Editor’s note: the first version of this article was published March 2020. Since then, Zwift has released faster gravel and mountain bikes. With ZRL race 1 coming up next week on Road to Ruins, we thought it was a good time to refresh and republish this post. Enjoy!
Imagine planning an outdoor race on a mixed-terrain course. It starts with 8km of paved road which includes a bit of a climb, then drops you into a dirt loop which first descends then climbs back up for a total of 9km of dusty riding. Then it’s 12km back home on a (mostly) paved surface.
Now imagine you had a whole garage full of amazing bikes at your disposal, and even a team car following you in case you want to swap bikes at any point. What bike(s) would you ride?
That’s the challenge Zwift’s Road to Ruins route presents for racers. With some bikes performing well on dirt and others performing well on tarmac, what do you ride when including the cost of stopping for a bike swap?
Let’s dive in and figure it out.
If you don’t understand how or why different wheels roll at different speeds on different surfaces in Zwift, check out Crr and Watt Savings of Zwift Wheel Types
About the Tests
For our tests we completed one lap of Road to Ruins using a 75kg rider, 183cm tall, holding 300 watts steady in an isolated environment (no drafting). We tested three different virtual bike setups (plus a swap that we’ll get to later):
- Road: Tron bike
- Gravel: Specialized Crux with ENVE G23 wheels
- MTB: Trek Supercaliber
We chose the Tron bike because it’s a good all-arounder, a very popular bike among racers, and a solid choice if you have to pick one road bike on a hilly race day. The Crux and Supercaliber were selected because they are the best performers in their classes.
It’s worth noting that, while we picked specific bikes for our tests, selecting other bikes would change our test results only slightly. That is, swapping one road race bike for another (for example) would not have changed the overall rankings – not even close! Using different rider weights or power numbers for the tests would have changed the timings as well (obviously) but would not affect the overall rankings, either.
Test Results
Here are the Road to Ruins lap times for each of our tests:
- Tron bike: 49:44 (see on Strava)
- Specialized Crux with ENVE G23 wheels: 50:12 (see on Strava)
- Trek Supercaliber: 51:24 (see on Strava)
Conclusion: when you’re talking about a steady solo effort, road bikes have more than enough tarmac time to make up any time lost to the gravel or MTB setups in the dirt.
Bike Swapping
This test wouldn’t be complete without trying one other approach: the bike swap! If you’re not familiar with how this works, the idea is that it may make sense, on a mixed route like Road to Ruins, to change bikes mid-ride, swapping to a bike that will go faster on the upcoming road.
(Some Zwifters don’t want to hassle with swapping, and I get that. Personally, I find it interesting and fun to hop on a fat-tired bike and zip past packs of hard-charging roadies. But to each their own!)
Since we know that the road bike is fastest on pavement, and the gravel bikes are fastest on dirt, we can easily formulate a smart swapping strategy to test. Road to Ruins goes into the Jungle then comes back out onto pavement, so when we hit the Jungle dirt we’ll swap to the gravel bike, then once the dirt ends, we’ll swap back to the road bike.
And we’ll do it as quickly as possible, using the bike swap hack. We used the Chapter2 TOA with ENVE 7.8 wheels (a good all-arounder) as our road bike, and the Specialized Crux with CADEX wheels as the gravel bike.
Using this strategy, our lap time went from our previous best on the road bike (49:44) to 49:35. A savings of 9 seconds (see it on Strava). This may not sound like much, but consider this: our swaps in the test were pretty poorly done (I have more practice swapping while actually riding in Zwift than I do swapping for my bot). In a live Zwift ride I would estimate I could trim another ~30s off of the overall time just by swapping faster. So that means the swap setup really beats the Tron by ~40 seconds.
Watch a Strava time comparison of our 4 bike tests:
Swapping Gotchas
There are four “gotchas” worth mentioning when it comes to bike swapping. First: you have to stop moving in order to change bikes. Using our method for changing bikes quickly, you will still probably lose 12-15 seconds each time you swap, if you do it smoothly. Practice makes perfect.
Second: you will want to accelerate hard after you stop for the bike swap, to get back up to speed as quickly as possible. Plan on 10-20s of hard effort before you settle in.
