Yesterday, Zwift made the unprecedented decision to pull Gravel Mountain’s new Red Rock Loop as the week’s featured Pas Racing series route, swapping it out for Watopia’s Jungle Circuit.
They’ve also changed the plan for stage 4 of the series, swapping out Red Rock Loop Reverse for Watopia’s Serpentine 8.
It’s a surprising move from Zwift, who have been teasing this week’s Gravel Mountain launch for weeks. But was it the right move?
The Bugs
On Monday morning, April 6, I walked upstairs to my office and fired up the ol’ YouTubes so I could watch the very first Gravel Mountain races and see what riders thought. I was excited about the launch – I had already seen the new route, having “pre-ridden” it using my bot on a pre-release build of the game so I could create a Strava segment for the new route.
Here’s my bot riding the course at 4 w/kg:
Watching the bot on the route, I had a few thoughts:
- The map is gorgeous. The rocks and scenery are epic and beautiful.
- The road is still too wide – and this is something I said about Gravel Mountain years ago. One of the cool things about gravel riding is that feel of going fast on narrow roads. Portions of Gravel Mountain feel much too wide, and this makes the road feel more boring and less speedy.
- It felt fast, because Zwift was pulling some sort of trickery to make the course move past more quickly than normal, while keeping your actual speed realistic. It didn’t feel overly fast to me – but I also wasn’t experiencing the increased speed of racing in a pack.
Overall, my takeaway after bot-riding the route was that racers would enjoy the experience, and that it might bring something new to the world of Zwift – the fast-paced gravel crit.
So I was genuinely surprised at what I saw in the livestreams of the first gravel races. Here are the two streams I was watching, from Bike Bonk Biff and Road to A:
The first comments of these two streamers are pretty telling:
“Woah! That was a fast start! What? What was that? What the hell is this? That’s surely a bug, right? Or…?” (~Road to A)
“Oh! OK. This is actually… why is it so fast? What? What is happening right now?” (~Bike Bonk Biff)
Watch the streams, and you’ll quickly see what I saw:
- Too fast: Speeds were much higher in the pack than on my solo ride (for example, Road to A’s speed was 10 kph higher at the end of the initial s-curves than my bot).
- The bouncing: While the rider’s own avatar didn’t seem to bounce on screen, other riders’ avatars intermittently were, and the effect was not good. Not good at all.
- Erratic movements: Riders were shifting back and forth left to right too quickly, and sometimes flying up through the middle of the pack unrealistically fast.
- Riding through rocks: riders were moving through rocks and bushes on the edge of the road in places.
- No rider placings: The game stopped showing what place the rider was in (on the right-hand rider list) near the start of the first lap.
- Negative feedback: Feedback via in-game messaging was instantly negative. I’m sure Zwift has all those messages stored on a server somewhere, and if they were to make a wordcloud out of them all, the biggest phrase would probably be “wtf”.
Zwift’s forum quickly lit up, with one rider starting a topic that has received over 100 replies in 48 hours.
To top it all off, riders reported not getting credit for finishing the stage, including the promised 1000 XP bonus.
Zwift Pulls the Plug
Just after 9am my time on Tuesday, April 7, 24 hours after the first Red Rock Loop events were held, Zwift’s event guru James Bailey posted this on the forum topic linked above:
Based on early feedback to the faster experience on Gravel Mountain, we’ve decided to make route changes for Stages 1 and 4. There will be a more detailed update coming shortly.
A few hours later, Zwift’s VP of Product Mark Cote wrote this:
Hey Zwifters,
As James mentioned, we’ve changed out the routes for PAS stages from Gravel Mtn as we address the issues some experienced. Crediting for Stage 1 completion is being handled as well and all should see credit for completion by EOD today.
W/r to Gravel Mountain: The ‘issues’ were especially notable for high powered, non-steering paired users on specific refresh rate devices…ultimately this led to a few people having a very bad experience with camera swaying and some on-screen jitters. The rest of us had the desired (sped up gravel) experience we were shooting for. We did test this on several occasions internally but missed testing in the high-speed, large packs that were apparent during the first events. Yep, obvious in hindsight, but here we are and we’ve adjusted the events.
Gravel Mtn WILL be back soon and tuned via additional testing. There’s something to the feeling of speed that we’re all quite excited about and we will dial this in. We definitely want to be trying new, fun things out but we missed the mark on the quality that we strive to deliver.
