Kicked out of ZA Group Ride by the fence

Did the 5am (EDT) ZA Group Ride A this morning. I was kicked out of the ride (along with a handful of riders) by the fence around the 8 or 9km mark when riding on the correct side of the fence (despite the kick-out feature being supposedly disabled these days). Not only is it annoying that the fence is constantly telling us to return to the group when we are on the correct side of the fence (in fact, only 20m in front of the leader), but it’s really annoying to get punted out of the ride. This is one Zwift user who hates the fence. It adds nothing to my experience, and at times like this takes away from it a LOT. Please get rid of it once and for all.

The kick-out feature is something that event organisers can configure to be on or off.

But obviously you shouldn’t have been kicked if you were inside the fence.

Hi,

I too got kicked today from the 11 AM (CET) ZA Group Ride B.

Furthermore, at the start the entire group seemed to be far in front of me, while I respecting the 1.7 - 2.2 W/kg range.

I had to push hard to catch up, and once in the group I was at the front. I saw a red fence, which I did not pass, and there was a countdown timer. So I slowed down to be in the middle of the bunch behind the red fence. However, I still got kicked. This was at about 30 minutes into a 45 minute group ride. It’s my first group ride. I have done two ZA Group Workouts, and these have been fine.

But this issue with getting kicked when not going past the red fence is frustrating. Is there a way to get our ride authorised. I kept riding until about 47 minutes.

Hi Steve: After I rejoined the ride leader told me the kick-out feature is disabled in all ZA rides, so that this should not have happened.

1 Like

Hi Robert: They probably won’t be able to give you credit for the ride. For future reference, if you quit and rejoin the ride (which you can do until 30 minutes in), you will get Academy credit. I did that in my ride today and I got credit. I’ll probably do an extra group ride anyway before ZA ends. A second tip: In these group rides, if there are lots and lots of riders, and you are far back in the queue at the start, you may have to work really hard to get up to the yellow beacon if they don’t set a super slow pace for a few minutes. In the ride I was in, I had to spend about two minutes in yellow/orange to get into the blob with the beacon. Once in, the effort to stay there was as advertised. Several riders worked hard later, but they never caught up.

The only way someone might get kicked is if they are using an out of date client that is a few months old. If you are using apple TV or a mobile device make sure you are on the latest version. If you are on the latest then raise a support ticket to get the fault investigated.

It’s totally mystifying Steve, but it happened. And not just to me (about 5 people got booted at the same time). I’ve been in lots of other group rides recently where the fence has prematurely given me warnings, and in which people have gone right through it and stayed there with no kick out. So I was definitely not expecting this. I’m running on a PC, and the app is 100% up to date. (As an aside, I always love the PACK rides!)

I did a group ride on Tuesday and had the message ‘Return to Group’ constantly despite sitting on the correct side of the fence nearly all the time.
When I did a few efforts on the sprints etc. and went in front of the fence it didn’t do the count down timer at all and I just slowed and re-joined. I saw a lot of riders on the wrong side of the fence and they didn’t seem to get kicked out.
I think the idea of the fence is fantastic and fully support it, it just doesn’t seem to be working as intended.

To my knowledge the Kick feature has not been enabled for some time now.

1 Like

According to a previous update, I thought it sounded like it was a possibility now.

We’ve made significant under the hood changes to the Event Fence which will allow us to resume in-event testing/tweaking of the feature. This includes a change to allow for a “no kick” mode where events can use the fence but not remove riders from the event if they are beyond the fence for too long.

I saw that, but I have not heard that it is back on.

I would assume a big announcement that it is back on.

I can see that (some) events are tagged with no_kick_mode. It may be significant :thinking:

1 Like

I know many folks seem to like it, so I know I am in a minority, but I’ve never really been bothered by flyers (and I’m not one of them) so I personally don’t get any value from it. And then stuff like this happens. Oh well. I’ll just get used to it.

1 Like

That’s what I thought. This was very unexpected. When I was booted out, there were a few riders around me, a handful in the ZA event jersey, and similarly befuddled as to what had just happened.

For the fun of it I’ve created a filter for the events where the fence probably will kick riders passing it. See the ‘Zap flyers’ rule in the event list at ZwiftHacks: Zap flyers events

At the time of writing that is 64 out of 396 fenced events in total – but all 40 out of 40 ZA group rides.

3 Likes

How do you know you were kicked out? What exactly happened? Did the other riders disappear? Did messages stop? Did you get credit for the ride toward the Academy? Are you kicked out on Zwiftpower results? Did you use power meter or zwift estimated power with a wheel sensor?

Awesome work. :+1:

That’s cool. So that provides the explanation. It would be cool if I could go back and look at what was true when I did my first ZA Group Ride a few days earlier. The fence did not zap anyone in that ride. So now we have a tool (the fence) that even when it is active, isn’t applied consistently, and still doesn’t work (all the premature “return to group” warnings).

Had my eye on the Giro, but caught the tail end of the countdown. Event countdown clock was gone. My avatar’s jersey changed back to what I usually have on. The other riders I could see except my fellow kick-outs had random jerseys on, but my fellow kick-outs had the event jersey on. I got credit for the ride, but only because I rejoined it (rejoins get credit, by my understanding). I’m in the Zwiftpower results but they are meaningless (they show me as having the same time as everyone else). Used a power meter.

That’s really odd. I got ahead of fence but nothing happened. (I got dropped from ZP results because I used my speed sensor for ride instead of power meter. I’m sure it is set up that way for races.)
Sorry, I can’t offer any answers. If the “quit event” doesn’t light up then you were out for sure. It may have been a glitch.