Third: if you’re going against packs of riders in a double draft race, a gravel bike probably won’t provide enough of an advantage on the Jungle descent. (I discuss this more in this post.) I would recommend staying on your road bike and sitting in the draft until you begin climbing after reaching the bottom of the Jungle. This lets you benefit from the double draft on the fast descent (where drafting is a major factor) as well as over the wood and paved portions at the bottom of the Jungle, where road bikes roll faster than gravel bikes.
Fourth: Zwift currently only lets you “save” one wheel selection at a time (I call this a bug, not a feature). You can save a wheel selection for your road bike or gravel bike, but you can’t do both. So if you equip, for example, the ENVE 7.8 wheels for your road bike (which “saves” your road wheel selection), then swap to your gravel bike, Zwift will automatically equip your gravel bike with the first gravel wheels on your list, because you have no gravel wheel saved (since that one save slot is occupied by your ENVE 7.8 road wheel selection).
Because of this bug, swappers will want to save their road wheel selection, then let Zwift auto-select the first gravel wheels in their garage. As long as it’s not the default Zwift Gravel wheels, all of the other four name-brand gravel wheelsets perform the same and are good options. This will let you swap back to a fast road setup quickly when you leave the Jungle.
Lab vs Real World
So the swap delivers the fastest overall time on Road to Ruins. But of course, our tests just show timings in isolation! In a drafting race situation, there are other important things to consider.
For example: what if you enter the Jungle with a strong group of riders? Is it worth dropping off the back of the group in order to swap bikes? Will you be strong enough to chase back onto the group and drop them on the Jungle Climb so you can swap back to the road bike afterward and still be in the same group, or (ideally) one further up the road?
Conclusion
An all-arounder like the Tron bike easily beats the best gravel and mountain bikes on the Road to Ruins route. But if you’re willing to pursue the swapping strategy, and do it smartly, you can gain significant speed advantages in the Jungle dirt without losing anything on the pavement.
Your Thoughts
Questions or comments? Share below!
Great article!
Any thoughts/hunches on a single switch (Tron to gravel) strategy – especially for a team to implement (like a TTT) while in the jungle and final pavement sections?
I’d say that’s not a good approach. You would finish further ahead in a TTT setup if you swapped back to road bikes after the Jungle. Otherwise, you lose something like 50-60s on the final tarmac section riding gravel bikes.
You used the gravel bike in the switch rather than the MTB. Is gravel better on the Jungle now?
Gravel might beat MTB over the entire Road to Ruins but it doesn’t mean that it is fastest over just the jungle segment.
Am I missing something?
thanks!
The new gravel wheels roll faster than the old stock Zwift ones, making a gravel bike with those gravel wheels just 1-2s faster than the fastest MTB on a lap of the Jungle Circuit.
Your original article when the mtbs first came out said that the Zwift MTB did the jungle circuit in 13:47, while, when the new gravel wheels came out, the Specialized Crux with the new wheels did the lap in 13:56. Did the mountain bikes get slower?
MTB does it in 13:55/13:56. See https://zwiftinsider.com/updated-mtb/
But here’s the crucial part: gravel bikes are lighter, and thus climb faster. And that’s where you need the advantage in the Jungle most.
Ah, I missed that update, sorry about questioning numbers you clearly have access to. It’s hard to keep track of when all the times for all the bikes change all the time. I have to believe that it’s gotta be annoying constantly having to recheck to see if any numbers have changed.
Thanks for the response and all of your work! I’m a total Zwift wonk thanks to this site.
Interesting (as always) 🙂
So I’m wondering if one shouldn’t change back to the allrounder but swap from gravel to a full aero setup given the rest of the course. Next question would be where to do that change – top of jungle climb or top of jungle pass? – or in between?). So many possibilities!
However, that’s just theoretic thinking for me as I’m almost certain I would mess up at least one of the two bike changes (never swapped during a race so far)… 😛 Better just stick to the Tron and hope being in a good group!
Yeah, swapping to a full aero setup for the finish makes sense.
I would definitely change when the dirt goes to tarmac. Otherwise you’re on a slow gravel rig for that crucial third climb.
