Today, we release the last of three special “full map” Rebel Routes. We recently published The Full Makuri and The Full New York, but today’s is the big one, covering every road in Watopia, Zwift’s biggest map!
But first, credit where credit is due: Zwifter Tim Nikkel gets the kudos for putting in the work to devise this route, sharing it with us via the ZwiftMap website. With so many intersections in Watopia, computing the shortest possible route is no easy task. But Tim figured it out! (At least, we think so. Tim says, “I do not claim that this is the shortest route possible, only the shortest route I’ve found. Due to how my program works it cannot prove that this is the shortest possible route.”)
We’ve released these three “full map” Rebel Routes in hopes that Zwift will adopt them as new fondo routes. It’s been way too long since we’ve had fresh fondos, and there are so many great new roads we could use!
This route in particular would make a splendid Gran Fondo course. It would be the second-longest route in Zwift (behind The PRL Full), with 250 meters more elevation gain than the PRL Full. A difficult but doable challenge for a well-trained rider!
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
A complete turn-by-turn tour of this route would take much too much space. So we’ll summarize it instead.
Start by selecting the “Oh Hill No” route from the Watopia route picker.
The Full Watopia is bookended by the biggest climbs in Watopia, starting with The Grade + part of the Epic KOM (including the Radio Tower), and finishing on Alpe du Zwift.
After descending from the Radio Tower, you’ll loop around onto the Epic KOM Bypass road and head to the Mayan Jungle, then down to the southern coast road to take in this long stretch of shoreline.
Continue up and over the rollercoaster road through Titans Grove, then head into Watopia proper to cover most of those roads, including ascending the Volcano KOM. You’re well past the halfway mark!
Descend from the Volcano, head out to cover the Jarvis loop, then ride through the Ocean Blvd tube and hang a right to enter Fuego Flats.
From the Flats to the climbs, you’ll head up the Epic KOM forward, but turn left to head down The Grade, then turn right to descend the Mayan and Itza KOM roads. 20km to go!
Knock out the remaining Mayan Jungle dirt, then turn right and head up the Alpe. The route finishes at the top.
Please note that the Strava segment includes the turnaround road atop the Alpe, because we figured everyone would ride that road anyway as they finish their climb and want to come around to descend the Alpe. Being at the top of the Alpe means you get another ~12.5km of distance once the route finishes, if you just let your avatar coast to the bottom. Why not? You earned it. Make it an imperial century!
Speaking of turnaround roads, it’s worth mentioning that this route doesn’t attempt to cover every bit of pavement on the roundabouts and turnarounds in Fuego Flats, the LAX Roundabout, and Ciudad La Cumbre. Doing so would add significant distance, and these are really just turnaround points built into the game. The route also leaves out the Climb Portal, for obvious reasons (the climbs it leads to rotate regularly). And this route doesn’t include Repack Rush, since that road requires steering to access.
Turn By Turn Directions
Be warned: this route has a lot of turns. Begin by choosing the Oh Hill No route, which starts you at the base of The Grade, heading in the right direction.
- Straight (Right) to Radio Tower
- Straight to Radio Tower
- Left to Bonus Climb
- Left to Islands/Jungle
- Straight to Italian Villas
- Right to Sequoia Circle
- Right to Epic KOM
- Straight (Right) to Epic KOM
- Right to Epic KOM Bypass
- Straight to Jungle/Alpe
- Left to Jungle Reverse
- Right to Mayan Bridge
- Left to Mayan Loop
- Straight (Left) to Jungle Loop
- Right to Cuidad La Cumbre
- Straight (Right) to Cuidad La Cumbre
- Straight (Right) to Fuego Flats
- Straight (Left) to Fuego Flats
- Left to Epic KOM
- Straight (Right) to Epic KOM
- Right to Titans Grove
- Straight (Right) to Ocean Blvd (this is the entrance to Repack Rush, and the turn UI only pops up if you have steering connected)
- Left to Ocean Blvd
- Right to Downtown
- Left to KOM
- Right to KOM Bypass
- Right to Bridge
- Right to Italian Villas/Sprint
- Right to Sprint
- Left to Volcano Circuit
- Left to Volcano Circuit
- Left to Italian Villas
- Right to 360 Bridge
- Straight (Left) to 360 Bridge
- Straight (Right) to Reverse KOM
- Straight (Right) to Reverse KOM
- Straight (Right) to Downtown
- Straight (Left) to Downtown
- Right to Volcano Circuit
- Right to Volcano Circuit CCW
- Straight (Left) to Volcano Circuit CCW
- Straight (Left) to Volcano KOM
- Straight (Left) to Volcano Circuit CCW
- Right to Jarvis Island
- Right to Jarvis Island Counter
- Right to Volcano Circuit
- Right to Volcano Circuit
- Straight (Right) to Italian Villas
- Left to Sprint
- Right to Bridge/Islands
- Right to Islands
- Left to Islands
- Straight (Left) to Sequoia Circle
- Straight (Left) to Downtown
- Right to Desert Flats
- Straight (Left) to Desert Flats
- Straight (Right) to Epic KOM
- Left to Epic KOM
- Left to Epic KOM
- Straight (Left) to Epic KOM
- Left to Cuidad La Cumbre
- Right to Jungle Ruins
- Right to Jungle Ruins
- Right to Mayan Loop
- Straight (Right) to Mayan Loop
- Straight (Left) to Jungle Loop
- Straight (Right) to Mayan Loop
- Right to Alpe du Zwift
Route details:
Distance: 154.5km (96 miles)
Elevation Gain: 2852m (9357′)
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!
