“Dust In the Wind” Route Details (Watopia)
One of five routes rolled out with Zwift’s Titans Grove expansion, “Dust In the Wind” covers Titans Grove twice, as well as Fuego Flats, part of Ocean Boulevard, and a Mayan Jungle out and back.
Along the way you’ll encounter a fair amount of virtual dirt/gravel road, so you might consider swapping to a gravel bike so you can move to the front of the pack and make everyone else eat your dust!
One of five routes rolled out with Zwift’s Titans Grove expansion, “Dust In the Wind” covers Titans Grove twice, as well as Fuego Flats, part of Ocean Boulevard, and a Mayan Jungle out and back.
Along the way you’ll encounter a fair amount of virtual dirt/gravel road, so you might consider swapping to a gravel bike so you can move to the front of the pack and make everyone else eat your dust!
Route Basics
Length: 52.1 km (32.4 miles)
Elevation: 582m (1,909′)
+0.3km (0.2 miles) lead-in
Map: Watopia
ZIMetrics
Rating: 27.7/100 🛈
Time Estimates 🛈
4 W/kg: 80 minutes
3 W/kg: 88 minutes
2 W/kg: 110 minutes
Start & Finish
Begins at the desert start pens and ends the first time you ride through the desert start/finish arch.
Format: Point-to-Point
Restriction: Level 6+
Ride Achievement Badge: 1080 XP
Run Achievement Badge: none
Strava Segments
BestBikeSplit Model
Estimate ride time, IF and TSS, plan your power, and more!
Route Description
Route profile by ZwiftHub – the place to plan and track your route achievements!
Begin by turning left off of Fuego Flats into Titans Grove reverse to ride through Titans Grove southbound.
Descend from the KOM, finish your ride through the redwoods, then turn right and descend down to Ocean Boulevard. Take Ocean Boulevard until you hang a left at the windmills to head to the Mayan Jungle.
Ride the Jungle loop (clockwise), then climb out and return the way you came. Turn right when you hit Ocean Boulevard at the windmills, riding toward downtown Watopia. But you’ll hang a right toward Fuego Flats before you reach downtown.
After crossing the bridge you’ll turn right into Titans Grove to ride it again in the same direction. But at the end, you will turn left and head into Saddle Springs, then into the desert to finish your ride at the rock arch finish.
Although a problem I’m unlikely ever to have, I’m interested in your idea about using the gravel bike to get a lead through the jungle. I assume you would switch once you’re out of the jungle, though, or the pack will surely catch you?
If so, do you recommend switching to a TT bike, or to the fastest drafting-capable bike you have?
David, you can’t change the bicycle during the ride.
Actually you can. You just have to stop and then you can change it.
If you are going to change, switch to a mtb for the jungle as its the quickest on the dirt/gravel then back to a road bike after that is finished so you benefit from the draft A switch will cost roughly 30 seconds so add a minute to cover both to see if it is worthwhile.
I don’t think switches are quite 30 seconds, and you also get some recovery during them. On solo rides I switch for the jungle: it saves energy even if short term on time it’s a wash (MTB saves at least a minute on the jungle loop, [per ZI tests](https://zwiftinsider.com/king-of-the-jungle/)). In a group event it’s not necessarily an option if trying to stay with a pack. Gravel bikes are expensive and there’s little motivation right now to use one.
The Trek Supercaliber MTB is very fast and while it costs 532,500 drops, I found it well worth it as it really rips up the gravel. I’m going to tackle this route today and will try the frame switcheroo when on the Jungle Loop.
Yes you can. You can use a macro to do it, or you can change manually, once your bike has stopped. Done properly, and at the base of a climb, it takes around 15 seconds to achieve.
If you time your bike switch for when you are on an uphill section, you will get
to a stop pretty quickly (assuming you’re not going that fast). I haven’t timed my quickest bike switches, but I’m reasonably sure I can do it in under 20 seconds, on an uphill section.
Curious about the distance – I completed this route yesterday – at the route banner – I saw 52.9 km total, the Strava segment shows 47.39 just for Dust in the Wind. The master list on ZI shows 54.6km, did the route change?
The said in the description that Strava segment is about 5k shorter because the route doesn’t start at a banner
Best frame / wheels for Chasing Cancellara? 😉
Everyone will have to use the same frame but for wheels I would go pretty aero.
haha-I am glad I am not the only one who came to check this 😀
Hi! I just finished Dust in the Wind today. It was my first time.
Distance was 52.7 and elevation gain was 583 M.
Slightly different then what you placed in your description. Thought you may want to know that. 🙂
Other then that, thank you for the description of the route. It was spot on. 🙂
I had the same result as Fernando
Hi – do you need a paid ZWIFT account to join? I could not actually see a “Register” button. Not sure of the process as I am not a ZWIFT user. Thanks.
You need to download the app to a pc/phone/tablet. Then you get 25 km free as a sample. After that $14 USD/month. Definitely worth it.
Thought I’d ride this during a 90min workout … but the BestBikeSplit estimate for the route was miles off – for me at 163lb pushing around 170W it predicted around 1h30m … but by that time I was still about 12km short 🙁
Same…took me 1:42min @ 2.7w/kg to get the badge from where I spawned. Looking at it now I see that BBS is only calculating 47.2 of the 52.7km I rode. The strava segment also lists Dust in the Wind at 47.3km, not the 54.6km listed here. I think this page should be corrected to show 47.3km with a 5km lead in (that is mostly uphill).
First time these route listings have been off for me. Usually very spot on, and a great resource. Thanks for the effort!
52.5 km ending with the 2.5k sprint @ Fuego Flats Reverse. First ride on this course, badge confirmed .
Tough ride this due to the lumpy nature of titans grove. As an FYI it took me about 1hour 50mins for me doing 2.4w/kg. Ride on fellas and ladies!
You may want to note somewhere that when used as a race the end is 8 miles earlier than the Fuego Flats sprint and instead ends on the second time through the Titans Grove banner. I just lost a race in part because I had this page loaded up in my browser covering part of my Zwift screen so I could track upcoming climb gradients. I had decided to attack at the KOM anyway to try to establish a break and Holy Cow! It Worked. But then the two riders who hopped on my wheel and were now my breakaway buddies suddenly went to 10 W/kg each. Why are you two trying to drop me from my own awesome break? Then I went through the banners thinking I had to work a bit to catch them on the descent and suddenly the race ended. Wait, what???!? Ohhhhhhh 😲.
But this is not really a complaint. Love the site. The information is golden. I should have paid attention to the mileage countdown. Keep up the great work.
Gravel or MTB for this one? Why not gravel?
Quick note on the ZwiftHUB elevation profile for this course..
Both instances of the Titans Reverse KOM are shown incorrectly. They should be on ascent of the peak immediately before where they’re presently shown. It’s also worth noting that the first time up is still part of the lead-in and therefore wouldn’t appear on this profile.
Lastly, the grade of the climb should be 4.4% instead of 6.6%. It shows in game as 6.6% but that’s wrong also. A quick calc of the delta-elevation vs the delta-distance gives the correct value.
Hope this is helpful for whomever is going to tackle this!
3/10/23 Update – the profile has now been fixed to show the KOM in the correct spot. Thanks!
You can do a quick bike change by using your keyboard and hitting A / OK / T (A stops the bike. OK closes the pairing screen. T opens your garage. Swop the bike and pedal)
Where the ‘OK’ button?
Looks like a new segment was created, for anyone that wants the old segment was https://www.strava.com/segments/22458637
Oh, and there’s an even older one https://www.strava.com/segments/21344400