Dear Tom (good enought Ihope for you Sir?), I said I answered to rude people, I don’t see where I was rude as I was using their own words. And is asking is someone is mad by answering a completly wrong answer, or stating and moking that I missed the good name of pacers (and this guy was wrong too, what a joke), or that Robopacers use speed instead of W/Kg, this people has not use Robopacers to say that as they go very slow in hills and fast on descent, they certainly don’t use the speed as a pace. That’s being rude, coming to someone post about a problem and saying wrong things and telling him that “google ‘define pace’ and see what you get back…” WTF is this ? Is this not being rude ? Is this about the initial discussion ? No it’s about provacation, and it’s totally incorrect answer on the top of it ! It’s just someone trying to open his big mouth but is wrong.
But what is also rude is coming in a discussion like you do, bringing nothing to the discussion except a rude picture, and judging others, but not bring anything to the initial discussion, not even one advice on the problem. So you come for what in fact ? Look in a mirror, you are the rude one.
But thanks to the other people like W, RC Ivany and Paul for their advice
You may not like the answer about speed, but here’s a quick random screenshot of a large pace group on flat ground. Everyone is going the same speed, but look at the large variety of wkg output (1.7 up to 3.7wkg, in following a 3.2wkg PP). I maintain that if one really really wants a non-dynamic ride, then do an ERG workout. Otherwise, there are always dynamics in a group, in large part because of drafting effects.
Curious of how long you have been using Zwift and Pace/Robo bots? It seems like we have a camp of riders that used Pace Partners prior to February 2022 when they were consistent and easy to pace for steady state rides, and a camp that either just don’t care and ride with them regardless or have joined Zwift after the issues started in February 2022 and don’t know what changed.
Looking back at my PP rides in that time frame, my HR and power graphs were pretty flat when riding Tempest or Tick Tock routes with CC. I believe the advertised W/kg was in the 2.6-3 range for CC at the time and my averages for those rides were 2.5-2.6 W/kg with an HR of 150-130. Something changed with CC in early February and my next ride on a flat route W/kg average was 3.1 and HR was 140-150.
There was quite a bit of discussion in this forum and Zwift attempted to fix it and get it back to how it was before the increase but it was never the same. Shortly after, the dynamic experiment started on CC and morphed into the 18 dynamic bots we have now.
I am fine with having the dynamic bots for those that like them, but still question why there can’t be a handful of steady state bots for those that preferred the way they were prior to February. This all or nothing, this is the way, handling of the bots is not very inclusive for a company that strives to be all inclusive.
Been riding for a while with them. Over distance, yes average will be about right, but within the ride there’s always been fluctuations up/down on watts – even on the flats. It seems pretty consistently you could go spectate a PP ride on a flat portion and see the pack in the screen listing with quite a bit of wkg variation.
FYI, one of the CC changes is though that her weight did go up I think about 10kg. Result is she went from 165 to 195 watts (on flat). By itself that’s probably pretty close to the .5 w/kg difference.
W/kg will always differ on the flat roads because weight does not have a huge impact on flat roads. w/kg is only relevant on the climbs where weight is the biggest factor.
Right, taking screenshots of the w/kg on flats without knowing each person’s weight isn’t really a good way to show how much watts each rider is pushing and how dynamic the ride is.
But even on a hill, if you take a picture of people riding with a pace partner to show w/kg it’s not that helpful because for instance if the rider’s weight is much less than the pace partner they will be able to do much less watts on the hills at the same w/kg, and if the rider is much heavier than the PP on the hills they will need to do a significant amount more watts.
My theory (particularly for the more high-level pace bots such as Genie and Antequil) is that you will see a much higher percentage of lighter riders riding with them when they are on a very hilly route, where heavier people are more likely to self-select away from very hilly routes and ride with them on the flats. I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but my guess is there’s a bit of that - This is because the change in dynamicism is very high for those pace partners between flat and a hill if you’re really heavy.
So in general screenshots of people riding with a pace bot showing w/kg won’t really tell the actual story. You’d want to share power output from intervals.icu, or the zones charts from the companion app from someone and ensure you know their weight and where they are on the route to better understand how the ride dynamics changed over the ride.
