How the Race/Ride Was Lost: Tour de Zwift on Outer Scotland

January 16, 2025

LAST UPDATED January 15, 2025

This all started by accident. I was looking for a race on a Tuesday afternoon, scrolling through events in the Companion app, and managed to sign up for a ZRacing event on Wednesday at 3:10am thinking it was Tuesday at 3:10pm.

I didn’t notice my mistake until I signed in around 2:40pm on Tuesday, and there really weren’t any compelling races coming up in the next half hour. So I decided to race the “short” route of Tour de Zwift Stage 2, on two laps of the “Outer Scotland” route.

This event looked like a fun one for three reasons:

Over 500 riders were signed up
The route featured rolling climbs but nothing too long, which meant I might be able to hang with the front
I created Outer Scotland as a Rebel Route in May 2023, but this would be my first chance to ride it as an official Zwift route. That always feels extra special!

If you aren’t familiar with Outer Scotland, the concept is pretty straightforward and easy to visualize if you know Zwift’s Scotland map. You start from the Glasgow Pens and travel in a clockwise direction, sticking to the outermost roads on the map:

A Weak Warmup

I didn’t get much of a warmup in because I got on the bike a bit late plus my scheduling snafu meant my race was starting 10 minutes earlier than planned.

I knew I needed to get into the start pens as early as possible to avoid having to blast through hundreds of riders at the start, so I popped into the pens about 15 minutes before go time and spun my legs to get the blood flowing.

Is this a race?

Let’s get this out of the way early: I realize Tour de Zwift is officially a group ride, not a race. In fact, I’ve already ridden 4 other TdZ 2025 events (going for the Ultimate Challenge!), and I treated all of them as zone 2 or tempo-paced rides.

This is what’s fun about Tour de Zwift, though. The groups are so big that you can always find people at your pace to ride with! If you’re a strong enough rider who wants a harder effort, you’ll find yourself in or near the front pack. If you don’t want to push very hard, you’ll find a group further back.

It reminds me of a chart I made a while back:

The truth is, on Zwift everyone is riding their own ride, and nobody is too fussed about what others are doing. Usually.

Start + Lap 1

We blasted out of the pens with around 450 riders in the pack, and I hit the pedals hard to make sure I could get to the front of the group. With Zwift only rendering the nearest 100 riders, you can’t always rely on the avatars you’re seeing on screen.

For example: you may be sitting in the middle of a long line of 500 riders, but it looks like the front of the group is just ahead because Zwift is only rendering the closest 100 riders.

So it’s smart to look at your current position at the top of the rider list on the right. This shows where you’re ranked, and also shows the total number of riders who have joined the event.

I got to the front of the group quicker than anticipated, and as we began climbing up the draggy Cliffs section of the course, gaps began to form in the line of riders behind.

One surprising thing I noticed, which I don’t remember happening as often in past rides, was the number of late riders dropping in. Every few seconds, it seemed, a new rider would appear in our group. It was a bit annoying, to be honest, but I also realized that most of these riders were quickly dropping from the front group.

Before we hit the 3km mark the elastic had snapped and I found myself in the front group of 46 riders. That group quickly dropped to 35 as we hit the Corkscrew Castle climb followed by Breakaway Brae Reverse, with many in our group making smart use of the powerups afforded at each arch.

As we made our way toward Glasgow, I had a strange steering malfunction that I hadn’t had before in Zwift: the game steered me hard right to the center line, and I wasn’t able to steer back into the pack for a few seconds odd. (See this in the video below at the 13:35 mark). This happened a few more times on the ride, but hasn’t happened since.

I used my aero powerup at the top of the Clyde Kicker, just before going through the arch, then quickly used my fresh feather powerup on the short climb that followed. I knew another powerup was waiting just up the road, and I wanted to use each powerup to maximum effectiveness.

We finished the first lap with 22 riders in our front group, and I earned my Outer Scotland route badge. Time for another lap!