Only one direction? 😜
copy it into AI and ask it to reverse the directions
A “Godcake” route might be interesting. Godcake is a traditional name for the junction of three tracks or roads with a grassy triangle in the middle, named after the Coventry Godcake triangular pastry. There’s loads of ’em in Watopia and I keep meaning to find them all and stitch them together in a route.
It comes to 95 miles. I know lots of people are going to want to descend AdZ to get over 100 miles. Looks like a fun route… I did take today off from work!
Hope one day Zwift will add this route
Hopefully this becomes obsolete soon (when they add new kms)
We’ll need a new version every year!
Would love for this to be an official route
One thing I think could improve these rebel routes even more (in this article) is distance markers for some of these turns. Not necessarily all turns but in certain parts of certain worlds turns can come thick and fast with very few seconds to confirm your choice. So would be great to know that in the next 1km I have to take a right, a right and a left.
Do it yourself. Load the strava section and move your mouse along the elevation graph and you can see distance and where you are on the map.
I agree it does make it easier and this is what I tend to do.
Great point. I will give that a try.
What a fantastic job!!! Thanks a lot. Would be very interesting to ride it. Let’s see if this i doable turn by turn. A “programed” route would be marvelous
To do it ‘turn by turn’ makes it less boring!! Really nice ride to do
I think my only feedback would be: give it a different name. There will be an expansion soon enough and it won’t be the “full Watopia” anymore.
That’s a problem I’d love to have. 😆
Probably what we’ll do with these full map routes is, once they’re outdated, rename the Strava segment to “v1”, and create a v2…
Should these rebel full map routes being named with the date (full watopia 2026) since if new roads are added the route won’t be full anymore
How long until they add new pavement? There could be a scenic coastal road circling AdZ.
It seems like they do a road expansion on some world every spring and every fall for the last couple of years. Maybe that pattern will continue.
Does it go along repack rush?
It does not, since that road requires steering, and many Zwifters don’t have steering.
Not bad, but as you point out it doesn’t include EVERY road (including the climb portal). I’ll stixkwnjrh my version that tips over 200k and can be very spicy if you get the ‘wrong’ climb portal of the day !!!!
This is absolutely epic. It must be made into an official route. But I do question the omission of the roundabout in Ciudad La Cumbre, a legitimate road, since Zwift has been known to auto-navigate riders there post-route in an infinite loop. If this is made official, that should clearly be added. The route passes it at checkpoint 14 in addition to starting there.
Wouldn’t that be cool if Zwift would let you upload your own custom routes and then be paced by a pacer bot!
Someday when I have an entire afternoon off… Great work to those who put this together!
distance seems about right- last time I did Watopia Whole was December 2023 and it was 87 miles- that was before the FTP climb and the hill road off to the side of that was added.
These All-the-Roads rebel routs should be added to the officials selectable zwift routes for club use. They are great Century routes.
