Morning All,
I have a friend who’s just joined Zwift and we’d like to do a few rides together, with one small issue. He’s averaging 250w / ride and I’m struggling to hold 170w. No excuses, I’m just unfit and have had almost 2 years off the bike.
For the full picture, I’m around 75Kg and he’s around 10Kg heavier, so up the mountain this will make a slight difference.
What is the easiest way to make things more “even” so he gets a good workout whilst still riding with me ? Is it simply to up his weight considerably in Zwift ? And if so by how much?
Cheers.
Hi Andrew
Changing the variables within the software to even out different riders’ performance is not really the correct approach to gaining a good workout for you or your riding partner.
I prefer to compare Zwift activities to conventional rides/runs.
If you and your riding partner went cycling outside you would need to make ‘adjustments’ such as slowing down, taking routes where one rider was better than the other and so on. Use this same approach within Zwift.
Set your personal details as they should be and work on gaining fitness in areas you need to bring your game ‘up to speed’.
Ride On!.
Thanks, but that’s really a useless answer and of no help. On the road we would be in different groups or he would just be bored. As this is a computer game though there are ways to even things out a bit.
I tend to agree with what Paul said.
Another option is to ride together in a group workout, where everyone is ‘held’ together.
But - if you really want to handicap your friend so you can keep up when the two of you are just riding along in Zwift, setting his weight to 110 kg will put his avg w/kg at 2.27 (same as you at 175w/75kg). This *should* achieve the desired effect, in theory, although his ability to generate more power than you - in absolute terms - means he will probably still be able to ride away from you in certain circumstances. He will also descend faster than you.
Cheers. I appreciate that group workouts are a good idea, but they only go at set times and on specific routes. We need to be far more flexible, riding when the better halves are otherwise occupied 
We can use this 110 Kg information and if he gets too bored then he can simply stop and increase his weight. Normally he likes to ride HARD so I’m pretty sure that he would rather be extra heavy and knackered than normal and bored.
Just keep riding until you can keep up. There’s really no better advice we can provide. Changing stats in-game may get you closer to meeting your friend’s performance, but it’d provide you an unfair advantage against all other members riding. Maybe instead of pushing your performance or changing stats, you could ask your friend to slow it down a bit on inclines?