The Return of Gravel Mountain!

General Discussion
1

James set up a few races on the new version (v2) of Gravel Mountain.
It was awesome (and I was skeptical going in, I admit.) It looked great, it felt great, and I was tearing through the turns and up and over the undulations of the course.

This is what we wanted and got in hand now. A quiet rollout? I don’t blame them. I’m glad the problems got fixed correctly (rather than a semi-fixed version done in a big hurry).

Will I buy or upgrade a gravel bike? No. Will I return? Sure.
Will there be a u-turn option or is it set for only one direction?

2

I’ll alternate the direction weekly next week if I remember.

3

As someone who missed the initial rough rollout in April (but read/heard about it), and isn’t a gravel-riding aficionado, I attended this Fun Friday “race” last night and came in with no expectations good or bad, just wanted to see a new place - and the course was really fun and beautiful! Loved the banked corners and rolling feel throughout. The scenery was also beautiful - would love to see this (and more dirt/gravel routes and climbs) added to Watopia in Fuego Flats, looks like there’s room there :crossed_fingers: :blush:

4

I have to disagree strongly here.

5

Because of the bikes? You’ll love this week.

6

@Zee_Kryder I’ve set them to alternate between forwards and reverse on a weekly rotation.

7

No, not really the bikes. I was disagreeing with the problems being fixed.

I very much like the idea behind gravel mountain. I understand people dislike the jungle because it slows them down on their roadbikes and the jungle is hard to avoid on a lot of routes. And with the CDA changes gravel and mountain bikes were kinda made obsolete and there was no point in having them basicly.
But than Gravel Mountain was announced and I got excited for that. A world where gravel bikes and mtb had a place and since it is all gravel, people on a roadbike only had to blame themselves for going slow. And I really like the look and feel of it. The ones who build it deserve a big compliment.

It was launced and there were a few problems with it so it got pulled within two days. The speed acceleration was way too fast and riding in big groups was a mess. And as a bonus we could ride through rocks and roadblocks. Work to be done and a lot of people complained about the acceleration and even some were getting motion sickness.

Quick forward to last Friday where it made a sudden reapearance on the Friday Night Fun races. I admit I should have guess soemthing weird was going to happen, but I never had an idea it was going to be a Halo bike. That made no sense at all on a gravel course so I disappointedly gave up and didnt get on my bike. I was looking forward to giving it a go but all I did was fanview the race a bit.

It still looks great, but my biggest problem with it is still the acceleration. I have no idea who came up with this idea at Zwift and has such power it hasnt been removed yet, but there is no need for it at all.
1 - Its all gravel so there is no change from tarmac to gravel like in the jungle so you dont notice the change.
2 - If you choose a roadbike and feel it makes you slow its your own fault.
3 - Gravel is just slower than tarmac and people should not expect it to go as fast as with a roadbike on tarmac. It is just how it is. Pick a gravel bike or mtb and you will go faster than you go on the jungle now.
4 - the feel is just wrong. When you go 30 and it feels and looks like you are downhilling the Alpe thats jus wrong.

Just make it a beautifull world for gravel bikes and mountainbikes and set the speed at normal pace and ditch the whole acceleration, no matter how much the guy who came up with the idea will be disappointed. I can gues he doesnt want to hear this, but he doesnt also like people avoiding the world all together if it stays like this.

8

The series is about being silly and having fun, hence Dino Costumes and silly bikes. When it is open to organisers then they can set it up however they see fit. This probably won’t be for a few weeks yet.

Thanks for your feedback, I’ll pass it on.

9

@Peter_Twigt don’t say I don’t do anything for you.

10

Haha great. Will do the morning one as I am working late.

11

There is open bike and wheel selection. There may however be big heads.

12

For a moment there I thought you’d rediscovered the non-accelerated gravel mountain

13

still working on that one :wink:

14

That’s not likely to happen at this stage.

15

I left the race again on Friday because the acceleration still feels completely unrealistic. What’s the point of having acceleration like this?

16

There is no point in that, but someone at Zwift has come up with the idea and its hard to convince them otherwise.

17

That is not bad. That also means a bigger Bucket Hat :grin:

18

I don’t understand why Gravel Mountain hasn’t been changed to a standard visual speed route for gravel bikes that ride slower, which makes each loop 10-15mins.

19

Thanks to James we could test the Gravel Mountain today with whatever bike we wanted. (two more to come at 19:30 and 01:30).

And I was happy to see people on all kind of bikes, which would give a nice example of the difference of roadbikes vs gravel bikes. I was on my level 5 Cervelo so was ready for it.

Well I thought I was since they went beserk out of the pen and after a few hunderd meters I was already struggling to keep up with the front. Thats some fast C cat riders I thought, till I had a glance at the minimap and saw red and green dots and realised it was a mass start.

After the first lap the C’s were so spread out that compairing road vs gravel bikes got a bit hard to do so cant really comment on that. We were also riding in small groups so hard to tell what it feels like in a 50 rider peloton.

So had more time to see how it went with the speed and the surroundings. I didnt notice us going through roadblocks or rocks anymore so it looks like that it solved. Good news.

Than de speed. I fanviewed the Friday race I was in and later watched Gerbens race on youtube and there I still had problems with the speed. That was still way to fast eventhough Zwift tuned it down from 2.5 to 2.
But at C speed it actually isnt that bad and rolls kinda smooth.
That is until you go above 30/35 km/h there the acceleration really kicks in and it just feels wrong from then on. So on every downhill or in a fast group it still needs adjusting in my opinion. Certainly for the even faster A and B group who will spend more time at those speeds, certainly is large groups in races.

Its hard to describe but it feels like what my eyes see my brain cant understand and at 40+ km/h it just feels and looks like I am descending the Alpe at 80km/h and that is just wrong.
It is also hard to tell how far you are behind a rider when you see him in the distance. At normal speed you know the gap, but here you can close much larger gaps way easier it feels like.

Other thing I noticed is that there isnt any graveltrail from the wheels like we have in the jungle. It gives that dusty gravel feeling and I think that is missing. Should not be screenfilling clouds of dust like in some parts of the jungle but a bit should be good and add to the atmosphere.

I got lapped in lap 5, and surprisingly that was a fellow C rider who lapped me even before the A’s and B’s did. Later at the score I saw the rider was doing a nice 3.8w/kg in the C group. After that I did the last few laps looking at the world and still have to say its a job well done. It looks beautiful.

Conclusion from today. Its a lot better but needs some more adjusting. Certainly in de acceleration if that should there be at all but I have already made my thoughts on that.
And a little but of dust trail from the wheels would give it a bit more gravel feel.

20

I have no inside information about the Gravel Mountain roads but generally when there is no dust it means there is no increased Crr on the road surface (eg, Makuri sand). I wonder how the roads actually perform with different bikes/wheels - I think we need some Zwift Insider testing of that. Did you observe anything that made you think that gravel bikes were performing better than road bikes?