I agree, weight is a factor, but not sure it explains everything. It’s not difficult to instead of picking the PP, to spectate on random rider. Eg. a couple more grabs from flats. Worth noting that not just the selected rider, but the whole lists’ worth of riders are pretty uniformly different in wkg - the top screengrab has everyone at least 10-20% higher than the bottom grab – and I don’t think dumb luck that in first instance everyone happens to weigh less than everyone in the 2nd grab.
Do we know why the dynamic pace partners were brought in anyways? I seem to remember that the issue was with the grade changes and there needed to be some change in the pace to keep the advertised pace a little more consistent.
I don’t find it difficult to stay with the Pacers unless I’ve selected one that’s a bit too fast and I have to work hard to maintain that pace. I would suggest that if it’s so hard to keep on the advertised pace then you’re probably riding with the wrong group? We’ve already discussed ways to tune that with bike choice too.
I would assume you are closer to the PP weight. The bigger the difference in weight between rider and PP the bigger the affect of increased pace up the climb.
I agree there. it seems to me that my pace has to match the advertised W/k of the Pacer when climbing. and only really becomes and issue on longer climbs like volcano or Titans.
I can stay usually stay well below the advertised pace, but I’m below average size so that could be why. I do use it to practice being efficient and TRY to keep my watts as low as possible.
I think it was mainly to address complaints about Coco and Diesel getting dropped on short climbs (Titan’s Grove and coming out of the desert on Tick Tock, for example) and Diesel hauling posterior on descents. IMO, dynamic pacing addresses those particular issues nicely, but doesn’t scale well to faster bots (increase in power is too big) or longer climbs. Several people suggested having a set of dynamic pacing bots and a set of old-school static bots since there was demand for both, but Zwift decided to go with all dynamic.
I still think there should be a “relative effort scale” for each pacer… similar to the adjustment you can make during a workout with a 90-110% increase/decrease in effort. While rideing with the Pacer you can slide it over to 90% to make it a little easier to stick with them or over to 110% if you find the pace too hard.
I would suggest having 4 bots holding Steady pace and 4 dynamic pace. Each pair (Steady and dynamic) will be on the same route so the experience will be the same except for the pacing.
Then after a month or two Zwift will know which is more popular and then make 8 of whatever is most popular.
Or just permanently have 2 sets. ie. Coco Steady and Coco Dynamic
Those of us who are light have to push more w/kg while the heavier riders have it easier on flat courses.
Downhill I have to sprint, while others take it quite easily. IRL on 4% downhill i don’t have to do that. Provided I’m in draft I can coast downhill without effort and not be dropped by a bigger rider. I’m using Canyon Ultimate CF Evo or Cervelo S5 2020 IRL.
In Zwift if I try to coast I slow down suddenly.
That’s seeming to be a losing battle. It has been decided steady pace bots are gone, not coming back and that’s it.
I will bet if you had 2.5w and 3.0w steady bots running on Tempus they would always have huge numbers of riders joining, probably 200 for 2.5.
Look at coco the other week on a hilly course, often only 16-20 riders joining.
In the old days I didn’t drop Coco on the climbs if I stayed at similar w/kg as the coco bot, interestingly enough. But for sure those Coco riders who every lap would do the climb after the LAX area at 4.5-6.0w would drop her. It was a running joke in the chat even.
Now if I can’t find a robot pacer at suitable watts on Tempus or Tick Tock I just get the TT bike, use my steering to stop other riders getting draft and ride alone for 1 hour.
This seems backwards? Unless below-average size means something different than weight (ie. height)? Otherwise if you weigh less than the PP (75kg), in theory you should be at a higher wkg on flats or downhills.
The problem in the hilly routes is that the descent dynamics is way off from IRL. And when the pace is hot in the front, like really big groups, high power PP and in races, things get complicated.
Going downhill doing Z3 or Z4 needs improvement from ZHQ. It takes out the enjoyment from more relaxed rides, and really destroy the tactics people and small groups can deploy in races.
