if I was doing 8 km/h my cadence would be 50.
You could be going 8km/h at 50rpm or at 100rpm, depending on gear selection and slope. Cadence doesn’t absolutely determine speed. If you were going 8km/h at 200w then, as Gerrie mentioned, it sounds like you must have been on an uphill slope. But… are you saying you were doing 8km/h at some point, or that you were averaging 8km/h for the entire route? What route were you doing?
Riders choice. 680 metres of vert. It didn’t feel particularly steep. I was in the big ring for most of it. I can only compare it to hills on the road. If I am doing 8km/h on a hill, it’s a real struggle and my cadence is well less than 80.
What kind of trainer are you using?
I averaged 8kmh
Wahoo kickr
@shane_elliott Not sure if you saw the “What kind of trainer?” question or not. But I see your other post.
However, if you were doing a “Rider’s Choice” workout, none of that matters, because in workouts (where you want to focus on your target zones/power/etc), Zwift artificially eliminates any feeling of slope from the route you’re doing. You could be doing a 40% slope, and it’ll feel like it’s flat. That’s why you could do 680m of climbing in the big ring and have a normal cadence of 80–you don’t feel the incline, but your avatar goes just as slowly as it would on an incline.
But the 8km/h average is low. 680m of climbing is a fair bit—it would all make perfect sense if the route you selected (you should still have had to select a route, even doing the Rider’s Choice workout) was pretty much all climbing. Any chance you know what route it was?
It was in New Caledonia but not sure of the route.
I’ve got a wahoo kickr
Can you post a link to your ride. Your profile is private so we can’t look at it.
It was in New Caledonia…
lol Yessss. I’m betting on Ven-Top (“Mont Ventoux” in “France”). Zwift located the imaginary France world’s GPS coordinates in New Caledonia so that the route overlays wouldn’t randomly criss-cross actual locations in France (e.g. on Strava). The Ven-Top route is almost all climbing from start to finish and steep enough to explain an 8km/h average at 200w.
Thanks mate
I thought my profile is open to the public?
I’m not sure how to share it
Your Kickr will give you all the feedback you could want, if you want it to.
If you do workouts, you won’t ever “feel” hills (because Zwift artificially flattens any route, no matter how hilly, in workouts)—but your speed will still fluctuate according to the in-game slope.
If you want to feel hills, select a (hilly) route but don’t do a workout (training). Also, in case you’re unaware, once you’re in-game, you can go into settings and adjust the “trainer difficulty.” Min effectively eliminates slope; max gives you 100% of your trainer’s capacity to simulate the in-game slope on hills. If you want, given the right course you could probably suffer through that 50rpm you mentioned 