Group rides have no draft effect

This has started just this week. I’ve done two group rides, both D rides where the leader has claimed to keep an average pace of 1.5 (and I trust both of these groups to stay with what they say based on past experience). I’m finding that if I go off the front, I can sit at 0.9 and stay off the front. But if I can finally get back to the blob, I’m having to ride 1.7 to stay in the group. (If I go off the back, I have to ride as hard as I normally would to get back.) I’m having a really hard time maintaining a pace through the ride, because if I get close to the front of the group at my pace, I go off the front without even trying, but if I’m in the peloton I have to accelerate dramatically to stay with the group.

I’ve seen that this has been mentioned in the past, but it’s only started happening to me this week. Does anyone have any thoughts / insight on what’s going on? I think I saw that the app updated last week – is this an issue linked to the update again?

Any chance you might have ended up on a TT bike?

3 Likes

No, definitely not on a TT bike. I even switched out my Specialized frame (which is not a TT frame) for the Zwift Carbon frame for today’s group ride, and had the same issue. The ride leader was telling us to ride 32 kph in the blob, and I was having to ride 37 kph to stay with them. Once I got ahead of them, though, I could slow to 27 kph and still stay off the front.