We are finding it frustrating that so many rides do not have the distance posted. And, they often have a surprisingly long lead in to the start often. It is hard to plan your time for training and to train the length you need with this problem.
There is no “lead in”, every race starts from the pen, regardless of what may be displayed above. Using the lead in as a warm up or roll out is a guaranteed plan to lose the race. # RELEASE THE HOUNDS
yeah… OK.
I know I plan on extra time and mileage when I take part in events and the race briefings are not the best as many are just copy/pasted from some other event.
There is only a few routes that have a “lead in” the lead in is there to get to to the start of the loops. For instance if you are going to do 3 laps of the jungle you have to get to the jungle first before you can start the loops, so the lead in will be from the Start banner to the beginning of the jungle loop.
Start to Jungle loop = ±12.3km
Jungle loop = ± 7.8km x 3
Total distance = (7.8 x 3) + 12.3 = 35.7km
Also distance is not a good indicator of the time requirements to do a race if it is the race is on the Mountain route then it is 29.5km but it will take a lot longer than 3 laps of the watopia Flat forward (12.3 x 3 = 36.9km).
Route information can be found here, https://zwiftinsider.com/route-details/
Well thank you for the feedback…but Cary seems to be the only one that is understanding our frustrations. As a family, we look at the schedule the day before or the day of, and look for events that fit our time slots, and distances that we need. We like races. There are three of us Zwifting, and some prefer harder and longer work outs than others. If I have to research the length of every loop, and the lead ins (they are not posted until the race starts though), and do the calculations as you have demonstrated Gerrie for every posting that we might be interested in, none of us would ever have time to go to work at our day jobs. We agree that the calculations are simply enough, and we are certainly capable of doing the calculations with plenty of university calculus courses between us. It is a time efficiency issue here. It seems that it would be quite simple to have all races posted with the total distance. Yes of course a hilly one would take longer than a flat one. We can figure that out Bath Salts. 
We are loving Zwift otherwise. Not ranting and complaining at all, just trying to help with product imprlvement ideas. Ride on!
When you are planning your races here is a very nice site to save you time: https://zwifthacks.com/app/events/
Also there are only 4 routes that have lead-in’s.
WATOPIA JUNGLE CIRCUIT - Lead 12.4km
WATOPIA VOLCANO CIRCUIT - Lead 2.5km
London Classique Lead - 5.8km
GREATER LONDON FLAT - Lead 5.8km
I hope this save you some time.
Great info. Thank you Gerrie. TTYS Ride on.