New Climb and Route of the Week Challenges Released

Back in May, Zwift introduced a “Route of the Week” challenge, where a different route is featured each week, and completing it earns a 500XP bonus. Learn more here >

Yesterday, two new weekly challenges have launched: a “Workout of the Week” featuring an ERG workout from Zwift’s library and a “Climb of the Week” featuring a climb portal. In simple terms, these work like the Route of the Week: simply complete the featured workout or climb to earn an XP bonus. But let’s take a closer look…

Workout of the Week

Click the Workout of the Week card on your homescreen to see the details of this week’s featured workout. Kicking it off? “Emily’s Short Mix”, a popular OG Zwift workout named after Emily Mullen, an early leader on the Zwift’s marketing team.

Finish the workout (I’m not sure what constitutes “finishing” the workout, as you definitely don’t have to earn all the stars), and you’ll see a banner on your screen:

Once you finish the workout, clicking the homepage card initiates a confetti party and a popup telling how much much bonus XP you earned:

How Much Bonus XP?

Until this week, completing the Route of the Week would earn you a 500XP bonus. But Zwift has changed their XP bonus formula, giving different bonuses based on the difficulty/length of the featured route/workout/climb. On the weekly challenge forum thread, Zwift staffer Alex says, “The XP reward does vary based on the difficulty of the ride, though we’re still fine-tuning the reward for these.”

So Zwift isn’t sharing the exact formula yet, but you can see above that we get a 250XP bonus for the 30-minute Emily’s Short Mix workout, and a 750XP bonus for the longer Tourmalet climb. Alex also says, “We agree that the reward needs to be clear on the UI. We’re looking at some options.”

Climb of the Week

Click the Workout of the Week card on your homescreen to see the details of this week’s featured climb portal. Our first featured climb? The mighty Col du Tourmalet, with 1213 meters of elevation gain across 17.2km of riding.

Finish the climb (yes, finishing it at 50% scaling counts), and you’ll see a banner on your screen:

Once you finish the climb, click the homepage card for a confetti party and a popup telling how much bonus XP you earned. (The Tourmalet earned my test bot 750XP.)

Double Dipping

Keen XP farmers will, of course, want to know how to maximize their earnings in these challenges. And there are certainly ways to do so! The trick is to figure out how to complete more than one of the three challenges (route, workout, and climb) in one go.

There really is no way to knock all three out at once, because you can’t do the Route of the Week and Climb of the Week at the same time. But you can certainly layer the Workout of the Week on top of a Route or Climb of the Week ride.

Alex from Zwift confirms, saying, “Yes, you can double dip! You just need to make sure you’re registered for both ahead of time until we update that.”

To register for a challenge, just click the challenge card on your homescreen. That signs you up for the challenge, and now, if you complete the route/workout/climb via another official pathway, it will still count.

(Note that it won’t always be this way. Alex also says, “You currently need to view each challenge to get credit for the ride, though you don’t have to start the route/workout/climb from the Challenge screen. We will soon change it so that you’re automatically registered for them on log in.”)

Two examples of double dipping (there are other ways to do this, but hopefully this illustrates how it works):

• Click the Workout of the Week challenge card, then return to your homescreen. (Now you’re registered for this week’s WotW Challenge). Click the Route of the Week card, and click the route to enter the map and begin your ride. Now go to Menu>Workouts (“E” keyboard shortcut) and choose this week’s featured workout from the library. (Emily’s Short Mix is under the “30 minutes to burn” category). Complete the workout and finish the route, and you’ll finish both challenges and get both bonuses.
• Click the Workout of the Week challenge card, then return to your homescreen. (Now you’re registered for this week’s WotW Challenge). Click the Climb of the Week card, and click the climb to enter the map and begin your ride. Now go to Menu>Workouts (“E” keyboard shortcut) and choose this week’s featured workout from the library. (Emily’s Short Mix is under the “30 minutes to burn” category). Complete the workout and finish the climb, and you’ll finish both challenges and get both bonuses.

Schedule of Upcoming Challenges

I don’t yet have the schedule of upcoming Workouts and Climbs of the Week, but I’ll share that ASAP in a separate post here on Zwift Insider. The Route of the Week schedule is available here.

Questions or Comments?

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