When the ‘keep riders together feature’ for meet-ups is enabled has anyone worked out…
How riders are positioned in the group. It doesn’t seem to be simply the fastest at the front and slowest at the back and it does seem that if I increase my effort I can move through the group. Why is it important? Because last night my meetup split into 2 or 3 groups separated by a few seconds and then one rider who seemed to be mainly about 6s off the back.
How is the speed of the group calculated? Is it an average of the factors which contribute to the speed of an individual?
What I’m trying to work out is whether we should split our members into a faster group and slower group in order to give everyone a good group ride experience with the group nicely blobbed. Or whether instructing riders to e.g. “Stay at 2.5 w/kg” would achieve this. Let me remind you that I’m referring specifically to when the ‘keep riders together option is enabled’.
What would be ideal would be if there could be a kind of “slider” for how much “keep together factor” applies to the ride.
What I mean is that an event creator could make (and publish this in the event description) an event such that there is a weak “keep together factor” which would suck back in someone really falling off the back (or perhaps extreme flyers off the front), but 99% of the work to keep in the blob would be with no “keep together factor”. Ride type A - keeping folks together, but 99% requiring effort to stay in the blob.
Then, on the other extreme, the event creator could move the “slider” to the other extreme and it would be like a group workout where the “keep together factor” would keep everyone mostly in the blob regardless of their w/kg output. 100% social. Ride type B.
There could be anything in between, of course.
I would personally not want to see too many group rides turn into workout style rides where we are always in the group no matter what we do as that seems to defeat (for me at least) the purpose of Zwifting which is simulating real world riding where by pedaling harder I go faster!
I see room for all types of rides, and I would hope all types are made possible not just “normal” rides with no keep together factor or 100% workout style keep together factor and no middle ground allowed.
I do love the existing rubber band option (not sure of its correct name). As a weaker rider, it enables me to ride with stronger friends without them having to back off too much. We all get a hard ride. I did feel bad when I was slingshot past them all on a long hill but they soon hauled me in again. It stayed functioning as long as I kept pedalling. I certainly get a lot of alone time off the back, but because I’m close (ish) I can still read chat messages on screen.
I’d be very happy to know the details how the Keep everyone together works at all🤔It’s guesswork we are doing how it calculates about speed,and who to pull up,who to pull back🤔