“Libby Hill After Party” Route Details (Richmond)
Libby Hill After Party began as an event-only route launched with the February 2020 Richmond refresh. It’s a wonderful race course due to its profile, which features perhaps the most exciting, give-it-all-you-got slugfest finish of any Zwift route!
Route Basics
Length: 33 km (20.5 miles)
Elevation: 102m (335′)
+0.2km (0.1 miles) lead-in with 2m (7′) elevation
Map: Richmond
ZIMetrics
Rating: 14.4/100 🛈
Time Estimates 🛈
4 W/kg: 44 minutes
3 W/kg: 48 minutes
2 W/kg: 57 minutes
Start & Finish
Begins at normal start pens, ends at KOM banner atop Libby Hill.
Format: Point-to-Point
Ride Achievement Badge: 660 XP
Run Achievement Badge: none
Leaderboard Segments |
| Monument Ave Sprint (0.22km, -0.4%) |
| Broad St. Sprint (0.28km, -0.1%) |
| Libby Hill (0.64km, 6%) |
Strava Segments
Route Description
Route profile by ZwiftHub – the place to plan and track your route achievements!
Riders begin at the main start/finish banner and head to 5 laps of The Fan Flats, a flat loop that includes the timed Monument Avenue sprint segment. This is where the bigger riders with lots of pure watts will need to work to drop the climbers.
Then it’s down to Broad Street for another sprint followed by the straight, quick descent of E Main Street. Recovery is key on the downhill and rollers that follow, because the finale is a short, sharp climb up the cobbles of Libby Hill!
The rider who can hold onto the front group then push out max watts per kilo for the Libby Climb should take the day, as the route finishes at the KOM banner atop Libby.
Ridealong Video
Where exactly is the finish supposed to be? I did this race a few weeks ago and to my surprise the finish was halfway up Libby Hill. Was this a glitch?
I just finished the TDZ on this route and it definitely finished at the top of Libby Hill. But now I have a question: What the heck is an “after party” ? Does it just mean a route that finishes with a climb? Because that would have been good to know before I jumped into this ride–The climb was a real surprise a t the end when I unloaded my “spring” with about 500m to go!!
@Doug, yes that’s right. After Party rides are generally flat (tish) and involve a short (ish) climb to finish. Enjoy!
Yeah, After-party routes are specially designed to end uphill
Any bike frame/wheel combo recommendations for this route? Should it be aero and hang on up the hill, or lightweight to break away at the end?
I think you are overthinking it somewhat!
Aero
This is a pretty flat route, with a slight climb at the end. Get the fastest bike/wheels (and not the lightest) that you can. Any “loss” in time on the small climb, would be easily gained (and more) on the flats.
In a scratch race a light setup is OK if you are strong, even a gravel bike could work as the uphill is on cobbles. As you can easily follow the pack in the draft on the flats. In case points can be won in the early sprints aero is clearly the option to go for.
Gravel bike will NOT give you any advantage on the cobbles.
And even if it did, you would have to seriously work to stick with the pack for the 30 or so Kms before you get to the cobbles, and therefore expend energy you’d need to challenge up the climb
Would go for aero like S5 2020 with stunning Swiss wheels
Warning!! Something can go wrong when organizing an event on Libby Hill After Party. As described by another user below in 2020, also in 2024, it happens Zwift changed the finish line to the start of the cobbles of Libby Hill! That was quite the anti-climax. Here’s a recording of the stream where you can see what went wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u-OkVYUpaE&t=2870s
Event settings were:
Libby Hill After Party
1 lap
(so no custom finish)
I free rode Libby Hill After Party this morning. Don’t know whether the change is permanent.
Newbie here. I’m not racing this route, just going for a route completion. I want to do it fast. I was thinking about using a TT bike or is it better to use an aero bike?
Yea, TT bike is fastest for solo effort.