For those wondering about the descriptors we chose (Longer/ Standard / Shorter), we’d like you to know that a lot of internal discussion has been spent to choose them.
Rather than using these adjectives to solely describe the course length, we’re accounting for the time commitment you should expect for the A, B, C categories.
We arrived at this way of looking at it because at one time, Zwift did use “hard / standard / easy” descriptors. That led to people getting annoyed that the “easy” ride was super intense and hillier than they were expecting. For example, one of the shortest-distance routes in Zwift is Road to Sky at ~17 km, but it’s one of the most unrelentingly challenging climbs, so “easy” is not appropriate.
We no longer want to make assumptions about the effort required because effort is very subjective to each individual. Instead, we chose the more time-quantifiable adjectives. While that’s not a perfect model either, we feel it’s better.