Snow and rolling resistance

General Discussion
1

Earlier this week I did the fifth stage of Zwift Camp: Build, which was Road to Sky. I am extremely proud and happy that I clocked in at 59:22 exactly four weeks prior to my 71st birthday.

One of several reasons I’m now a Sub Club Member is possibly my active use of the Click2 I got a few weeks ago, which enabled me to go for shortest lines and cut the many corners as short as possible.

Or that’s what I thought. Today I studied the data for my bike and wheel setup at Zwifterbikes and found that the Royal Alpinist wheels I used have almost twice the rolling resistance on snow compared to tarmac – 0.0075 vs. 0.0040. And by cutting corners like I did, you will be passing over snow in many of the upper section’s corners.

Does anyone have any data or thoughts on this? Will the slightly shorter route to the top outweigh the increased resistance in the snowy corners? Also, did I mention how happy I am for my result?

1765288802994
17652888029941920×1080 301 KB

2

The full width of the road hss the same rolling resistance. It’s all Tarmac.

Ice/Snow is only on the Radio Tower.

1 Like
3

If you want to know if a route contains the snow surface, you can check zwiftmap.com

For example: https://zwiftmap.com/watopia/muir-and-the-mountain

2 Likes
4

I’m sort of sad that the Snowman route doesn’t have any road surfaces with snow.

5

Thanks, Tom and Paul, that is good to know. So the snow in the corners up Alpe du Zwift, The Grade etc. is mere decoration, I wasn’t aware of that, again thanks.