I joined the crowd lining up for the noon start of Stage 8 of the Tour de Zwift. For the previous 7 stages I rode the Group B routes but today I chose Group A because of the longer distance and moderate climbing. The new Scotland Rolling Highlands route awaited. 3 laps plus a long lead-in was ahead totaling 19.9 miles and 855 feet of climbing. About 1900 Zwifters in the start pen when the clock hit 0. I figured it wouldn’t take too long for the real A riders to leave me behind. For this ride I would be the sweep.

The ride out of the pen and onto the lead-in was fast and I stayed with many Zwifters. I had looked at ZwiftInsider.com and seen the roads a couple of days ago in a GPLama YouTube video. The lead-in was a rather long 3 miles. Before I exited the lead-in the companion app on my phone lost connection forcing me to stop on the course until I switched to my desktop computer’s Bluetooth. That separated me from the few riders I was with. For the rest of the ride I was usually by myself or one or two others. Occasionally a large group would race by as you can see in the video. Until the last lap I was about 50 riders from the end but I moved up to about 100 from the end by the finish.

The 3 laps would go over a 2.45 mile climb gaining 118 feet followed by 2.89 miles of mostly downhill with 2 short climbs then back to the big climb. Each lap was 5.6 miles. With a new route I had no personal records to beat or match but I did record 2 in the Breakaway Brae sprint according to Zwift. I got the Rolling Highlands route badge and the 2023 Tour de Zwift ride kit. Strava was more lavish: PR on Breakaway Brae Reverse (1:40), PR on Rolling Highlands (18:52), 2nd fastest time on Breakaway Brae Reverse (1:43), and 2nd fastest time on Rolling Highlands (19:11). Checking ZwiftPower.com I was 1225 rider out of 1231 for Group A. Apparently almost 700 people don’t share their results with ZwiftPower.com. 569 Group B Zwifters rode, 454 Group C, and 49 Group D.

The SportTracks image shows the route profile better than Strava. The “big” climb was after a nice downhill where I built up some speed to help get to the top.