Lap 2 + Finish

Things got spicy on the Cliffs this time around, but I stayed in the wheels, letting others pull back attacks. Jadon Jaeger, a high-ranked A+ racer (5-time and reigning USA Masters TT Champ), was off the front for a bit, as was Bobson Dugnutt, an A racer who kept attacking the front group.

(The problem was, I had no idea who Jadon Jaeger was. Or that he has a legit FTP of at least 411 watts.)

Popping my feather powerup on the Corkscrew Castle climb, I found myself just off the front of our group, chasing Jaeger. We both had steering capabilities, and Jadon got cagey, weaving back and forth to avoid giving me a draft. I knew I didn’t have the legs to stay off the front, so I just sat up and let everyone else catch.

It wasn’t easy to see what was happening at the front of our ride/race, to be honest. This is one of those things I wish Zwift would improve. Even with Sauce for Zwift running, I wasn’t sure if the riders shown up ahead were being lapped by our fast group, or were attacking off the front. The rider list on the right doesn’t help, since it only shows who’s ahead of your group if you put down the watts and move to the front of your pack.

All that to say, with 3km to go we were nearing Glasgow, and I thought Dugnutt was the only rider off the front, 8 seconds away. It wasn’t until I watched the video replay that I saw Jaeger was well ahead of him!

Not that it mattered for me personally – I wouldn’t have put in the chase on Jaeger anyway. But maybe someone else would have, and I could have followed their wheel?

We caught Dugnutt on the Clyde Kicker, and I thought everything had come together at that point. I triggered my draft boost up the Clyde Kicker, then got a rather useless feather for my final powerup.

The pace was high as we descended from the Clyde Kicker with just 1km to go, and I wasn’t sure if I’d even get back onto the wheels of the front group as the line stretched out. But they all seemed to sit up a bit to catch their breath, and I put in a well-timed dig on the last little rise to get back in touch:

There were just 11 of us left. I triggered my feather before the final left-hand turn, then downshifted and got out of the saddle for the final sprint. To my surprise, I saw myself passing rider after rider, eventually crossing the line in what I thought was 2nd position!

Turns out, Jaeger was 8 seconds off the front in 1st, which meant I got 3rd on the day. I’ll take it!

See my activity on Strava >
See event details on ZwiftPower >

Watch My Video

Takeaways

A total of 663 riders joined this event, and while at least 130 of those dropped out early and countless more weren’t treating the event like a race, I was still pretty stoked with my result.

A few noteworthy takeaways from this ride:

Surprising myself: going into this ride, I wasn’t at all sure I’d even be able to hang with the front group to the finish. So I was really pleased with coming across the line in 3rd! I set a 6-week power PR in the 20-minute range, which is always nice to see.
No coffee: I didn’t notice a single coffee stop used in this ride, which struck me as odd until I remembered that you only get one 30-second break in the first 5 minutes of a ride, then you aren’t able to take another until the 30-minute mark. But there’s another rule: you can’t take one in the last 5km of a ride! My ride ended at 31:31, so basically nobody really had a chance to use a coffee stop when it would have mattered.
Late join mods needed: I really wasn’t a fan of having all the late joiners dropping in next to me as I was digging deep to stay in the front group. It was especially frustrating when a handful of riders got off the front for a minute or two, and I saw late joiners dropping in up the road! I’d like to see Zwift modify their late join placement logic to put riders, say, in the middle of the event. Find the rider who is positioned at the 50% mark (say, 75th out of 150) and place late joiners next to him. That doesn’t seem like a difficult change to make.
A more helpful rider list: I’d love to see Zwift tweak the rider list UI for events so I could see riders who are off the front of my group. Perhaps something as simple as a little bar at the top of the rider list that says something like “2 riders ahead”? (In fact, if Zwift added that, they could also change the bottom of the list to say something like “45 riders behind”). I think this would be a big improvement for group rides and races. I even made a rough mockup: