The first race of Zwift Racing League 2024/25 Round 3 happens Tuesday, January 14, when we’ll be in Watopia for a TTT lap of the newish Waisted 8 route.

This route brings us onto Jarvis Island for the first time in ZRL history, which is fun. It’s also quite flat, but with just enough climbing to keep things interesting! Let’s discuss route details, bike choice, and all things TTT…

Looking at the Route: Waisted 8

Watopia’s Waisted 8 is a figure 8 route that is 30.9km long, with 144m of elevation gain. The lap profile shows the course for what it is – a fairly flat route, with a handful of short climbs:

This route divides logically into 6 sections, which I’ve broken out below along with notes on key portions of each section:

Part 1 – Start to Jarvis (0-3.5km)

You’ve got a bit of a climb heading up toward the Esses, so be sure to give it a bit of extra gas to keep your speed up. Once you turn right toward the Volcano you’ll get a bit of flat/descent for recovery, all the way until the start of the Jarvis KOM.

Part 2 – Jarvis Loop (4-8.5km)

It’s ZRL’s first time in Jarvis! This loop is just under 5km, and the big feature is the Jarvis KOM Reverse, where climbing begins at 4.7km and ends at 5.7km, although it really feels like more of a two-part climb thanks to a bit of flat in the middle:

This is the single-biggest climb on today’s route, and valuable seconds will be given to teams who attack it smartly.

Part 3 – Land Bridge to Dirty Sorpressa (8.5-11.2km)

Once you exit the Jarvis loop, you’ve got a flat run-in to the Dirty Sorpressa which begins at 10.1km. This snaking, short climb is made a bit tougher by its dirt surface, which rolls slower than tarmac. And it’s followed by a few short, climby rollers, making this 10.1-11.2km another key section where you can gain or lose valuable seconds based on your team’s pacing and positioning.

Part 4 – Descent to Ocean Boulevard (11.2-15.5km)

Get some recovery as you descend the snaking road to the Fishing Village, but be sure to keep the power up on the dirt sections so they don’t slow you down too much. You’ve got your final climb of the day just up the road…

Part 5 – Climb to the Desert (15.5-17.3km)

This two-part climb begins with the ~300-meter ramp out of the ocean tunnel, which is followed by a bit of flat road as you turn left and cross two bridges heading toward Titans Grove. The second part of the climb begins on the second bridge (@16.3km) and ends in the redwoods 1 kilometer later as you pass the turnoff to Titans Grove.

Neither of these climbs is particularly steep, so you’ll want to use the draft to keep your team’s speed high. (This goes for all the climbs on this route, in fact.)

Part 6 – Flat and Fast To the Finish (17.3-30.9km)

The last 13+ kilometers of the race are flat or downhill, apart from a bit of false flat @22.3 in the Oasis. This is where your team’s ability to hold formation and rotate smoothly will pay off, because fast pulls on the front coupled with efficient drafting behind are a deadly combination on flat, fast TTTs.

Read more about the Waisted 8 route >

Bike Frame + Wheel Choice

This week, bike choice is easy: grab your most aero TT setup! The CADEX Tri is the fastest frame in game by a solid margin, and the DT Swiss disc wheels are the fastest wheels. If you don’t have access to that setup (level 40+) then see this post to determine the fastest TT setup available at your level.

Whatever you do, do not use a road frame. Because just like in real life, even a “slow” TT frame is much more aero than a road frame.

Route Recon Videos and Resources

Here are some recon videos from helpful community riders…

Zwifty Zwifter

See Waisted 8 recon notes >

John Rice

The Syco-list

J Dirom

TTTips

Team Time Trialing on Zwift is a challenging mixture of physical strength, proper pacing, and Zwift minutiae like picking a fast bike and understanding drafting in a TTT context.

Flatter courses like this week give valuable seconds to teams with big pure-power riders who can keep their power high on the front while staying in single-file formation to conserve in the draft behind. A few extra seconds can also be grabbed if you ride smart and keep speeds high over short climbs and false flats that you’ll encounter on this week’s course.

Your goal in a ZRL TTT is to get four riders across the line in the shortest time possible. That means every team’s pace plan will differ based on the abilities of each rider. We highly recommend having an experienced DS on Discord directing your team, especially if your team contains some inexperienced TTT riders.

If you really want to go down the TTT rabbit hole, check out Paul Fitzpatrick’s zwift-ds.com site. We also highly recommend using Dave Edmond’s Zwift TTT Calculator tool.

Your Thoughts

Any insights or further thoughts on this race? Share below!

What’s happening with Zwift Racing Score?

Zwift Racing Score (ZRS) went live as the de facto race categorization method on October 7, 2024. But that doesn’t mean Zwift has finished its work with ZRS! In fact, they’re working on lots of ZRS improvements in parallel, and it’s become rather difficult to keep track of what changes are being made, what’s in the works, and what Zwift is still considering for further changes down the road.

Related: All About Zwift Racing Score >

So I decided to create this page as an up-to-date tracker of Zwift Racing Score development. First we’ll list work Zwift is currently doing with ZRS, and below that you’ll see potential work Zwift is considering. Lastly, I’ll list the changes Zwift has completed.

Current ZRS Projects

Score History View

Zwift keeps a record of each rider’s racing score changes, but that history isn’t visible anywhere… yet. Riders have been asking for a way to see this history since the early days of ZRS testing, and Zwift informed us in January 2025 that they are actively working to create such a chart.

