I’m involved in a support role for a race team here in Australia. one of the tools for training used use is motor-pacing.
Zwift could simulate motor-pacing (probably with just a bot rider / or sim motor bike?).
Work Out Ideas
The idea is *not* just to sit behind the pacer all the time.
the session should involve the rider being trained to poke his/her nose out into the wind and hold the speed for some time interval. (simulates taking a turn on the front of a fast moving peloton)
the rider may also be at the back of a bunch of riders who are behind the pacer. at a given signal increases their effort to reach the front of the group. (simulates effort to a position move during a race.)
the pacer lifts their speed to simulate an attack and the rider must hold the pacer wheel. (simulates going with a move).
There’s tons more, but the general idea is to simulate the effects of drafting, then zero drafting, back and forth as you find in race conditions.
That’s quite a niche requirement. Motor-pacing is more about adaptation to leg speed, holding wheels, bike handling, and all the other spidey-scenses that go into making a skilled rider.
You’d lose so much trying to simulate this indoors. If you want surge efforts, do surge efforts. If you want leg speed, change up a gear, or jump on a set of rollers.
Group dynamics already works within Zwift between riders, the drafting effect is pretty good. So you could achieve a lot of your requirements with two or more riders.
The last thing we’d want to see is riders take Sprint/KOM/Lap jerseys while being motor-paced. That’d cause more of a stir than someone with a wildly inaccurate zPower trainer.
nah this would be like a private session - so would not involve or interfere with others.
you ideas as alternatives a little off. sure we could jump on rollers, sure we could change gears. but the beauty of simulation is that is very encouraging to keep going.
in much that same way we all enjoy competing against each other on the island.
agree it’s probably never going to make as a feature but just thought i’d put it out there.
I second. Motor pacing as private work out or similar. This is something you can do with computrainer. You setup desired speed or whats and then you can draft thd pacer “rider” or ghost in zwift terms. The pacer allows for the extra effort that you can not achieve by using rollers or easy a gear or…
