So you are not raising your power to “Blast” out of the corner?
I have been racing IRL and virtually, and I know you have to use as much power as possible on the hard sections and recover on the easy stuff if you want to win.
Doing the Alpe with Trainer Difficulty at zero so it’s like a flat TT is a pretty good way to set a PR simply because of the duration of the effort. Probably not different from an ERG mode ride up the Alpe (I’ve done the former but not the latter). It gives you the lowest normalized power possible, which sure feels easier to me. I make no apologies for it since I like to look at a picture of a hill while doing a flat TT and the rest is nobody’s business.
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I am sure the effort is different. But at the same average power I am sure free ride will be faster.
What a lot of people do is just sit in whatever gear they were in on the steeper parts when they get to the flat corners and that’s where they lose time, because you don’t need the same power in that gear on the flat part. What they should be doing is upshifting right away.
Maybe I didn’t use the right word, but you can’t just be lazy on the flat bits, you’ve got to maintain your target power or you lose time.
I learned to get pretty good at pacing ADZ over time, as a few people have found out. 
As for off-topic, if a wayfinder is also off-topic then I’m in good company.
you guys are way off topic… just sayin
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There we go.
New topic, LOL
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I would like to test it with a bot against your best time. It will be a very interesting experiment.
For me, my fastest Alpe times were not in ERG mode, they were in sim mode: I don’t think I could just hold my PB alpe average wattage in ERG mode without having at least some variability on the corners to rest/push. I am not sure if it’s mentally more draining for me to have 0 variability in the climb or if those small breaks/pushes are more efficient etc.
Hats-off to anyone who can PB their best time on the alpe using ERG mode. That would be a hard grind.
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Loads of folk can do that - they just drone along at constant power in workout mode up ADZ. Whether these people are entirely genuine with their apparent fitness is debatable but that’s what they do.
When I see someone zooming past at constant power with the workout hud in front of their bike you just know, okay, 40 minute Alpe lap on the way.
Personally my own ADZ lap are done not absolutely flat out, I know well what heart rates and power I can sustain so I use a Garmin Edge 1030 paired with kickr bike to monitor the average power over the entire lap so I don’t go too hard. Once I get to the last two segments then I can push harder because it’s near the end.
I think there are a few things. The folks who are actually trying to cheat the system probably have modified their weight, or they are bots. Both of those will absolutely get you up the hill with less effort whether or not you’re using sim or ERG mode. But if someone is legitimately, going for a PB and pushing as hard as they can in ERG mode they are for sure in the hurt locker and not having an easy time because of ERG mode.
The easiest thing you can do to make your times fast on the alpe is just drop your weight, then you can blow up the alpe fast whether in sim or erg mode.
My point is that you can do higher average power if normalized power is lower, and that means faster. I realize that’s not pertinent to a workout where you have a power target that is whatever it is, but it does matter if you’re trying to set a PR. I don’t do ERG mode workouts because they’re no fun, but the Alpe is a decent 1 hour FTP test and for that I prefer to keep the power as flat as I can and just grind it out. (OK still not very fun but maybe once a year is enough.)
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That’s my way on the Alpe as well - try to keep the power as steady as possible, that’s the way to go fast on there. You have to avoid the temptation to go all out and then need rest in certain sections. You must keep the power steady the whole time.
Even though the first half you might be tempted to push hard because your legs feel good, it’s easy to cook them and blow up.
By the time you reach sector 6 then they may not feel so great anymore and then you lose a lot of time.
The more laps you do the better you get at pacing ADZ. I have dropped quite a lot of people who have started out really fast then they get to a point and you can see they’ve exploded then I just claw them back and bye-bye because I was cautious with my pacing.
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For most people the fastest way to climb ADZ, or any other time trial effort, is erg mode with manual adjustment. It controls the even pacing at the target power, while allowing the slight increase on steeper sections and decrease on flatter sections for an optimum power profile.
I understand in theory why that would make sense, but in practice I’m not sure that’s how it would work out, and it would not make the difference between someone “easily flying up” vs. someone going slowly - which sounds like what Chris is seeing, the times would probably not be that much different I would think.
Do you have any data that would show how big a difference it would make? I’ve watched a lot of alpe vids online and not one of them used this method to get their time.
I’m sure if I did set a 49 minute interval block and set power at 250w exactly it would be quicker than me doing manual ride with gradient changes and having to shift gears.
The time of the block would need fine tuning to make sure I don’t miss out on the spinner.
When you shift you lose a bit of power or momentum as well.
That said doing erg mode for ADZ I would find boring.
This is great info to have!
Ok, so do you know what your best alpe time would be right now?
If so, what do you ‘think’ you can do with ERG mode?
Sometime this week or next you should try that and report how much faster it was. You do the alpe enough that this would be a great test.
Best time so far was 45:05 (pre accident) and post accident 45:57.
I’m not going to use a bot to simulate it because that is against Zwift terms of service. There are enough bots in there without me making it worse.
Hell will freeze over before I use a bot.
What do you ‘think’ you could do with ERG mode? Do you know what power you’d set it to to try that out?
To be clear there is no bot involved. I’m suggesting you try ERG mode yourself and see how much faster you can be.