Silly Ideas on Zwift Continue with #EveryZwiftRouteTBD

For better or worse, To Be Determined may be deserving of our reputation for silliness on Zwift. There was the double century weekend a while back, and more recently a few of our folks have been competing in multiple races per day - in fact Tom has even worked his way up to the Top 40 Zwifters in the country in the process.

But with real world racing on hold and motivation a bit harder to come by can you blame us for responding to Zwift silliness with a ‘why not?’ And as of last week, we officially have our latest Zwift challenge in mind: earning every route badge on Zwift, a task that we are calling #EveryZwiftRouteTBD (in this instance, TBD = to be done).

As with most TBD challenges, it started simply enough via the team Slack:

After Corey’s inquiry things quickly started gaining steam. Different team members had different rationale for jumping on the train, but in short order we had ten folks signed up for #EveryZwiftRouteTBD. Justification for joining in the challenge was varied:

• “I like spreadsheets and ticking boxes”

• "I quickly realized the mountain (pun fully intended) I left myself to climb due to my habit of sticking to the same, flat course out of habit"

• “Bike racers: we are all weirdos”

Shortly thereafter Scott pointed out that he had already started this exercise as part of his return to Zwift and within a few hours a #EveryZwiftRouteTBD spreadsheet was born. It has continued to grow larger over time, but it looks something like this (kudos to Zwift Insider for some of the information included):

Based on that spreadsheet we have detailed information on the very large task ahead:

• More than 2,000 kilometers of riding

• Nearly 30,000 meters of climbing

Assuming an average speed of 30kph on flatter courses and 24kph on the hillier courses, we are estimating this total project will take a ballpark of 70 hours of riding. In short, this is going to be a monster effort that may take the better part of the next two months. But with New York City event permits suspended through the end of June, it doesn’t look like the project will be interrupted by real world racing anytime soon.

Over the past week we started ticking off routes - some focused on finishing off multiple shorter courses while I choose to clear off a few of the longer routes including a grueling Thursday PM on the ‘Four Horsemen’ route that included more than 2,000 meters of climbing:

We’ll be sharing a few updates from this journey over the coming weeks on the Journal so definitely stay tuned to the Training section of the website.