Thanks as always for the commentary and reporting here. It’s super appreciated and valued by our team.
Mark Cote
What About the GC?
At the time of this post, Zwift hasn’t determined how to handle the time-based GC for the Pas Normal Racing series.
On Friday morning, Zwift announced that they have annulled stage 1 in terms of GC rankings, meaning stage 1 will not count toward the time-based GC for the 4-stage series.
My Thoughts
First, I do think Zwift made the right call in pulling the plug on Red Rock Loop this week. The race experience was just too buggy.
It all seems so avoidable, though, right? Why wasn’t this caught in early tests?
Hindsight is 20/20, of course. But surely this could have all been avoided by Zwift testing the race course with a large enough pack of riders at a realistic race pace. I’m sure Zwift’s QA department is taking notes in this regard.
I think most racers are hoping what I’m hoping: that Zwift fixes the bugs and launches a much-improved Gravel Mountain soon. I like the idea of a fast-paced gravel crit course, and I think Zwift can make it happen. I do, however, share the thoughts/concerns of Aoi Niigaki, who posted this on Zwift’s forum:
If Zwift is after a sped up experience then that can be achieved through good course design. One of the things I noticed with the Gravel Mountain stage is how incredibly wide the road was. Narrower roads, tighter corners, shorter straights would all improve the perception of speed without the need to artificially boost it.
It’s a dangerous road you are going down Zwift (which started with the accelerated subway exits in New York). If people get used to double speed races then riding at normal speeds will start to seem slow and boring. Power creep is a thing in games and needs to be carefully managed less you stuff it up completely.
Aoi_Niigaki
I’m not convinced Zwift needs to speed up the visuals in order for gravel racing to be fun. And I definitely know that narrow roads with more turns/shorter straights can make a course feel fast and engaging without leading to “power creep”. I’d like to see Zwift explore this, particularly for virtual gravel and MTB racing.
That said, I’m not completely against Zwift’s idea of artificially boosting the perceived speed (let’s call it “visual speed”) of a route for a particular gamified race mode. This kind of experimentation is important, and I like that Zwift is willing to give it a try. It definitely needs to be dialed back though, particularly in the faster race categories.
Your Thoughts
Did you race Red Rock Loop? How did it go? And do you think Zwift made the right call in pulling it? Share your thoughts below…
Sounds like ZHQ needs another Zwift Community Live event in Mallorca with all of the influencers to find a solution for gravel mountain.
And they need to be spending less time on useless”features” such as AI recommendations and fitness tracking
Please don’t say that, this is not available yet in my country 😭
Lucky you. Glad they’re offering an opt-out now, even if it takes a support request to do it.
The solution is tarmac it 😉
I volunteer as tribute! LOL! But man those presentations Zwift developers gave to the Mallorca audience that didn’t really care was just painful to watch.
If you’ve done the gravel route on Makuri Island, it’s a great example of the narrow twisting route (even if it’s just a section) going through that flowing section gives a great sense of speed, just a shame it it was for a few hundred meters
Agreed!
And only 2km – why? – I don’t mean it should be unbound style over 300km – But at least something like 15 – 20km would be great.Gravel racing isn’t crit racing.Please add a longer route to gravel mountain at some point.
Agreed they should be some longer races
And why a new world? They have a gravel mountain playground that seems perfect for development in the hills and desert around Fuego Flats…
“Zwift’s QA department”
This is us. We are their QA department.
Welcome to the age of vibe coding.
Totally true, but moreover Zwift should leverage us.. offer us some way to participate in early release features for feedback.
Yeah, if zwift had offered this as a “zwift labs” event or a beta of the new course the response would have been more positive because we would be expecting these kinds of issues. But they messed up and put out a big press release and used it for their flagship series of events for the month before it was ready for that.
Personally for my cat D speed it felt great, although a small breakaway formed quickly so no large pack dynamics in my race
I did get shot off course once though in the first lap
Watching the video and having not tried it, the fast speeds actually looks kind of fun. I may not be fast in real life but flying through the desert at top gun speeds looks like a blast 😀
also having the release have issues is just emblematic of gravel. Never know what weather and conditions you will get 🙂
i did it, it just was fast, but no actual difference to any other race. same people dropped, same people complained.
Just one question… why did it need the speed up boost?
seems like an unnecessary addition for the sake of it.
