After creating so many Rebel Routes over the years, including the Summit City Velodrome, I smiled when I saw Zwift’s new Cirque du Suffer route in Paris:
50 laps around the Arc de Triomphe… was this for real? Yes it was.
By now, many of you have already ridden this route. It’s an easy ride (flat and short) after all. After reading various comments on Zwifty forums and overhearing chatter around the Arc de Triomphe, it’s clear that feelings are mixed:
When I rode it, I had a few thoughts:
- This will be absolute mayhem in a scratch race, with riders lapping each other. It could get really interesting with a small pack.
- I wonder why they didn’t make this a looping (lappable) route?
- How much distance could I shave off by steering to the inside of the circle?
It’s that final question that I’m addressing today.
Steering vs No Steering: Distance Comparison
Most Zwifters with a steering device already understand that steering can shave distance off of your ride if you do it right – or add distance if you do it poorly. Just like outdoors! (Back in 2020, Bo Oxlund tested steering on Alpe du Zwift and determined that steering the optimal line shaved around 500 meters off the overall climb’s length vs no steering.)
On a route like Cirque du Suffer, where steering to the inside clearly shortens the distance, it’s not a question of if steering shortens the course, but by how much.
I ran three tests:
- Steering to the inside for the entire ride
- No steering at all
- Steering to the outside for the entire ride
And here are the distance results, taken from Strava since Zwift only displays distance to one decimal place:
- Steering to the inside: 17.88 km
- No steering: 18.49 km
- Steering to the outside: 18.99 km
Without steering, the “track” around the Arc de Triomphe is ~370 meters long. But if you steer to the inside, it is shortened to ~358 meters. And if you purposely steer to the outside (or just get stuck out there due to poor pack positioning), the track is lengthened to ~380 meters.
That means a non-steering rider on the middle “default” track would need to travel 3.35% faster than the steering rider on the inside in order to match their event distance. Or to put it in more practical terms, if the steering rider is racing at 45 kph, the non-steering rider will need to ride at 46.5 kph just to keep up.
Steering vs No Steering: Experience Comparison
But distance and speed aren’t the only things to consider here.
In a typical Zwift race with drafting enabled, riding in the draft (presumably the longer “non-steering” track) would be more efficient than riding without a draft on the inside track. It might be fun to take on the non-steering peloton as a solo rider steering to the inside, but that will be a tough race to win. I do, however, predict we’ll see races on this course turn into a battle between two groups: steering riders on the inside against non-steering riders on the outside.
In a TT, where drafting isn’t a factor, steering to the inside will simply be a massive advantage. At 45 kph, steering to the inside will save a rider ~50 seconds across the full 20.9 km Cirque du Suffer route. (TT races often have steering disabled, perhaps for this very reason. But I’m of the opinion that we should generally allow steering throughout Zwift, since it’s part of the game and people have paid for the hardware.)
Lastly, it’s worth noting that constantly steering on Zwift is a bit of a pain. It’s not like outdoor riding, where the difference between steering your bike onto the slightly longer or shorter tracks around the Arc probably wouldn’t be noticeable. On Zwift, it requires near-constant steering, since the game will auto-steer you back into the draft if it detects no steering input after a short period. So there is a bit of additional work involved in sticking to that inside track… unless you set a box on the corner of your Zwift Click controller to hold the button down for half an hour like I did for these experiments.
Questions or comments?
Those are my thoughts. But what about yours?
Cirque du Suffer. Love it? Hate it? Want to race it? Share below!
Yep, I did the steering to the inside and I was passing people who were in the middle lane. 😁
Might be a good route for a TTT race. 😁 😁
Good to know!
Not putting in a lap counter was not a good idea. Otherwise those wanting a flat ride now have one.
would be awesome to do 100km with Coco or Yumi similar to the volcano, but only if the non arc part were dropped =)
This will be havoc in ladder races! Constant attacks and potentially lapping the field regaining draft. Will be hard to getaway but if done could be dangerous.
Exactly! Lapping the field then rejoining the draft is the ultimate move here.
It might take some coordination, but with enough riders, you could potentially have everyone drafting around the full loop. I’m curious how fast a group could go if they pulled that off.
Exponential centrifuge or some such thing and the Zwift server spirals out to Mars…
there’s a really great velodrome Sufferfest / Systm workout (can we discuss other platforms here?) called (I think) freight train where the person on the front goes as hard as they can to join at the back of the bunch, and then new front person goes off as hard as they can, and so on. This is a very very solid and sorta kinda (ok not really) fun workout you could replicate on the Cirque
Sounds like a terribly good workout!
