On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 2 laps of Innsbruckring…
This festive season is not just about family and feasting…. with GTR’s (Good Time Riders) 12 Races of Christmas series, it’s also about having some fast and furious racing fun during the holidays!
About the Series
Running from 26 December through to 6 January, the race series is loosely themed on the “12 days of Christmas” carol.
With routes ranging from 10-25km, it’s been designed to give racers something to get their teeth into whilst acknowledging it’s a busy time of year. While there we 12 races, the series rankings will be based on your best 9 results according to the points structure listed on ZwiftPower, with individual and team leaderboards available. So, if family, work, or social engagements crop up, you don’t have to worry about missing a day or two.
Race Times and Basic Rules
Three times are available for each race:
12:30pm UTC/7:30am ET/4:30am PT
6:30pm UTC/1:30pm ET/10:30am PT
12:30am UTC/7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT
Entry into any of the race times will count as your result for the day. Races are mass start, but five categories are available, split by Zwift Racing Score. A ZwiftPower account and heart rate monitor will be required to appear on the leaderboard.
And best of all, there’s no complicated rules around the races – just a straight scratch race to the finish.
Route Schedule
26th December: “And a Partridge in a Pear Tree” – Makuri, Spirit Forest – 1 lap, 12.6km
Today, we’re releasing the first of three special “full map” Rebel Routes. Unlike the very small Summit City Velodrome, the last Rebel Route we released, these routes are very long, covering every single road on their respective maps.
But first, credit where credit is due: Zwifter Ole Eichhorn gets the kudos for putting in the work to come up with this route. And it was no small job! Finding the shortest route covering all roads on a complex map is known as “the postman problem”, and Ole wrote a program to solve it, telling me that “the Internet knows a lot of tricks.”
Ole went on to say, “The program uses Hierholtzer’s algorithm to find a Eulerian path, the Floyd-Warshall algorithm to pair odd nodes, and Djikstra’s algorithm to find minimum node pairings. (Yeah, just typing that makes my head hurt.)”
Not only did Ole find the shortest route – he went and rode it! Fine work, sir.
Second: I’m releasing these three Rebel Routes in hopes that Zwift will adopt them as new fondo routes. It’s been way too long since we’ve had new fondo routes, and there are so many great new roads that fondos could use! (All three routes are from Ole, and all three are “full map” routes.)
This route in particular would make a great Medio Fondo route, and the next two routes released will make good Bambino and Gran routes, respectively. Stay tuned for those.
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 take much too much space. So I’ll summarize it instead.
The route begins in the Yumezi countryside, which is fitting since this is where it all began! When the Makuri Islands map launched in May of 2021, these were the only roads it had.
You’ll cover nearly all the Yumezi roads in the first 26km of your ride, but will return at the end to cover a final bit in the Castle area.
From Yumezi, we make our way over to urban Neokyo, which was the next section of Makuri Islands to launch, in November 2021. Neokyo is all bright lights and city streets, and the lights feel especially bright because it’s always night time in Neokyo. We’ll cover all of Neokyo roads here, before heading descending down Pain Cavern to Urukazi.
Urukazi is the tropical island portion of the Makuri Islands, and we’ll ride around it clockwise, doing two loops to cover all the roads. The first loop covers the inner roads, while the second loop covers the outer roads.
Then it’s up the Slot Canyon and back into Yumezi for the last bit of the route. You’ll ride through the lap banner once again and into the Castle area, covering a few internal roads. We finish our last bit of unridden pavement here as we ride through the Village Sprint, but we might as well carry on downhill for another 1.5km to finish up at the lap banner where we began.
Turn By Turn Directions
Be warned: this route has a lot of turns. Way more than any other Rebel Route we’ve ever done. You may want to print out a cue sheet.
Begin by choosing the Two Village Loop route, which starts you near the Yumezi lap banner, heading in the right direction for the first few turns.
Considering adding a Zwift Ride to your indoor setup? In this week’s top video, one Zwifter shares his experience with the setup after one week of use.
I Finally Bought Zwift Ride and This Happened to Me…
Adam from Road to A shares his thoughts on the Zwift Ride after his first week of riding with it. Does it meet his expectations?
Unboxing my new trainer!
Casual Creations unboxes his new trainer and does his first race with it. Hear from him as he explains why he decided to upgrade and what his experience has been so far.
Can I Help A ‘Newbie’ Win A Zwift Race?
Zwifter Ryan Condon teams up with Jessica Strange and coaches her through a Zwift race. Can he guide her to a win?