My feeling, zwift hq completely misread the room (not the 1st time we all know) and feedback on zwift gravel roads when compared to riding on road & then gravel in the same ride. If the world is entirely gravel, keep the same speed and leave the gimmicks alone.
I don’t get why they simply don’t use the actual route instead of doubling it so they can also double the speed. It will feel fast enough with the visuals scaled down to the actual size. And the roads won’t feel FAR TOO WIDE.
I don’t like the idea of having different visuals depending on the map, that will just get confusing. My biggest gripe with riding on the current gravel is the plodding audio effects which makes it seem slow even when my actual speed isn’t.
Good point, they need to update the quality of the audio on gravel. I usually ride without sound, but when editing a video for an audience I do find the generic “when the rubber meets the road” sounds in Zwift, especially gravel as less than ideal. Sound is a big part of sensation of speed
I rode an early event. The scenery looked good but the perceived speed was too fast and the juddering avatars looked bad. It was Zwift Support that were really terrible though. I didn’t get credited for the event so I contacted them about it, and I mentioned in passing about the jumping graphics. They told me my system was to blame, and made no mention of how badly they had messed the whole thing up. I’ve got a high-spec gaming PC and enterprise-level network infrastructure so I knew that wasn’t true but their opening gambit is always to blame user error and never admit to mistakes.
I’m glad I waited and raced today on the Jungle Circuit. Watching the early videos I wasn’t looking forward to the series but wanted the kit and the XP. I am disappointed to not get to see the scenery which looked awesome to bad it was a flop. Pulling it was the right call and like any stage race that has a messed up stage just neutralize it for the GC. Thanks for the update and explanation I figured it was something like this nice to see it in print.
zwift has gravel roads I don’t understand why they are messing with a good thing with the speed just stick to what they have done it the past if it isn’t broke why fix it??
just give as a cool fun new route with some twists turns a climb or two and some straight sections it’s not that difficult
I don’t entirely buy the point that the issues were worse for people on fixed refresh screens – I’m on a gaming pc/monitor with vrr and it was pretty terrible for me… the washboard effect was strong enough to make me bail on the racing after 1 lap.
Shame…but no shame in trying new things and taking decisions zwiftly to address snafus
I raced the Red Rock Loop on Tuesday. It was startling and confusing to say the least, especially since I was unaware that Zwift was planning to increase the visual speed of the course. Riders’ avatars were bouncing everywhere and constantly changing position. It all made for a stressful racing experience, beyond the normal stress of just trying to hold the wheel. Afterwards, when I returned to a robopacer ride in Watopia to cool down, it felt like everything was in slow-motion. Truly bizarre.
It’s not unprecedented, this happened with climb portal races in the not too distant past.
Sure, Zwift has changed things midstream before. I was thinking it was more unprecedented based on the scale of user involvement in the series… this being Zwift’s flagship race series.
What I’m surprised with is the fact that Zwift made changes to their game engine, and instead of having it available to pre-ride and “beta” test, they chose to use it as the first course for a sponsored major race series.
The scenery was a pleasant change, albeit the track was a bit wide in places. Instead of the speeded up visuals making it appear to be a ~2Km loop, I’d rather it was slower and 4-5Km. The bike speed felt too quick given I was often solo, ~20mph average for NP243W on gravel/dirt.
The most frustrating thing in the race was no position info, the lead group quickly dropped me, but I had no idea how many were ahead. Really should have used Play steering but forgot to!
I’d agree about taking week 1 off GC given the route swap.
Bit frustrated that both route replacements are variations on Jungle Circuit, when there are some lovely and rarely used gravel/dirt routes on Makuri.
To me having the visuals sped up but not the reported speed broke the immersion. The draft felt wrong because the cone was stretched out with the scaling, so it looked like I was too far back to get good draft but the HUD bar was almost full. Big gaps opened up because what should have been a small gap was visually stretched so the rider was around the next corner and out of sight, not helped by the position marker not working.
The world looked great though, and I’d love to try it at the correct scale.
I did the race alternating closed eyes, not looking down at the lower portion of the screen and shifting views to cope with the visuals. That said, zooming out, the map looks great, so there is definitively potential with this new world. Agreeing with some of the comments: dial back the warp speed visuals, narrow the roads, add twists and turns, and if you have to make it “more exciting”, do that via course design, not alternative universe physics.