The workout is called Team Scream and it was actually one of my go-to’s on Sufferfest/System. It is actually pretty great as workout but hard because you basically acting as one of 8 riders in a TTT, where you do a pull at or above FTP, get the rest as you drift back to the end of the line and then ramp-up again for your pull, with an all out sprint at the end simulating the sprint to the line. You had video of team BMC TTT and a race director giving instructions during the workout.
Can’t wait to test the route and steering myself.
ghost powerup = reappear one lap ahead ^^
I did it for the badge and treated it like a zone 2 / give a lot of Ride-Ons day. I must have handed out a couple hundred.
For those with the Sterzo steering like myself, it’s easy to steer and stay in a position for something like this.
re: cutting switchbacks on the AdZ – Does this change the gradient like it would in real life? I tried it a little and it seemed like it did. That’s impressive if those details are part of the game.
Yes, it does! This is really noticeable on the first big turn at the bottom of the Hilly KOM, in fact.
this is an IQ-test & I failed. 🤫
Say that a group of 30 riders does a race on this route. Half have steering and go to the inside. The other half has no steering. Would the group without steering be sucked into the draft of the group with steering because that big group makes a detectable draft for the non-steering group?
Would be interesting to watch the interplay between steering and auto steering in a setup like this.
I did this one in a workout and after I completed the route you will go around the classic way. Than returning to the 50 laps so it is lappable in certain way
So you continued on the course back round to the Arc and when you got back it set you on for another 50 laps? I did something a little different and did a u-turn after completing the course to see if in reverse it gave me 50 laps again and it did. (I didn’t do all 50 on the reverse, just four or five to be sure it was indeed looping).
It’s a fun route. I like to see Zwift trying new ideas. It presumably did not take a lot of resources within Zwift to develop, and the people who don’t like it can easily ignore it (unlike the AI recommendations), so it’s a nice addition. Good job Zwift!
Big Ben. Parliament. I can’t get right!!
A bit of whimsy is great, I think there’s some fun to be had with it for those who think it’ll be fun!
I’m of the opinion that we should generally NOT allow steering throughout Zwift, since /snip/ people have paid for the hardware. i.e. they haven’t earned their status with in-game time and effort.
I’d be ok with it if Apple TV remotes could implement it, or even the companion apps – a free non-ideal implementation using existing hardware is fairer than paid-for single-use widgets that will one day end up in the bin.
Steering doesn’t really add much to the game, so it’s just an annoying thing to have to do, so I prefer it off.
I assume you don’t race much Tim, because if you did you would not be annoyed by steering. It’s a distinct advantage, both for cutting corners and staying in optimum draft position.
I do race and the reasons you mentioned are reasons I am annoyed by it. I don’t want to do that stuff during a race.
Sorry Eric but your wrong on this one, well at least for me:
Lastly, it’s worth noting that constantly steering on Zwift is a bit of a pain.
My avatar is such a moron that he’s never drafting. Seriously does my head in. I’m already steering all the time. Waiting for Zwift to bring in “Avatar Upgrades” in the drop shop!
I now have a reason to put my older Zwift Play controller back on my bike, I replaced it because it goes into constant hard-left mode.
Perfect.
Z should have an option to disable the auto-steering. Let me pick my line and it should hold until I manually change.
This is the most boring route at Zwift so far
doing the Cirque while doing a workout that involved short intervals caused the arches to get very confused
For a casual ride staying in the pack, especially how the Paris expansion is hot and there’s lots of people, makes sense as the draft gain is so much stronger than the distance advantage. For me, and I think most others, this was a one and done for the badge. Popped on a tv show and pedalled, hitting that ride-on bomb button every few seconds 😀
This “new route” is just another example of how ridiculous this latest expansion is. My bet is that if Eric M would have asked his paying customers where they wanted their money to be spent, this Paris addition would not have even made the top 50…
I did VO2max intervals while doing it. One lap max effort, one easy. After a block of ten, 4 mins (total) easy then repeat. To be honest I was so busy counting and looking for the start/end of the lap, I didn’t notice doing the 50 laps! I can definitely recommend this.
I love this route..time flies and me to with all the draft 🙂
National Lampoon’s European Vacation came to mind while doing this route. Not exactly the most stimulating course on the planet, but good for a route badge and a chuckle…