My Idea; Start with a climbers bike with fast wheels (the first 4,3km shouldn’t be a problem, changing to gravel, then the an aerodynamic frame for the finish.
I like the idea of starting with climbers bike. Anyone else considering it?
Wish you would have kept the road bike consistent for the bike swap! The best way to do a true comparison, is to keep one of the variables consistent. You had data on road bike (TRON 49:44) and gravel bike (Specialized Crux 50:12). When you did the test for bike swapping, I believe it would have made more sense to keep the TRON as the road bike instead of the Chapter2 TOA. You noted there was only a 9 second saving in the swap – but unless we know that the Chapter2 TOA could do all by itself…we really have… Read more »
I get what you’re saying, but really the swap timing is a gross estimate at best. As I noted in the article/video, swapping faster could trim significant overall time off. Swap time is a much bigger variable here than road bike choice… which is why I didn’t sweat the road bike pick.
Awesome Article, It was just was I was waiting for this week! I was hoping for a great race to switch bikes, but after reading the article, I really cant see the bike switch being a winning strategy, The sentence saying that you have to hammer hard for 10-15 sec to catch back, then recover and then attack and get a gap large enough that you still have a big enough lead AFTER the 2nd bike change. seems like ALOT of effort to make to maybe get a 5-10 gap, which if you are solo a big group will catch… Read more »
I suspect for a race you pretty much have to go with the majority on this route. If everyone goes road & you go gravel, you’re probably struggling to keep in the bunch and are cooked by the time you get to the jungle, or if everyone goes gravel and you go road there’s probably not enough of an advantage to pull clear of the bunch solo. Also the road finish means a gravel bike compromises the sprint. I’d be interested to see what would happen if the course started & finished on gravel though, and whether that changes the… Read more »
Nice article Eric, I know we’re talking fractions here, but as the Gravel bike is now the best to swap to, is the Zwift gravel bike and wheels the fastest currently due to the recent surface change? I think the recent Tour Stage 4 has confused my brain with the new Gravel surface and the fastest bike combo around that was the pre-selected Zwift Gravel setup as the wheels were changed to a low CR on the new surface.. I’m riding the TTT tonight and wondering which Gravel bike to switch to, has the new Gravel surface gone now or… Read more »
Great review! If I decide not to change, which setup do you recommend? Tron bike, chapter2 TOA / Enve 7.8, cervelo S5 / DT Swiss dicut disc or other?Thanks in advance
I think that one approach that we could also discuss is the going with 3 bikes.
The tron for the first third of the race, all the way to the bottom of the jungle descent.
Gravel or MTB for the jungle portion (with default wheels)
Fast aero road bike with pre selected disc wheels for the last third of the race.
A friend of mine came up with that idea yesterday and i figured it was great!
For someone that can do a quick swap this would be optimal IMO.
Surprised to see the TOA/Enve loses a bit of time to the Tron in the first uphill section!
It doesn’t actually lose any seconds… it goes from 1s behind to 2s behind just as the climb begins, then stays at 2s for a while.
Which basically means the TOA doesn’t offer a big advantage on the climb. But I’d say it offers a slight one. Very slight. Less than 1s slight.
These quandaries always make me think how good it would be to have the ability to sell items from your garage that you no longer want. Declutter so to speak. This would make bike / gear swapping so much easier! I’d sell for a quarter of original price BTW.
That is what I was thinking. So many bikes are useless and in takes a lot of swiping/hits to reach the gravelbike…
I wish Zwift had something like a “favorite” or a “loadout” for different types of rides. For example, Road loadout = Tron bike Gravel Loadout = Specialized Crux with ENVE G23 wheels MTB Loadout = Trek Supercaliber TT Loadout = xzy Climbing Loadout = xyz All you have to do is tap a button and it would equip that loadout. It would be much easier to change bikes without having to go thru every bike and wheel you’ve bought. Edit: Maybe also add tabs to separate equipment too. Not all Zwifters may know what is gravel, road, MTB specific gear… Read more »
How does Zwift decide on the “default” gravel wheels to give you? Is it just alphabetical?
Seems to be, yes.
How do you “save” a wheel selection? Every time I swap from road bike to gravel bike or vice versa Zwift puts me back on what looks like the default wheels for that bike, not the ones I left on it.