The first and only TTT of Zwift Racing League 2022/23 Round 1 happens Tuesday, September 27th on the Wandering Flats route in Makuri Islands. And for the first time ever, we get to ride TT frames for our ZRL TTT race! It’s gonna be fast.
Let’s dig into the race, including tips for bike choice and crucial route sections.
Looking at the Route: Wandering Flats
The Wandering Flats route in Makuri Islands begins in the Yumezi countryside at the start pens near Village Onsen, descending down to the Countryside Sprint then heading over for a flat lap around Neokyo before coming back through the tunnel into Yumezi, up into the Castle area and back to the start/finish banner.
All categories will be racing 1 lap for a total distance of 25.2km with 145m of climbing.
This is one of the easiest routes on Zwift for team time trials, as it is almost entirely flat. The road may look twisty, but it’s the pitch changes that really determine the technicality of a TTT.
Apart from figuring out your pacing in the flats, your team will need a plan heading into the one climb on this route, which happens around the 18.9km mark. This climb up into the Castle area is 2.4km long, averaging 2.9%. That means it’s very draftable and will take most teams 4-6 minutes to complete.
Read more about the Wandering Flats route >
PowerUp Notes
No powerups will be given during this race.
Bike Frame + Wheel Choice
Bike Frame + Wheel Choice
Because most of the route is pan-flat, and the one key climb is quite draftable, you’ll want the most aero TT bike available for your race. The four TT frames shown above are the fastest in Zwift, with the new Cadex Tri actually the fastest of the bunch (watch for a Zwift Insider speed test post this week).
The Felt IA 2.0 and Scott Plasma RC Ultimate turn in identical times, just 1s slower in our tests than the Canyon Speedmax but significantly better climbers. The Cadex Tri looks to be ~5s faster than the Canyon Speedmax!
If you don’t have access to the frames above, read Fastest TT Bike Frames + Wheels at each Zwift Level to learn the fastest setup available to you.
More Route Recons
Many events are now being planned each weekend on the upcoming ZRL route. If you’re not familiar with this course, jump into an event and do some recon! Here’s a list of upcoming Wandering Flats events.
Looking for a video recon, with lovely British commentary to boot? Check out Si’s recon below:
Si Bradeley
Oli Chi
TTTips
Team Time Trialing on Zwift is a challenging mixture of physical strength, proper pacing, fine-tuned formations plus Zwift minutiae like picking a fast bike and understanding drafting.
This week’s course will give valuable seconds to teams who are able to keep their speeds high over any false flats while staying in formation. For a flat course like this, we recommend your team uses a high Trainer Difficulty (75-100%) so you feel the inclines and automatically boost power accordingly.
Your goal in this week’s 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 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.
Your Thoughts
Any insights or further thoughts on this race? Share below!
How about the The Cadex Tri climbing abilities. Is it better on climbs than The Felt IA 2.0 and Scott Plasma RC Ultimate?
That is, assuming they don’t nerf it Monday night after we all buy it but don’t say anything until after the ZRL is over.
It’s a slower climber than the IA and Plasma, but a better climber than the Speedmax. Detailed post coming today…
You are awesome! We have enough time to make a decision for upcoming Tuesday
https://zwiftinsider.com/cadex-tri/
Interesting comment about using higher than normal trainer difficulty. Hadn’t thought about that before, but it totally makes sense. Now to consider balancing that with not wanting to get out of my big ring (or big-big crosschain) when the slope hits 9-11% right after the pens on the climb to the claw.
Or, if you’re really tricky… you can adjust TD on the fly…
Whaaa? Had no idea that was possible. I’d sort of assumed all the settings were locked down while you were riding when they fixed that cheat. If I’m riding and not DS-ing next week, I’m sure my hands would be too sweaty to properly run my mousepad with that kind of precision, but that is interesting to know.
I know it’s possible in SOME races to change TD on the fly. There’s an event setting that locks a certain TD for all racers. Quite possibly there’s also a setting so you can’t change it during the event.
I enjoy leaving the TD in the higher range as it gives me something to push against…I think.
Hope that makes sense!
Not sure if I’m doing it right, but I sort of like leaving the difficulty at ~33% or so because I’m a fat man and I like attacking on descents (to try and use my momentum to gain back some of what I lost on the ascent). Lower difficulty/realism means there’s a bit more to push against as we go down…I think.
No ‘How the race was won/lost’ series this season?
Haven’t decided yet. I only raced race 1, then left town for a week on vacation. Our team results in the first 2 races have been pretty pathetic – apparently the Roosters didn’t maintain racing fitness over the summer. 🙂
Do the Sprint sections count for anything on this, or is it just time based like the Thursday TTT
So just to confirm, the TT bikes in this event can draft?
Yes.
Will we have the conveyor belt start? Looking forward to this new improvents. Manually setting alarmclock after clock strikes 0 and escaping the pairing screen was a hassle.
Supposedly yes!
Thanks Eric for the brill insights as always🤘 Is there a review somewhere how the BMC Timemachine and the Venum One stack up against the Canyon/Scott and Cadex an the flat & climbing (sorry if I missed it on my searches)?
You can see how they compare here: https://zwiftinsider.com/charts-tt/
Thanks v much👍