I love the new coffee break, but to have 3 minutes every half hour and all the distance count seems too much like cheating to me. I know it does’t count in races, but if you are doing a long ride of some sort, in 10 hours you could have only done 9 actual hours of riding!!! This seems a little ridiculous to me!! As a long distance specialist I find this just another way people can cheat.
I think a coffee break once an hour is enough for a start, but also the distance while you are not riding should also not count! I think most people would think that is fair.
I have not used to coffee break function myself as it feel like cheating in my own training. When I would go for a verry long ride I can see the use of it (to refill the water bottles or something like that), but in an ride of less than 2 hours I do not think I will ever use it.
totally agree with you. I can’t see any reason distance/xp/drops should count while not pedalling.
and for long distances challenges like everesting/GAR etc it would be a big advantage so i assume they would need to update their ruleset once they become aware of the coffee break.
My maths was a little rough in the first post - you get 6 free minutes every 66 minutes so you get a whole free hour of distance every 11 hours, not 10, but still a ridiculous amount of free distance you haven’t actually pedaled.
Just remember that no one is forcing you to use the coffee break. If others use it that frequently then they are really just ‘cheating’ themselves. But for you, you can choose to just not use it, or only use it once every few hours. If you never use it twice in one hour, fantastic! But I’m guessing you’ll be thrilled on whatever day you end up having a couple of reasons to step off the bike in a single hour.
EDIT : my post was merged here from elsewhere. I 100% agree mileage should NOT accumulate during Coffee Stop
ORIGINAL POST:
Currently when riders are in Coffee Break mode, their mileage continues to accumulate, earning them “free” miles. The correct behaviour to emulate should surely be to let riders continue on with the group they are riding with, but pause their mileage accumulation until they start pedalling again. That gives you all the benefits of not losing your position, but more accurately reflects actual work done.
Personally I think the distance moved during the break should not count, if say you planned to ride a 24 hour moving time ride it would be great to use a pacer. I’m looking forward to using the new features for this.
I look forward to the thread complaining of mileage, drops and xp being removed by zwifthq, when they look back through riders’ history to detect coasting down hills and mountains.
Someone getting “free” miles, XP, whatever during a couple of minutes break doesn’t affect anything I do on Zwift at all. I therefore fail to see why I would try to impose rules about it on others.
Just sent a note to Zwift along these lines. I’m a huge fan of the coffee break–now I’m doing a round of weights in the gym every thirty minutes when riding with a bot–and I am grateful to Zwift for developing this new offering. But I am VERY careful in counting miles toward an annual goal, so I (too) WISH the miles didn’t. count. Seems an easy change, and I hope Zwift will make it happen!
Yeah, I don’t think drops, XP, or mileage should really tick up while on a coffee stop, it’s not at all the same thing as coasting down a hill that you’ve climbed - but I also don’t care that much that they do.
It can also affect route badges. For example…
I guess the best use of it would be to use it during the PRL Full - the laps to get back around to Box Hill are about 30 mins, so every 30 mins catch up to the fastest group of people you see going up Box Hill (or just the first group that passes you naturally - which are faster than you), use the coffee ride and chill out for 3 mins halfway through the climb. Then you also can chill out going down the climb. I bet this would make PRL Full much less of a slog.
Understood! But Zwift has already imposed a rule: miles during coffee breaks count. The debate isn’t over whether rules are being imposed but on which rules are appropriate and fair. The current rule DOES affect what I do on Zwift, in that it counts miles that I don’t want to be counted. Some number of folks feel the same.