Awesome! I think Oh Hill No is the perfect way to start a century 🙂
Cheers and thanks
And Alpe du Zwift perfect way to end it! haha
I rode all roads in Watopia last year – my route was 112 miles (180 km) with 10,000 ft of climbing and it took me 7 hours to finish it. I started with Fuego Flats and the Southern Coast as a warm up, the up and down Alpe Du Zwift, then through the jungle to Mayan and Itza KOMs, then down to the roundabout and back up The Grade and upper section of the Epic KOM all the way to the radio tower and then the rest of Watopia (including the lower section of the Epic KOM). That way I finished the hardest climbs first when I was still fresh. Here is my Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/13409498870. My route started and finished in downtown Watopia so it was a loop.
I would rather go for this route than the Alpe after more than 140 km at the end.
Hey Eric. Looking forward to trying this one. I also came up with one recently I thought would be worth sharing. I called it the Elastic Waistband: https://zwiftmap.com/strava-activities/16927490746
The AdZ climb at the end will be brutal. 🥵
Just seen that this has been added to the VeloViewer Zwift Insider leaderboards, which I’m a big fan of and recently completed.
Unfortunately as an older rider this route would take me well over 8 hours, so I’d hate to do it as a rebel route then have to do it again to get the route badge if Zwift adopt it. @Eric Schlange do you know if this is likely any time soon?
Your guess is as good as mine!
Ha! I doubt that, but thanks anyway.😀
Tried this out today, really liked it with the challenging start and finish bookending the flatter meandering middle – very Uberesque – which made frame/wheel selection and if/when to switch relatively straightforward. @Eric Schlange a couple turns that are missing- between #7 and #8 there is a Straight/(Right) to Epic KOM (instead of going up towards Titan’s/Feugo Flats). Then when you pass the Alpe first time in the Jungle, it’s the default turn but it’s a Straight/(Left) between #12 and #13 on your list. You might consider also adding the Straight/(Right) to avoid Repack Rush through Titan’s for those that are utilizing steering just so there’s no surprises, although that is also the default option.
Thanks for the details! Adjusted above.
I think I’ve posted this in these comments before, but free idea: the Funnel Cake, a pretzel-style route but which avoids going through any KOM/QOM arches, even in ways that don’t “count” for the climb, including downhill.
Hit basically everything else, most of it both ways (though not worrying about getting absolutely every single piece both ways, just most of them, like the Pretzels do). Turn loop-de-loops a lot, rather than trying to go out and do big perimeters all at once, though since there’s so many KOM banners in the Mayan expansion you can’t loop there at all; it’s either two out-and-backs to the bottom of the Grade or two long perimeter runs. Definitely hit all of the jungle in both directions, because I like the jungle even if most people don’t; I don’t mind the dirt and it’s pretty, and it adds some of the larger hills left on the map. Split it up into multiple visits now that you’ll need to be heading via it to the Mayan/South Coast anyway.
The last time I drafted up an entire listing was before the Mayan expansion, though; a new one would be a lot longer. It was mostly inspired by the release with the Epic KOM/QOM bypass, because that road is so pretty and it was very underused in the initial release.
(The name is because a funnel cake is loopy like a pretzel, but sweet instead of salty.)
This is the reason why zwift should not make this official. If it was that easy everyone would do it
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.
Great to see the new rebel routes added to the Veloviewer leaderboard. But I notice 5 other rebel routes have been removed from the leaderboard. Any reason for that? For the Big Flat 8, reason seems obvious as it is also available as an official route in Watopia Medium. For the other removals, reason is not clear to me, and seeing the KomMonster disappear comes to me as a shock! I spent close to 4 hours sweating and suffering on that one, and it is not really something I look forward doing again. I assume you are preparing the KomMonster v2….
This leads me to the conclusion that adding rebel routes like the Full Watopia or the KomMonster harbors eternal suffering. By definition, these routes may never be the final one and for sure will make think twice before attempting to ride them again.
PS. Will you add the routes that recently got badges as well?
let’s hope KOMonster v1 is being turned into an official route then, since it disappeared from the rebel route list 😛
Those have all been added except No Sleep Till Brooklyn. Not sure why KOM Monster has disappeared from the Rebel Routes leaderboard
No sleep is there now.
Done. A fabulous route
Why when I open and read this newsletter do I still get the check here if you don’t want to see are you a “Zwift member”?
Thank you for the route! I included the La Cumbre and Desert roundabouts and was hoping that Strava would “give” me the segment time anyway. No luck on that part, but at least I covered a few more meters of roads 😄