This is insane! – Zwift London PRL Full Route
Patrick Lino tackles the PRL Full – the longest route on Zwift. Watch as he talks through pacing, nutrition, and more.
Indoor Cycling Felt Wrong… Until I Tried a Rocker Plate
As a long-time indoor cyclist, Bike Bonk Biff tries a rocker plate for the first time and shares his thoughts on the experience.
Got a Great Zwift Video?
Share the link below and we may feature it in an upcoming post!
This weekend’s picks are all group rides, but they vary in length and pace. We’ve got a sweet spot ride from the inventor of sweet spot training, a kit unlock ride in NYC from Dadbod Cycling, two very different 100km rides, and the good ol’ BMTR Flat 100! See below for details…
Ever heard of “Sweet Spot” training? It’s a staple for many riders, since it lets you accumulate a lot of training stress in relatively little time without suffering at or above threshold.
The guy who created the sweet spot concept – coach Frank Overton of FasCat – is one of the leaders on these rides. There’s even a Discord channel so you can chat directly with him. Pretty cool!
Everyone will be on Big Foot Hills (69.9km, 712m) for this ride, doing “freestyle sweetspot,” and groups will naturally form around each rider’s sweet spot zone.
Makesi from DadBod Cycling is hosting a holiday ride on one of New York’s newer routes this Saturday. It’s your chance to hang with Makesi (super cool dude) and also unlock the exclusive DBC Jersey in Zwift- see it on his Insta post.
This is an open-paced group ride on Double Parked (42.2km, 329m).
I’m not sure what the folks at OUTLYR are up to, but this ride has more signups than any other heading into the weekend! For that reason alone, I’m including it in this list. They’ve earned it.
It’s a 100km event on Watopia’s Triple Flat Loops, led at a pace of 2.7 W/kg.
Want to accumulate lots of miles quickly? Join this growing group ride, which puts everyone on the fastest TT bike in game (Cadex Tri) with drafting enabled. It’s 100km, but it’ll be a fast 100km!
Riders are on Tempus Fugit, the flattest route in Zwift. Three different pace groups, released so the faster groups catch the slower groups over time.
Bike upgrading hack: on rides with forced bikes, whatever bike you’re on when you join the event is the bike that accumulates the distance/elevation/time. So, for example, you could accumulate lots of distance toward a road bike upgrade, while riding the Cadex Tri in this event.
A regularly featured event here on Zwift Insider, the BMTR Flat 100 always gets lots of joiners because it’s well-led and run consistently week after week, year after year.
This week’s ride is on Watopia’s Big Flat 8, with three pace groups to choose from.
We choose each weekend’s Notable Events based on a variety of factors including:
Is the event unique/innovative in some way?
Are celebrities (pro riders, etc) attending/leading?
Are signup counts already high, meaning the event is extra-popular?
Does the ride include desirable unlocks or prizes?
Does the event appeal to ladies on Zwift? (We like to support this under-represented group!)
Is it for a good cause?
Is it just plain crazy (extra long races, world record attempts, etc)?
Is it a long-running, popular weekly event with a dedicated leader who deserves a shout out?
In the end, we want to call attention to events that are extra-special and therefore extra-appealing to Zwifters. If you think your event qualifies, comment below with a link/details and we may just include it in an upcoming post!
If you’ve been on Zwift in the past few days, you probably noticed Christmas is in the air. Santa is flying around Watopia, the trees are decorated, and ugly Christmas sweater kits are showing up in the peloton!
Christmas Sweater kitThe blimp is now Santa’s sleighHQ has been working overtime hanging lights…
Finding Your Ugly Christmas Sweater
Everyone has the ugly sweater kit in their Zwift closet–it’s just hidden behind the default grey Zwift kit! While Zwifting, hit “T” on the keyboard (or visit Menu>Garage), then click “Jersey” to change your top.
Click the default Zwift kit (grey with orange Z), then dash away, dash away, dash away down the road!
Did you know Zwift has 200+ cycling routes that earn you a special achievement badge and XP bonus the first time they’re completed? And runners have 35+ routes that award badges bonuses as well!
Here’s everything you need to know about Zwift route achievements, including the little gotchas that trip up new Zwifters and a full list of all the routes that award an achievement badge.
Every Badge has a Bonus
When you earn a route achievement badge, you also receive a one-time XP bonus for completing that route. This bonus is equal to the XP you already earned for the route (20XP per km), so you effectively double your XPearning rate when finishing routes for the first time, helping you level up faster.