I applaud zwift for taking a risk and trying something new. As for testing, there’s quite a diversity of systems in the user base and that’s a difficult thing to validate in the lab.
Try something new? Sure. But put out a press release and use the experimental thing for their flagship monthly series of events? Don’t force experiments to the wide user base, let people decide if they want an experimental experience.
As for validating in the lab, I have a 100% standard PC, nothing exotic, if they didn’t test that then they have a problem. And if they don’t test group ride scenarios where there is a pack….well then that explains some of the crazy bugs that have gotten through over the years. That’s a standard part of the zwift experience, if they don’t test that then they aren’t testing what users actually do.
I think road width is fixed in the game. And change this things mean rework on pack placement, trajectoires and mouvements possible with steering system. So an huge modification.
But sure, a single track can be so fun!
But there are singletracks in game (Makuri Temple KOM, the old Repack Ridge, etc). Zwift can handle narrower roads…
Yep – had the same experience on Tuesday – hated it, and it wrecks your stats – much as when I did that ridiculous Mario Cart style Crit race a couple of weeks ago. Impossible to get into rythym and so far from the simulated real racing that we normally get. Too much experimentation.
Speeding up the experience does not seem like a good idea. I race gravel and know what speeds I move at. If it does not match the feeling I get while actually racing gravel then what is the point? Is Zwift trying to just make this a game? Or is Zwift actually still trying to create an experience that closely matches real world riding? The subways and speeds while drafting seem to be a bit much. I have noticed that when I ride the same routes for training that I have over the years that it is getting faster and faster. Same watts as before but faster ground speeds. I no longer consider using mph as a factor when judging a workout. I use time versus watts and ignore speed. The more Zwift adjusts things to bring in the gamers the more you will push out the serious racers… You cannot have it both ways, unless of course you make special worlds for each…?
Exactly, I totally agree speeding up the experience is not a good idea. Yes we know it is a simulator for cycling, but the beauty of zwift is the artwork and the rider base. Nothing else on the market comes close. Zwift please keep delivering great art and interesting routes, not sped up experience for the sake of it.
Please don’t speed up the visuals…Lets have a better Graphics engine. Weve spent way too long looking 10 years behind in the graphics department. Zwift is gamified itself enough over the past few years…
I rode it solo after all the racers had long finished. Liked the course although it seems odd you can’t use the whole road to steer across. Personally didn’t like the speeded up graphics.
“I’d like to see Zwift explore this, particularly for virtual gravel and MTB racing”… 😆 They removed the one MTB/singletrack course and turned it into a game to collect rings and tokens. So much potential for singletrack options in Watopia and Makuri Islands, unfortunately at the pace of development Zwift operates on this will be years if ever in the future.
I will always applaud Zwift for trying out new and exciting ways to break their game and make cyclists, especially zwifters, angry. They take it on the chin and generally make changes or moves.
I suppose I am contrarian, but I thoroughly enjoyed the race. For sure there were bugs. People would pop in and out, and it was hard to steer into the draft. The second you got into the draft I felt like the whole line would shift to the right or left.
The course was gorgeous. It does remind me of many dirt roads I have ridden in Arizona and Utah, so I wasn’t so much concerned with the width. (I would expect narrow if they were trying to recreate single track, but that isn’t at all the feel for what they are trying to accomplish.) The off-camber sections, tho, were completely unrealistic. At those speeds and at that angle, you would be fighting your bike for a line and probably sliding sideways down the camber, especially as my experience with dry roads like that is that they are loose on top.
The biggest issue for me was what felt like the lack of differentiation between road bikes and gravel bikes. I brought my gravel bike, but was getting passed left and right by Trons and other road bikes. Maybe I am that much worse a rider and needed the extra umph to keep up, but it felt like the gravel bike was no advantage. And if that is the case, it is stupid to have a gravel series where a gravel bike isn’t required. As I said, I could be totally wrong… but I finished where I typically finish in this range of Zwift racing scores so I think the bikes were equalized whether road or gravel.
I’ll give my general thoughts on the gravel trend in Zwift. The track will be fixed, but the trend will remain. New bikes cost over 1 million, and upgrading them will take even more time and money. What I mean is: I’ve been riding Zwift every (!) day since October (except vacation). And I just now bought a Level 1 Halo. It will take me another year to get it to Level 5. Roughly. That includes buying the right new wheels at the store. I don’t use cheats. It’s impossible to have time to upgrade my gravel bikes.
