Is there a long lead-in to this new route? I completed it today, but I was expecting a route ride of 12 miles (19.3 km) with an elevation gain of 675 ft. Instead, it was 16.5 miles (26.6 km) with an elevation gain of 781 ft!! That is 4.5 miles (7.3 km) longer than advertised!!
The only other route that has quite a long lead-in is The Highline (New York) with 6.2 miles (10.0 km).
Yes, there is a lead-in of a bit over 7km.
edit: āSerpentine 8ā Route Details (Watopia) | Zwift Insider
Thanks. That explains it then! Pleasant route, by the way!
Hmmm I did it yesterday, I forgot to check the map first and also got caught out by the long lead in. Oh well it added to the annual mileage 
It just to show that it pays to read up on the route first, and not to give up towards the end when the announced distance has been over-ridden!! 
It is hard to see the majority of the 7.3km lead-in since the orange lead-in highlighting gets covered by the blue route highlighting. The lead-in takes you all the way to the Jungle Loop Start/Finish banner. Creating a Meetup to ride the route might cut off the lead-in.
I know that it does on a few routes, but not this one. I rode Serpentine 8 in a Meetup today and we started near the Jungle start pens, so quite a long lead in.
Agreed. I used Meetup to ride Serpentine 8 and started just past the start pens, and so had the long lead-in to the route.
Why would they leave the ride showing as a 19.3 klm ride if it has a lead in of 7.3 klm. Surely a ride distance is the total ride lead in or whatever. I have been chatting to zwift support in this for a week now and they donāt seem to knlw about this.
The thing is that they donāt show it as a 19.3 km ārideā. They show it as a 19.3 km ārouteā. And the route doesnāt start until you get to the banner behind the falls. Yes, itās a long lead in (and I truly wonder why they have you go across the new bridge as part of the lead-in, as opposed to going straight to the banner), but itās still not a part of the route (which is, effectively, the part of the ride that would be repeated if you keep riding and make no manual turns, whereas the lead -in is only covered once during each ride).
There was some discussion in another thread earlier today about putting the lead-in distance into the route selection, next to the route distance and route elevation, in order to give a more clear picture. Weāll see if that ever happens.
Thanks for that explanation very helpful.
Thanks for the explanation. It would be very helpful for the newbies on Zwift to know actual mileage, so we donāt get all excited about earning our first badge and then discover we didnāt!! It was a tough ride, but still enjoyable. I will look for lead ins in the future!
Kris
Basically, if you select a route and keep riding w/out manually turning, youāll eventually see the route badge appear on screen. That is when you know you have finished the route. The distance may be longer than you expect due to a lead-in to the official route start point. So keep riding until the badge notification appears.
Check out the following before your next route badge quest:
N00b tax 
Thank you Paul! Attempted to finish it twice with 50min workout and never get the batchā¦ now I understand why! 