Note: It’s not exactly accurate that you double your XP earning rate when running a new route. This is how Zwift set up the badges for running routes in the early days, but in recent years, they’ve set up running badges to award XP at the same rate as riding badges, which means newer route badges earn you about half the bonus that older ones did.
What Counts (and What Doesn’t)
Route badges can be earned in three ways:
Select the route from the home screen, then ride the full route. The game will make the correct turns for you. You can do this as a “free ride” or a workout.
Join an event (group workout, social ride, race, Meetup, etc) that uses the route, and ride the full route. (If the event ends before the route is finished, you must continue riding in order to finish the route and earn the badge.)
Join a RoboPacer or friend using the route, then ride the full route. (This can be tricky, since you’ll probably start midway through the route. You must cross the route’s start and finish line to complete it.)
What will not earn the badge is you freely navigating the route when the game thinks you’re on a different route.
Many Zwifters have hopped into the game, completed a particular route, then tried to keep riding and complete another route in the same session. This only works if you teleport to a rider or RoboPacer on the new route. But if you try to navigate the route manually, Zwift won’t know which route you want to complete, and it won’t award the badge.
Your route selection is only saved when you select a route from the home screen menu, begin a new event, or teleport to another rider or RoboPacer.
Planning and Tracking Your Progress
Most Zwifters use the Companion app or the in-game badge indicator to track which routes have unearned badges (read how to do that here). These approaches aren’t without their drawbacks, though:
The in-game list requires you to fire up the game before browsing, it only shows the day’s scheduled worlds (unless you use the fake workout world hack), and it doesn’t include event-only routes.
The Companion app’s list could be super convenient in theory, but in practice the list isn’t accurate, with many routes shown as not awarding badges when in fact they do.
Some Zwifters use tools like Zwifthub to track which routes they’ve completed, but that requires manually marking the route as complete. (Which, to be fair, is rather satisfying.)
I’ve included a complete, up-to-date list of all routes with achievement badges below. You can copy and paste this into any spreadsheet if you’d like a list you can print, edit, etc.
Routes Without Badges
Some routes do not have achievement badges:
Certain Event-Only Routes: Some routes in Zwift are not available for free rides, and thus can only be ridden in official events. While Zwift has been enabling achievement badges for event-only routes in recent years, many older event-only routes don’t have them. Examples include fondo routes like the Gran Fondo, as well as many reverse routes and after-party routes.
Ride Badge, But No Run Badge: while runners can run on all the “mixed-use” routes in Zwift, most of those routes don’t award an achievement badge for runners.
Run-Only Routes: Some routes are only available to runners, and thus have no achievement badge for cyclists. These routes always have a running achievement badge, though! Examples include Jon’s Route and Hudson Roll.
A Complete List of Route Badges on Zwift
Here is a complete list of Zwift routes that award an achievement badge (and bonus XP) upon initial completion. Since Zwift awards different badges and different XP amounts for riders vs runners, I’ve created two separate lists: one for routes that award badges when ridden, the other for routes that award badges when run.
Yesterday’s Zwift update included the release of a long-awaited feature: a draft indicator! It’s a very simple yet useful addition to the game UI: a horizontal blue line that expands and contracts at the bottom of the center HUD element. This animation shows how it basically works:
Want to see it in action? Here’s a quick recording I made while spinning around Watopia yesterday:
Into the Weeds
The new draft indicator, in typical Zwift fashion, is a very simple UI element. But there are lots of details worth discussing, so let’s dig deeper…
What are we measuring?
This is a tricky question to answer, actually.
The blue bar isn’t showing exactly how much power you’re saving. If that were the case, it would be wider when drafting two riders at ~60kph on flat ground, vs drafting the same two riders at a lower speed. But that’s not the case. The bar is full even at 34kph, as shown here:
And here you can see it’s filled to the same level drafting off of one rider, whether I’m saving a lot of power at 48kph, or less power at 34kph:
The blue bar is also not indicating how much of the potential draft you are experiencing. If that were the case, the bar would be full when you’re on a climb in the middle of a pack, receiving as much draft as possible in your current location. But that’s not the case. On steep climbs, the bar only fills partway:
Draft Indicator partially filled while sitting mid-pack on a climb
So what is it displaying? I think it’s best to think of the Draft Indicator as showing what percentage of your power is being saved in the draft. This isn’t a perfect description of what it’s showing (especially since the blue bar fills up even when you’re coasting), but I think it’s as close as we’re going to get.