That’s such a piss poor response from Zwift. Really? you released it as your first big new gravel event and didn’t test it for ‘high speed large packs’. Nice blame shifting on people’s devices too. ‘Oh it worked great at Zwift Hq, your devices must suck’…
There’s no need to artificial speed boosting, if the racing is quality no one needs that. I understand the need for some new ideas and gamification but don’t mess with the core mechanic and movement. There’s a fine line between fitness app and arcade game.
Yeah, the blame shifting language annoyed me too. I have a bog standard pc, nothing exotic, if they didn’t test on a machine like mine then they aren’t testing properly.
Yeah, no need for boosting the speed. If I want the effect of being on a rollercoaster then I’ll go to an amusement park. The world did look cool though, I’ll give them that
I thought it was a little fast. Turing the speed up to 2x may have been a bit much. 1.1 to 1.25x probably would have sufficed.
i was more disappointed that by the time i checked gc results, a bunch of jungle loop times were posted so i was 12 minutes behind. Would have been nice to see how i stacked up on the gravel course with the other early racers.
I did get podium. So if it never comes back I got that going for me.
I also don’t know why this isn’t an area to the NE of fuego flats. Seems like it would fit in on the map over there.
Yeah, it looks like a clone of that area to me. A little too monotone in color.
i think the sense of speed confused too many people, because the actual racing made ZERO difference to any other race. you still had to put down same power to stay in your bunch, and most people saw suffering were on road bikes; so they complained about how fast it was going. even if it were slowed to normal, the exact same result would have happened.
they found gravel mountain in an old file and just thought: fk it…we release it as buggy as it is… classic zwift.
“wtf” sums it up quite nicely, that was a strange experience
Funny how they said (in other words) ooops, we got it wrong…
but they never apologised for the mess up which if it were any other company they would have done. James was very proactive on posts on FB but again no apology which says a lot.
I like the gravel concept but it seems really sloppy work from Zwift. How’s about a Mallorca route or a Calpe route? Do Zwift actually spend any time asking actual Zwifters (not YouTubers or Instagrammers) what they actually want in the game? Doesn’t seem so, or if they do, they’re not asking the right people.
I’m in the slowest/starting racing on Zwift category, I enjoyed the route and the graphics outside of the game around the road.
But riding at my speed having everything zoom in and out zoom in and out repeatedly and somehow I was doing well on the first lap and then the next second everyone disappeared in front of me and behind me. I have no idea what happened because I didn’t back off.
But it was very unusual. I felt.
I actually ride indoors because I have a severe traumatic Brain Injury and unable to ride a bicycle outdoors any longer after years of riding long distance tours/events in Africa, Europe and New Zealand and enjoy the gravel riding greatly so I was very much looking forward to this new course.
I’m glad I wrote it when it was still up, but I’m glad it’s stopped because it needs to be improved. I had to close my eyes and ride because of my Brain Injury was causing me to extreme mental fatigue and unable to concentrate my riding.
fingers crossed will be back soon better than ever.
As I’m not planning to race any road sections and just ride generally in events like the big spin, etc.
I thought it was fun. Yes it was buggy and jittery, but from the beginning it was just an all out race. It would have sucked without steering. And the steering needed to be more responsive if they are going to speer up the visuals. I liked trying to steer towards the inside corners more trying to shave off distance. Not something that you get to do on the tarmac. It didn’t feel like drafting was as big of a deal on this race so you could play more with the routes you took. Especially since the road was wide. It seems a lot of times the group went wide and I was able to go through the inside lane and eek out a little distance. But I get that it would be weird to have an alternate behavior for gravel and road and it would be hard to switch back and forth between the two.
I loved it!
I did Red rock 2 times and Jungle Circuit 5 times .Red rock was like a city crit but on dirt , but moving at pavement speed , so my gravel bike had no advantage . Then on the Jungle course, my Cannondale gravel bike was a big hit . The 1st small downhill pavement worked very hard to stay with main pack, when the dirt showed up, caught up, the hills with dirt I pulled away , and downhills with dirt was much faster with gravel bike than road bikes . Now I do not mind dirt with gravel bike . 9 laps is to much unless hills are steeper on red rock .
Frankly Zwift, just stop the high speed visuals. Your customers are cyclists. We know how fast things should be and we like it that way.
