Zwifters have long requested a velodrome in game, but so far Zwift has resisted the idea due to concerns about the need for steering, event size limits, and required support for track-friendly new race formats like elimination races.
But we’ve discovered a velodrome hidden in plain sight on Watopia’s southern coast. It may not be your classic wooden indoor oval. And may require a manual turn… every lap. But it’s right at 250 meters long, and it’s flat and fast. So we made a 10-lap rebel route, and are excited to invite Zwifters to a Strava segment competition on the Summit City Velodrome!
About Rebel Routes
“Rebel Routes” are Zwift rides not available on Zwift’s routes list, thus requiring manual navigation.
The reward for your rebel ride? Exploring a new route, knowing you’ve gone where few Zwifters have gone before. And a Strava segment rank in the tens or hundreds instead of the thousands! Rebel Routes are also included as a separate category on our Veloviewer Route Hunter leaderboard.
Route Description
The Summit City Velodrome has just one Strava segment at this time, and it consists of 10 laps of the Ciudad la Cumbre (“Summit City”) roundabout in a counterclockwise direction, after entering it from the uphill side at the base of The Grade KOM:
So to begin this route, you need to enter the roundabout from the uphill side, as pictured above. The quickest way to do this is to choose the Oh Hill No route from your list of Watopia routes, then flip a quick U-turn at the start. (Pro tip: ride up The Grade for a minute or two before turning to get a flying start!)
From there, complete 10 laps of the roundabout. You’ll get two intersection prompts per lap, and in our tests the first prompt defaults to the correct direction (left, to Radio Tower):
The second prompt, though, defaults to the wrong direction, as it tries to take you up The Grade. You want to go straight toward Jungle Ruins:
Complete 10 laps, and this Rebel Route is complete. The finish line is here:
Getting Started + Lead-In
The easiest way to get started is to choose “Oh Hill No” from your Watopia route options, then flip a U-turn. The game will auto-navigate you correctly on the first intersection of each lap, but you’ll turn to manually tell it to go straight on the second intersection of each lap, otherwise the game will take you up The Grade.
There’s another option: rumor has it that once you finish the Itza Party or Itza Climb Finish routes the game takes you down the bottom half of The Grade and onto our rebel velodrome for infinite laps without a need to navigate! We aren’t promising it will always work this way, but if you’re looking for a solid ride with a fun rebel route at the end, this is the way.
Route details:
Distance: 2.53km (1.57 miles)
Elevation Gain: 0m (0′)
Strava Segment
Rebel Route Suggestions
Got an idea for a great Rebel Route? Share it below and maybe we’ll publish a post about it!
I wish there was a route that included at least 1 side of every climb
There was, until this latest expansion. https://zwiftinsider.com/komonster/ Takes a lot of manual turns, but it’s out there.
Yeah, I need to create a KOMonster v2!
I still haven’t done the first one. I keep wanting to, it just hasn’t happened yet. But I’ve thought about how to add the new ones. Problem is that Mayan and Itza end half way up the Grade, and the Grade ends half way up the Epic, so there will be more repeated roads. It could be really similar to the original, but then towards the end, descend from the Epic forward, down through the jungle (left side), and continue on to the expansion and left up Itza / Mayan. Then descend the Grade, flip around through the big roundabout and head back up the Grade. Finish the Epic (again), descend and then head to the Alpe (down the right side of the jungle) as in the original. There might be a more efficient way to do that, but that feels okay.
Great idea, but looks like a slightly too small loop for Strava segments to handle properly…
True, but that’s part of the fun! Not unlike IRL velodromes in fact…
I completed “Itza Climb Finish” and started my cool down session at the bottom of the grade. I noticed Zwift had me doing a circle without forcing me to make a new route selection. Did not do ten laps, but it started getting boring around the third lap.
Yes, did the same… 3 laps for me before getting bored, but no need to navigate
The same goes for Itza Party apparently! One can easily do some laps as a cooling down there. You quickly reach 10 rounds tbh.
This sounds fun and Easy to do even for me. 😁 😁
Can also confirm the post Itza Party infinite cc loops upon route finish – see https://www.strava.com/activities/12110660564
Can confirm this as well. Happened in the ZRL Summer Showdown.
Jurassic Coast with one manual turn towards the grade got me looping around the roundabout with no further manual turns required. Quickly lost count of the laps though. If it shows twice on strava does that mean I only did one extra lap?
Came here to say this 😁
Route suggestions you say? How about the two I submitted for ZRL this round:
https://strava.app.link/TGnDuen0nMb
https://strava.app.link/cdR9uSo0nMb
Pretty hard to have a route competition on Strava when it still doesn’t do strict segment matching by distance. Have seen all the top results are a little under 4 laps…
And does Strava not segment match to previous activities? I’ve done this all the way back in June. I’ve also done multiple laps at the desert turnaround as well 🙂
Short/loopy segments strava does not do the best job of matching. Some segment in crit city suffer from this problem too I believe.
Strava does segment match past activities in general, but it does not do it for zwift segments. To be more precise, when a new zwift segment is created it seems they will start segment matching old activities and then quickly hit some kind of internal limit (“we’re finding too many old matches/potential matches, lets just give up since this is a virtual segment”) and stop and then only new efforts will be matched.
I also rode “Itza Climb Finish” today, turned right and got caught in the ‘automatic velodrome’.
I noticed though that Strava credits me with a speed of 91.1km/h for the segment https://www.strava.com/segments/37626854?filter=overall even though I only averaged 59.2 km/h while I was doing those loops.
I’ve seen this before in short IRL segments, where the position of the first and last data point can skew your speed upwards if randomly placed in the right points, but never before in Zwift.
I got “stuck” on that after doing one of the Itza routes and thought it was a glitch in The Matrix. Wish I had known this was a Rebel Route I would have completed the 10 laps and not just ridden to finish off the km.
I’ve finished 3 rides on this loop just to make sure I get enough mileage for the points.
There is another loop of about 600 meters on tempus fugit, between the outward and return…
New rebel route idea (I’ve ridden it already); It’s basically the Coastal Crown Loop but in reverse direction and starting at the start pens at the bottom of The Grade then ride the bottom half of The Grade turn left on to the new Mayan road and the route starts when you go thru the Itza KOM, carry on down the two KOMs and back on to the southern coast road back to the bottom of The Grade and ride up it again turn left onto the new Mayan road and finish at the Itza KOM arch. The route is 15km/185m, Lead-in is 1.9km/130m
Don’t think there are any routes currently where you ride up only the bottom half of The Grade and also no routes that use the new Mayan road in reverse which surprisingly does have a bit of elevation in it while ripping down the two KOMs.
Oh and a name suggestion for the rebel route is Oh Hill Half. 😄
I still think a decent velodrome simulation could be entertaining, one that gives a rider gravity assist/penalty depending upon going up or down the embankment, enabling simulation of flying 200s, and gravity assist for accelerating.. I am thinking simulation would hold a constant line without input, and allow going up or down the track if zwift or other steering hardware used. Next level would be steering only enabled racing wherein one must have steering and one must move up or down the track to pass, e.g. they can’t pass by going through another rider. (Making a hole where there isn’t one has consequences on a real velodrome) This would provide for better simulation of actual miss and out races, where not getting boxed in is just as important as sprinting ability.
Itza Climb Finish wants to turn you LEFT (uphill towards Radio Tower), so you need to do a manual RIGHT turn downhill towards Ciudad La Cumbre. After that, the velodrome turns are automatic, as of now.
Just did this today. Can you make a rebel route that does this 100 laps? 25 ish km? I would do it.