A Note About Bar Width
No, I’m not talking about the UCI’s controversial recent stance on handlebar widths. I’m referring to how the draft indicator’s design could stand to be polished a bit. Currently, the draft indicator bar only fills ~80% of the HUD’s width, but it’s so low-contrast that you can’t really tell how wide the bar should be, if there’s a dark background behind the center HUD:
Because of this, when the bar is fully filled, it can look like it’s only partially-filled, since it doesn’t go to the edges of the HUD.
The bar only expands to the edges of the HUD box when using a Draft Boost powerup (see below). But perhaps the bar should be the full width at all times, then a Draft Boost powerup changes the color of the indicator, or the bar expands to be a bit wider than the main HUD element?
Draft Boost Powerups
What happens when you activate a Draft Boost? I’m glad you asked. Here’s a demo:
How many riders for max draft?
How many riders have to be ahead of you for you to fill the Draft Indicator to max? The answer appears to be two, at least on flat ground at a descent speed.
If you’re well-positioned behind a single rider, the bar fills to this level (around 75% of max):
But get behind two riders, and it fills completely:
This doesn’t quite line up with my Pack Dynamics tests from past years (see Test 2 in this post, for example), which seemed to show that a 4th rider got a bit more benefit than the 3rd rider in a TTT. But my guess is the discrepancy can be explained by Zwift’s new draft indicator having a cap on the power savings it displays, as explained in “What are we measuring?” above.
Goodbye, “Close the Gap”
Zwift says the “Close the Gap” text will be retired with the rollout of the Draft Indicator. I don’t think anyone will complain about that, as long as the Draft Indicator is always visible in its place! (“Close the Gap” was a handy tool in TTT’s… IYKYK.)
How Far Back?
One thing the Draft Indicator will teach Zwifters is that you receive a draft benefit from riders quite far up the road. How far back can you be, and still receive some benefit? I don’t have precise measurements, but here’s a visual showing where the Draft Indicator begins to show a benefit on flat ground at 33kph:
Zwift vs Sauce for Zwift
Until this week’s release, the only draft gauge Zwifters could access was the one provided for Sauce for Zwift. Here’s a quick demo video where I compare Sauce’s drafting gauge and Zwift’s new Draft Indicator:
Sauce’s gauge is titled “W Savings” to indicate that it is showing how much power you’re saving in the draft. This isn’t perfectly accurate, though, as it’s actually showing you how much more power you’d need to be doing to hold your current speed on flat ground without a draft.
Some Zwifters prefer having an actual number displayed. But I think Zwift’s choice to keep it a simple bar is probably the right call, in the interest of keeping the HUD clean and simple.
Drafting Ghosts
With the Draft Indicator now being used by hundreds of thousands of riders, people are going to start discovering new things.
For example, on Zwifter wrote in yesterday to tell me they discovered in a Ladder Race that you can draft off of someone who is invisible due to the ghost powerup. I’d already written about this a few years back (see the post), and of course it makes sense: everyone knows ghosts still have bodies, even if they’re invisible. Right?
TTT Drafting
While Zwift’s Draft Indicator announcement in the forum says, “this indicator will not appear when riding a TT bike…” sources in Zwift tell me that’s not actually true. If you’re in an event where TT bikes can draft (like a TTT), Zwift says the Draft Indicator will be visible. I guess racers will find out tomorrow if that’s true!
Questions or Comments?
What do you think of the new draft indicator? Comment below, and you can also chat on this Zwift forum topic.
The newest episode of Nowhere Fast rolls into the Zwift season with its trademark mix of cycling news, casual chaos, and self-inflicted existential dread. The hosts recap their summers — which, in true virtual-cycling fashion, featured more KOM-hunting intentions than actual training — before diving into another classic Zwift storyline: someone cheated again. Apparently, virtual racing continues to deliver scandals with the reliability of a dropped chain on a neglected trainer bike.
At one point, Kevin makes a comparison that perfectly sums up the vibe: the latest “exit racing” format is basically the gluten-free pasta of virtual cycling — technically the same activity, but somehow missing flavor, texture, and joy.
The episode also marks a real-life milestone for host Zach Schuster, proving at least one member of the podcast occasionally contributes something meaningful to society outside Watopia.
The overall tone is equal parts mockery and affection — a reminder that while the racing is digital and sometimes ridiculous, the enthusiasm (and inability to stop caring) is painfully real.
About the Podcast
Nowhere Fast is a member of the Wide Angle Podium network. To support this podcast and help pay for Kevin’s gold-plated ankle weights, head to wideanglepodium.com and contribute to our advanced virtual racing research.
To keep up to date on all our real coverage of fake bike racing, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
