Could we please have a few more flat routes in the Zwift world? And by flat, I don’t mean “Mostly flat but with an 8% grade somewhere in the middle of the route.” I mean “Flat, with no slopes steeper than 2%.”
Thank you!
Been suggesting this for years, but the threads keep getting high-jacked by climber complain there should be more mountains and it ends up going sideways from there.
We need a 28 mile flat route on Zwift so we can stop doing endless loops on the same course. It is very difficult to do long Z1 rides on Zwift since when you hit the inclines your speed drops so far that you are barely moving.
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Let’s hope the New York course gets some expansions in the future. I’m sure it will as they’ve invested so much time into it. My suggestion would be to add on the New York Marathon route. Fairly tame for biking and Zwift could really go after the running market with it.
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Have any of you tried lowering the Trainer Difficulty setting in Zwift? Is that not a viable option for you?
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I adjust the difficulty sometimes. It helps in some respects but is not the same as a flat road. You still slow to a crawl when ascending a steep hill. And if you’re riding with a group the lighter riders vanish into the distance on the first climb.
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You are missing the point, and I knew someone would chime in saying that.
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Totally agree. Sometimes I’m just trying to do an easy 10min warmup, but I have to climb that stinking hill.
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I just started Zwift today. My first question after my first ride is whether there are flat courses until I get in shape. This thread does not seem to have an answer to the original post. How do I find some real flat courses to ride just to get back in shape?
The flattest route is the flat route on Richmond, but Zwift needs an almost pancake flat route.
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@D_Pokela Welcome to Zwift.
Every world has a Flat’ish (is that a word?) See this link Zwift Course Maps and Details | Zwift Insider
Watopia - Flat (10.3km Elevation 54m)
NYC - The 6 Train (6.4km Elevation 61m)
London - Greater london flat (11.6km Elevation 45m)
Innsbruck - Innsbruckring (8.8km Elevation 72m)
Richmond - Flat (Loop) (5.1km Elevation 11m)
Edit:
not for free ride.
NYC - Gotham Grind (9.2km Elevation 86m)
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I agree. I also just started today and had difficulty finding a ride I could handle. Also, there is no allowance for warm up like Trainer Road.
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Welcome to you both.
Unfortunately there isn’t a solution. The best we can do is make a Feature Request and hope that Zwift creates some flat routes.
For now, the flattest ride available is the Flat route in Richmond. Unfortunately it’s only 5 km long and you can’t even ride it in the reverse direction.
Gerrie has listed the next best options. But none of these are flat - they all include at least one significant grade.
Watopia Flat has a climb of 5.4%.
The NYC 6 Train route has grades of 5.2%, 4.3%, 7.3%, 5.1%…
Greater London Flat has a 1 km climb of 3.7% and 2.6%.
Innsbruckring has an approximately 0.5 km climb of 7.9%.
I did read somewhere that a new “mostly flat” route in Watopia is in the works.
If you are just looking to reduce the amount your trainer increases the resistance when you hit a climb, you could try changing the Trainer Resistance in your Settings. (Within Zwift, bring up the Menu, select Settings, and slide the Trainer Difficulty setting all the way to the left.) This will make all of the roads “feel” flat, regardless of the slope.
https://zwiftinsider.com/using-the-trainer-difficulty-setting-in-zwift/
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Thanks. No substitute for just simply getting back in shape.
How about Watopia Ocean Boulevard?
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It’s fairly flat, but you would need to keep doing U-turns because there is a climb after it.
There is a nice flat route in Watopia - my favorite one. There are just two steeper parts (about 5% or 6% => marked by arrows), but those are very short (100 meters or so, I guess) thus no problem - just several pedal strokes. The rest is pretty flat - mostly 0% gradient, sometimes 1 or 2%.
I ride it in “clockwise” direction …
Note that 133m of ascent is the result of almost 3 laps - 33km …
That is not flat enough, we are asking for an almost pancake flat route with the greatest elevation change being around 1%. The route should also be about 28 miles long. Seems you are missing the point on the request.
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This guy on YouTube said it.
“got to see an update that’ll be a flat ‘time trial’ kinda course”
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Do you have to manually select the turns, or is this an established route with an actual name?
manually … I don’t use those “preselect” routes at all …