Sort of the little brother to Island Outskirts, Fine and Sandy is a shorter circuit of the Urukazi island complex.
Sort of the little brother to Island Outskirts, Fine and Sandy is a shorter circuit of the Urukazi island complex.
Route Basics
Length: 10.6 km (6.6 miles)
Elevation: 77.1 m (253‘)
Lead-In: 0.1 km (0.1 miles)
Map: Makuri Islands
Start & Finish
Starts and ends at a virtual banner just south of the Mech Isle pens.
Achievement Badge: 210 XP
Sprint & KQOM Segments |
| Boardwalk Sprint (0.24 km, 0%) |
| Tidepool Sprint (0.31 km, 0%) |
Strava Segments
Route Description
Route profile by ZwiftHub – the place to plan and track your route achievements!
Beginning by going left out of the Mech Isle start pens, you’ll hit dirt and begin the Mech Isle climb, which is the largest climb on the route (and you’ll be hitting it twice). Then it’s a dusty descent to pavement and a bridge crossing to Festival Harbor where you can enjoy the sights and go for the green jersey on the Boardwalk Sprint.
Turn left and head toward Mangrove Maze, where you’ll take the flatter outer road through the trees before turning another left onto the beachfront to have a go at the Tidepool Sprint.
Catch a quick breath, as you’re heading back to the dirt for another go at the Mech Isle climb. But this time you’ll descend at turn right to finish out the Mech Isle loop at the same virtual start/finish line you say at the beginning.
Gravel bike for this one?
The sand surface rides like tarmac
Tron if you’ve got it or light road bike IMHO
I have just tried Gravel frame and tires and struggled on the tarmac segments following the pack.
You struggled just as much on the sand which is designed for road bikes
I’ve been doing bike swaps on all these new routes when I hit the dirt surfaced hill and it seems to be working.
I have no idea why Zwift keeps torturing its users this way. When I finish collecting all the route badges, I plan to avoid all of them as much as possible in the future. Serious waste of programming effort and a major disappointment.
I am not convinced that the rolling resistance on the compacted sand is the same as that for a road. I just did 2 laps of this Fine & sandy course in a race (C Category). I averaged 219 watts (3 w/kg) & did 35.7 kph with 156m of climbing. As a warm up I did a similar distance on the Flat route in Watopia with the Maria robopacer (D category). For this I averaged 150 watts (2.2 w/kg), avg speed was 36.9 kph with 148m of climbing. For both rides I was on the Tron bike. It looks to… Read more »
Henry, rides in a larger bunch are significantly faster to riding solo or in a group of two-three. You cannot compare that.
There is some road that ride like gravel on the route. Not the sand but the surface that has a green edge. Also the pacer draft is different. Using Sauce it looks like double draft.Certainly more than you get in a group. Finally all the Race Makuri rides blew apart on the climbs. Group much smaller by the end. Long way of saying i think the sand rolls the same as tarmac.
With the pacer I was in a group of about 70-80 riders. In the race I stayed in a group the whole way, with about 20 riders by the end. I can’t believe that the difference in group size & a small section of gravel road would account for more than 45% difference in watts.
Did this route for the first time last night, and it’s surprisingly brutal in a strong and/or committed field of riders. Can definitely see this rivalling 2 Bridges Loop as an attritional multi-lap race, it’s just a shame that they didn’t make the climb section into a timed KOM
(…of course if they change the sand surface rolling resistance it could just become another route to avoid, so fingers crossed they don’t)
@Eric Schlange – zwiftpower calls it Tidepool Sprint Reverse – is that a tweak needed in the article or zwiftpower setup wrong?