Not sure whether I can describe this accurately, but hopefully someone else can translate for me!
Let’s say I am doing a workout like the Zwift Festive 500 ‘12 spikes’ session. It has 3 blocks of overs/unders and at the end of each one, there is a 1 minute ‘free ride’ block.
If I am on ERG mode, then the trainer controls the resistance outside of the free ride block. In the free ride block, ERG disengages.
The problem with this is that - depending on where you are in the Zwift universe - your free ride segment is pot luck in terms of your incline, and therefore affects your power and cadence.
As an example from my ride yesterday: 3 ‘free ride’ segments, each one following a 2 minutes @ 195w block:
Free ride segment 1 occurred when I was on a 4% uphill, so I had lots of resistance to push against and could really hurt myself on the free ride
Free ride segment 2 occurred when I was on a 5% downhill, so no matter how hard I spun/pushed, I could only hit 160w and was spinning out.
I think that ‘free ride’ should be consistent across a workout, unless the whole workout is a free ride, otherwise it defeats the premise of that free ride blockout, which is to go as hard/soft as you want.
So, what I would propose is that for a ‘free ride’ block WITHIN a structured workout, it shouldn’t just disengage ERG mode but should default to, say a 0% incline, so that each ‘free ride’ block is the same.
Does that make sense? Obviously, free ride as in ‘Rider’s Choice’ is totally different, as there is no erg mode in the same way.