Potential ZRS Projects

The following changes are being discussed by Zwift staff, but are not currently being worked on:

• Improvements to the volatility of score movement at lower ranges (est Dec 2024). Scores in the lower ranges aren’t moving as quickly as Zwift would like to see, so they’re looking at ways to change that.
• Looking further back than 90 days for the seed score (est Jan 2025). This is an important change in regards to seeding riders accurately and thus reducing cases of underseeding, which negatively impacts race experience in the lower categories.
• Arrow indicators when min effort mechanism kicks in (est Feb 2025) 
• A historical view of how your score has changed over time. Zwift said in this post “We are planning to introduce a view for viewing your score history. We’re already tracking full history in our backend, it’s just a matter of implementing a view of this.”
• Dynamic pens: dynamically grouping riders based on signups to automatically provide for the most competitive and race groups.

Completed ZRS Projects

The following changes have all been completed since ZRS originally launched under Zwift Labs in June 2024.

• Re-introducing Zwift Racing Score Decay, Rewarding Personal Bests with Instant Score Updates, 30-Day Max Score for Category Enforcement, Score deltas in race results (September 25, 2025) See forum post >
• Event Category Range Revisions (January 2025): Zwift modified their ZRacing category ranges, creating three different events. A new set of “Advanced Category” races for riders with a Zwift Racing Score of 650+ was created, and races for riders at 700 and below now feature tighter, alternating category ranges.
• Tiny Race Scoring Improvements (January 7, 2025): Because Tiny Races are short races in quick succession, there was an issue where scores weren’t updating fast enough race over race, causing inaccurate results until the score finalizer ran 12 hours later. Now you will see a more accurate score ahead of the final processing. See forum post >
• Score Finalization Fix (January 7, 2025): Zwift says, “An issue was fixed with scores calculated from races held between Dec 30 – Jan 6. We identified an issue where scores weren’t finalizing as expected during this period and have fixed the issue (and our error alerting). During this window, you may have seen scores that didn’t correctly consider past race results and therefore were off by a few points. All results from this window are now fixed.” See forum post >
• New Seed Formula (December 4, 2024): The previous seed formula was based on your 90-day power bests for 30 seconds and 10 minutes, but Zwift changed it to be based on riders’ 5-minute power, both in pure watts and w/kg. Seed v2 launched December 4, 2024 (see forum post), then v3 launched December 6 (see forum post).
• Race Requirement Lowered To 1 Activity (December 2, 2024): Zwift added an activity requirement in late September so riders had to have at least three 10-minute activities recorded in the last 90 days before racing a scored event. In December, Zwift reduced this requirement to just one 10-minute activity because they “received feedback that the barriers to race are too high.”
• Requiring a Minimum Effort (Anti-Tanking) (December 2, 2024): With a small minority of racers purposely “tanking” their scores by entering races and essentially soft-pedaling to get a bad result and lower their ZRS, Zwift implemented changes to detect and stop this sort of intentional score manipulation. The first release of Zwift’s anti-tanking measures went live in December, and you can spot it in the race results… if the result has no arrow that means anti-tanking kicked in and their result was not scored.
• Decay Turned Off (October 29, 2024): “The original intention with decay was to account for decays in fitness after going an extended period of time without riding. After evaluating the functionality and reviewing feedback, we have decided to disable decay for now since it doesn’t seem to be providing the intended value. We may turn this back on later after making some improvements to the mechanism.” People will see small increases in their scores once it is turned off.”
• Podium Bonuses: The top 3 finishers in each scored race are now receiving a podium bonus meant to help move racers up a category faster if they are regularly winning.
• Finalized Subgroup Score Ranges: Zwift has defined the score ranges they will use for Zwift-owned races and recommend for community organizers. (For more information, see this forum topic.)
• Faster Score Calculation: Scores are calculated and adjusted as each racer crosses the finish line, instead of being finalized after 12 hours to account for DNF’s. This will eliminate issues where individual scores would drop when checking the day after a race.
• 3×10-Minute Activity Requirement: Riders must now have at least three 10+ minute activities recorded in the last 90 days in order to race a scored event. This helps ensure an accurate seed score, to improve initial subgroup placement. 
• ZwiftPower Score Range Filters: ZwiftPower.com will be updated so users can continue tracking General Classification (GC) standings after event series like the Zwift World Series move to score-based subgroups.
• Bug Fix for Stuck Low Scores: Zwift says they’ve “fixed an issue where scores that drop too low get stuck with low values even after winning several races.”
• New indicator icons in race results to show if you hit your floor value or had a major jump based on setting a new 30s to 600s best (Aug 22, 2024)
• Score volatility fix: “We will also be fixing an issue that prevented score from moving as quickly as they should when a new 90-day power best/floor is established”
• Fixing web results so up/down arrows display correctly
• Slowing the rate at which your ZRS decays (July 8, 2024)
• Showing your updated score when you return to the game homescreen after a race
• Changing ZRS-based bands in Zwift-owned events to use different score ranges: these score ranges have been modified several times as ZRS has developed over the past months.

Forum Posts from ZHQ

Zwift staff shares information about ZRS updates via the Zwift forum. Here’s a log of these update posts:

• September 25, 2025
• June 27, 2024
• July 8, 2024
• August 22, 2024
• September 19, 2024
• September 25, 2024
• October 29, 2024
• November 18, 2024
• December 3, 2024
• December 6, 2024
• January 7, 2025

Questions or Comments?

Share below!