The sixth and final race of Zwift Racing League 2023/24 Round 1 happens Tuesday, October 17, and it’s the second team time trial of the round. In contrast to the climbiness of our first TTT, this week’s route is quite flat and all about pure watts.
Let’s dig into crucial segments along with bike choice and a trainer difficulty tip!
Looking at the Route: Greatest London Flat
Greatest London Flat has been used multiple times as a ZRL TTT course. It takes you around the City of London itself, then over to Surrey with the flattest of the three paths through before taking you back to London to finish on The Mall.
Total ride length is 31km for all categories – that’s a 7.4km lead-in to The Mall followed by a 23.6km lap. Here are some notes from Sherpa Dave:
While the profile above may look rather lumpy, this is a fairly flat course, with just a few important bits (climbs) worth mentioning:
- Northumberland Ave @3.6km (150 meters at 4%): your first ramp of the race, and you’re still in the lead-in portion! Give it the beans, but don’t drop anyone. Recovery is just around the corner…
- Surrey Parkland Ramps @18.3km (3km long): the toughest part of the course for many riders, this series of long rollers forces you to keep the power high if you want to maintain race-winning speed!
- Ramp up from the Underground @22.5km: teams can lose several valuable seconds by attacking this one incorrectly! You want to ramp up your power heading into this steep, short ramp so you carry more momentum, then keep hammering hard over the top to get back up to speed.
- Northumberland Ave again @27.2km (150 meters at 4%): with just a few kilometers left, you may have already lost a rider or two at this point. Make sure you stay together so you can pull hard to the line.
Also worth noting: in between the key climby bits above you’ll find a light of slight inclines and declines. Riding these smartly can make a big difference in your overall time! That means going harder on inclines, and easing a bit for recovery on the declines. Raising your trainer difficulty to 100% may help you feel the slight gradient changes and react appropriately.
Read more about the Greatest London Flat route >
Bike Frame + Wheel Choice
Bike choice here is simple: go aero. On a flat route like this, weight doesn’t matter much, and aero is everything! The best setup by far is the CADEX Tri frame paired with the DT Swiss Disc wheels, but you’ll need to be at level 42+ to access that sweet rig. Here are the 4 fastest TT frames in game:
If you don’t have access to one of those, check out “Fastest TT Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level” and use the fastest TT frame and wheelset available at your level.
More Route Recons
Many recon rides are planned each week on the upcoming ZRL route. If you’re unfamiliar with this course, jump into an event and do some recon! Here’s a list of upcoming Greatest London Flat events.
Si Bradeley
TTTips
Team Time Trialing on Zwift is a challenging mixture of teamwork, physical strength, proper pacing, and Zwift minutiae like picking a fast bike and understanding drafting.
Flatter courses like this week’s are about big sustained watts on the front while riding efficiently in the draft so you’ve got big watts when your turn comes. Additionally, as mentioned above, it may help your team to raise trainer difficulty so you naturally go a bit harder on slight inclines and ease a bit on declines to maximize your overall speed.
Si Bradeley’s video above is packed with tips from special guest James Barnes – we recommend giving it a watch if you’re looking for pro-level TTT advice!
Your goal in a ZRL TTT is to get four riders across the line in the shortest time possible. That means every team’s pace plan will be different, based on the abilities of each rider. We highly recommend practicing beforehand and having an experienced DS on Discord directing your team, especially if your team contains some inexperienced TTT riders.
If you really want to go down the TTT rabbit hole, check out Paul Fitzpatrick’s zwift-ds.com site and particularly the Excel Power Planner sheet.
Questions or Comments?
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