I am not sure why they felt the need to blame the issues on the user-end. Almost all users experienced the weird buggy-ness. Just apologize, say you’ll fix it and fix it, blaming it on the user end is just poor form. Do better Zwift HQ.
I disagree about the road width. Some of the best and most famous gravel is in the US and looks just like this.
The fix needed in my opinion is to keep it real. If it’s supposed to feel slower on gravel, then so be it. It has to be realistic; people pay to get that same feel indoors like you would outdoors. Just my opinion.
I raced it – it didn’t FEEL right from the start.the laps looked short but felt long
The camera swaying around felt awful and the other riders juddering was simply weird
Personally I will avoid races with this visual effect
The jungle race felt much better
Yes , I am old so probably don’t like change
Regarding Mark’s post: stating that “a few people” had a bad experience is an understatement. At 28:48 in my linked video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQD6ym-2njI&t=12s), you can see I was physically ill from motion sickness. The entire field dealt with a broken experience for multiple races before the event was cancelled.
As paying customers, we expect a finished product, not a beta-test environment. It is frustrating to see resources spent on influencer trips to Mallorca when the core experience for loyal subscribers is lacking. I value the platform, but Zwift needs to prioritize its community’s user experience over marketing junkets. Sorry, not sorry.
Yep. Had a buggy experience- jittery riders, riding through bushes and rocks, etc. the placing count was off for most of the race, and I out sprinted another rider for 3rd in my event, but was placed in 4th in the end. Not a big deal of course, but it was certainly not the Zwift racing experience I’m used to having.
Looks like they are getting ready for a marketing push to e-bike riders.
I thought the roads were too wide and the “sped up” scenery was just weird
I raced it in one of the first races. Although I noticed some small glitches I was totally taken by the beautiful surroundings. It was a great experience. Bummed when it was pulled, but understandable. PLEASE bring gravel mt back
I disagree about making the track narrower to improve it. The wide road meant you had to be on the ball with steering could be tactical when making attacks. Actually made it feel like steering and technique were an important component of the race rather than just a bit of an added extra with little consequence
I just finished the Pas Stage 1 on the Jungle circuit. I purchase the Cannondale SuperX LAB71, stock tires (need more drops for the Zipps). When the race started there were a lot of road bikes, some with disk wheels. This was a long downhill start (5k) and I could not stay with the roadies on my “super fast” gravel frame? I thought the physics was supposed to add significant friction coefficient to road tires? Normally in my race category I am with the lead pack? This same effect happened on the flats. However, on the climbs my gravel bike definitely out performed the road bikes. This course was probably 85-90% gravel, so wondering why I used my Cannondale, as my Canyon Aeroroad probably would have been much faster?
The stretch from the start pen to the jungle loop is tarmac, road bikes roll raster there and if you’re on a gravel bike you’ll want to push hard to stay in the draft. Once you’re on the dirt surface that advantage swaps. There are some stretches of wood surface where road bikes have a slight advantage again.
Overall a gravel bike is generally an advantage on that course but any zwift race is hard if you can’t stay in the draft.
Sure but this is a “Gravel Race Series”. I expected gravel bikes to have the advantage over road bikes but that wasn’t the case. If I used my road bike I would have done better? I get what you are saying and don’t disagree, but I guess I just found it disappointing that this was promoted as a gravel series so I kinda thought my very expensive gravel bike would have performed better. I also thought everyone would be on gravel bikes, crazy eh?
Zwift doesn’t “offer” gravel in Zwift, let’s be clear with this first and foremost.
Gravel World was an experimental world that was unreleased now for half a decade, and is the only place where you’re immediately on gravel, and on gravel for the endurance of the road.
Jungle (8km + 1km crossing bridge in middle), and maybe 4km of roads in Urukazi are the entirety of ‘gravel’ that Zwift offers.
Zwift created its own problem with trying to set up a gravel racing series where it didn’t even prepare itself. Jungle Circuit 1 lap is over 40% lead-in…
Zwift offers 1 road that is flat and also gravel, and it’s only just over 1km long, and only 1 route offers it; Two Village Loop.
As for the race, I experienced a bit the same in Advanced; folks on road bikes were pretty able to hang on to those of us on gravels. Draft is big, and Jungle is still quite fast. As a solo attempt however a gravel bike would be minutes faster.
I advocate for Zwift with friends and family partly because “It has a realistic real-life feel.” Don’t mess with that Zwift!