I assume they’re talking about this, from the zwiftinsider article:
“If you’re chasing a PR on the Epic KOM forward or reverse, be warned: Zwift changed the road surface from tarmac to ice/snow on the upper portion of the climb, which increases the Crr thus reducing your speed. We tested to confirm: at 4 W/kg, our test bot climbed the Epic KOM forward 28 seconds slower on the updated roads, while the Epic KOM Reverse was 27 seconds slower.”
Not sure why a zwift decided that such a change shouldn’t be mentioned in the changelog, but here we are.
ooooh - no, there was no intentional turn off at any point other than when i was going around the roundabout, and i wasn’t pushing so there wouldn’t have been any sweat drops doing evil things.
I did take a screen shot with the moveable camera…maybe i got unlucky and moved that just as an option to choose a direction was there, and as i was riding without the hud I wouldn’t have seen that happen. I don’t know if that’s something you can tell happened around the same point?
The no HUD thing was intentional, so I could see your lovely new graphics and just chill
If no-one else reports it, it’s probably a rogue thing on my side.
Do you ride outside or only on Zwift? I ride outside a lot more than on Zwift this time of year, some days there is a strong headwind, sometimes it is a tailwind or crosswind… sometimes the county road commission decides to chip and seal the road… all these things can negatively impact my strava segment times… but it doesn’t mean that I didn’t get a benefit from the actual work… As @calfzilla said, the only thing that really matters is power/time and HR… speed and distance have no place in your fitness value. If I only ride downhill does that mean I’m in better shape than someone who only rides uphill?
So let’s all just stare at our watts/time, how boring would that be. Sorry but training against personal bests is a form of training and a pretty good one at that, heck I know World Tour pros who use specific climbs as a benchmark to their fitness.
But I like Zwift, because there are no variances, see my initial post.
Edit: let’s now have a discussion about powerups, draft and bike choises. About to prove the point there are also variances within Zwift.
Point is:
I’m not unique nor special, there are a lot more number crunchers
Some (see 1) value comparable efforts on specific segments.
You look to hr/powercurve, so it is al the same to you when Zwift didn’t change the segment
So why change? Some people don’t care, some people don’t like it. Nobody appreciates it.
Can we please have a discussion about point 4. And not about which training metrics are more important to you? I have enough experience to determine my personal preferences.
Yeah, but that’s not what’s happening here. In the outside world sure, one day I’ll have a headwind, but the next I’ll have a tailwind. I can still set PRs on Strava segments, etc.
The annoyance here is that the road has been permanently changed; potentially putting those old segment times out of reach. And Strava doesn’t make it easy to, say, discount all times on a given segment before a certain date.
I agree Strava segment times aren’t the be all and end all, and have argued against Zwift caring too much about the impact of their changes on those times. But it’s still annoying.
I don’t think it’s the first time though. I’ve some vague recollection of them changing the road in the Jungle or something too. Or maybe it was how tyres performed on certain bikes.
I think things have changed multiple times over the years, the dirt roads have at least twice that I can recall.
Zwift is gunna Zwift and keep changing/nerfing roads and bike frames… you can always just set new benchmarks if comparing segment or route times are your preferred training metrics. Is that extra 27 seconds really that upsetting?
In any case times IRL are not really a valid comparison because they are impacted but things outside of your control like weather conditions, traffic and road conditions, etc.
I agree: the snow on the road should affect the radio tower. Presumably the main road is plowed :). It’s not even a matter of it creating an incentive for different bike selection, since for some bizarre reason road bikes are still better than gravel bikes on ice/snow, just slower than on pavement.
Excited to try it out when it hits me (referring to the update). Just wondering, I looked at Zwift Insider at Elevation Evaluation and it does some sort of out and back at the beginning. Not that it’s anything bad, I’ve just never seen a Zwift route with a random u-turn. Or is there like a little parking lot type road near where it turns on to and comes back?
Ah, yes! I just went back to Zwift Insider and looked closely at “Oh Hill No” (not that it matters the route in the picture, the point was I was trying to show the road), look closely and you’ll see a very small turnaround. (Emphasis on the “very”, probably close to the Bologna turnaround in terms of size.)
I’m always amazed that even with a good news message, zwift can do something stupid that annoys people and they lose their momentum.
People are talking about the change to crr and its negative impact (rightly so btw) rather than the positive. No one was calling out for a new road type of surface, or new crr especially when climbing. It’s fantastic self sabotage.
(Emphasis on the “very”, probably close to the Bologna turnaround in terms of size.)