I rode Zwift’s new Paris-Roubaix route - how hellish was it?

In 2014 I rode on the Paris-Roubaix cobbles - not every sector, mind you, just a handful of kilometres towards the end of the race which for me culminated with the Carrefour de l’Arbre, arguably the toughest length of pavé in the race.

Eleven years later and several hundred quid lighter in chiropractor fees and I’ve finally summoned the courage to ride on them again. This time, I wouldn’t need to fork out for a reinforced pair of bib shorts and half a kilo of Sudocrem, I wouldn’t even need to worry about decreasing tyre pressure or bidding farewell to feeling in my hands for the next month.

No, the cobblestones I would be riding on were of the pixelated persuasion and came courtesy of Zwift’s latest update. Eight new routes have been introduced to the indoor riding platform’s France map this month, one of which coincides with the Queen of the Classics. The Hell of the North route is around 19km long and promises cobbles aplenty.

Zwift’s roads, though, regardless of texture, are smooth, and unless you have a smart trainer with a real-ride feel, like a Tacx, you aren’t going to experience any discomfort at all - or are you? I was about to find out…

The Hell of the North starts on fast flowing tarmac taking in Les Intestines - a series of undulating switchbacks. This is a section of the route that’s been open to Zwift users since the France map’s unveiling in 2020, but it isn’t long before a right turn sends you onto freshly laid asphalt. Sheep graze by the side of the road, windmills lackadaisically rotate on the horizon while rapturous spectators bound up and down, moved to the point of hysterics by your mere presence. So far, so Paris-Roubaix.

Then you see it - the entrance to the first sector. Upon initial inspection everything looks as it should be – a desperately irregular road surface that bicycles have no business riding over. These are ancient farmtracks after all, tracks subjected to a sustained battering from carts and cattle to tractors and tourists. Even this pixelated version looks like it was in dire need of attention from the Friends or Roubaix.

And so unto the breach…

The first thing I noticed about riding on pixelated Paris-Roubaix style cobbles was that it felt absolutely nothing like riding on actual Paris-Roubaix cobbles. Of course it didn’t. My sit bones could stand down. Unless I hired a pneumatic jackhammer and got my wife to dig up our garage floor whenever I gave her the nod, I don’t think this is a sensation that could ever be mimicked outside of northern France.

However, what this animated pavé does offer is resistance. The opening segment quite aptly goes by Dos d’Ane - or ‘speed bump’ in English. At 0.75km in length it’s based on a slightly ascending false flat. Regardless, it should be fairly easily dispatched, I’d just need to wind up some big wattage and – due to its fairly recent arrival to the platform – I might even scoop a top-10 position on the overall Strava leaderboard.

But something happened on those cobbles. I just didn’t seem to be moving very fast. My designs of finishing the sector in less than a minute were doomed from the first pedal stroke. It was frustrating - I was laying down as much power as I could muster and barely breaching the 25mph mark. Finally finishing the segment in one minute dead with a heart rate in the deepest realms of the red, I hadn’t even troubled the top 100. It was time to do some research.

Zwift has a host of different road surfaces and each come with a different coefficient of rolling resistance (CRR). The optimum speed at which you can cover varying terrain is dependent on the wheelset you choose for the job, each having a different CRR. Like the pros riding at Roubaix this weekend, certain concessions will be made and bikes will be specced for efficiency when traversing the pavé. Some riders even have remote tyre pressure technology which allows them to increase or reduce PSI according to the severity of the sectors.

While Zwift doesn’t have this functionality (yet) it does have a selection of wheelsets with CRR appropriate for cobbles. So it was with this I located a pair of Roval Alpinist CLXs in the Drop Shop, added them to a Specialized Tarmac and had another crack at Dos l’Ane.

Slightly less power, slightly more pain, but faster. By one second.

The pavé on Zwift may not inflict the same kind of discomfort as their real-life counterparts, but they do require preparation, thought and a whole lot of pain to negotiate at speed.

With nearly 40,000 riders already having tackled the segment, this weekend’s action over the likes of the Arenberg Trench and the Carrefore d’Labre will surely serve as a catalyst to at least double that figure.

You may not be at Paris Roubaix this weekend but the option is now available for your own, private, Sunday in Hell...