across an hour of climbing the Alpe.

Using some approximate napkin math, we can say that the Temple KOM is ~6 minutes long, or 1/10th of an hour, which means the fully-upgraded bike would be 37/10=3.7 seconds faster up the Temple KOM than its un-upgraded version.

So if you have a fully upgraded road bike and an un-upgraded gravel bike (using the frames and wheelsets I used in my tests above), the gravel bike will still outclimb the road bike by over 21 seconds.

Conclusion

Given all the considerations above, I’d say bike swapping on WhatYumeziWe’reLost? is a no-brainer, assuming you’ve got braking controls and access to quick menu navigation (best done on a Mac/PC keyboard).

Your Thoughts

Have you tried a bike swap on this route? Do you agree or disagree with my conclusions above? Chime in below!