Pace partner on club events

Feature Requests
1

Hello, we would like to be able to add a pace partner on our club events !

The pace partner is very stable dans our members want that !

We would like to have a pace partner + leader + sweeper … We have large group rides and we want to help our members to ride correctly !
Thank you !

2

I don’t think that is possible. Well possibly with some manual doing by Zwift but I doubt they would be willing to setup adhoc requests for pace partners.

@James_Zwift should be able to tell you.

3

Hi Marc,

I’m afraid this isn’t something we would be looking to do, certainly for the time being.

There is a lot of work in creating a single pace partner and I’ve always been very clear that I don’t want to use them in group rides as it takes away the massive value that the Community offers in the form of their ride leaders.

1 Like
4

@James_Zwift Thanks for your honest and swift reply. But I think you’re passing up on some things that this feature would allow:

  1. Adding pace partners would give clubs more options to organize more weekly rides, the number of ride leaders is often a limiting factor.
  2. Robo pacers are perfect at holding a set speed, ride leaders could supplement this with fun and useful training drills such as bridging a gap between two robo pacers, or doing interval training with the robo pacers as steady beacons in between the intervals.
  3. Having multiple robo pacers in one training would give clubs the option to organize a single event that caters for all abilities. All club members could start off together, which would be more inclusive than the separate B, C and D group rides there are nowadays.
  4. People would be able to decide during the ride whether they want to try to hang on to a faster paced group than they would normally choose, or to take it easy and have a recovery ride with other club members if the legs aren’t what you expect them to be.
5

What you describe is already done with the Robo Pacers.

If a club ride can’t have a group leader then that club should not be leading rides that will open up space for clubs that want to lead rides.

3 Likes
6

I fully understand and appreciate what you are looking for - I have worked more closely with pace partners probably than anyone else in the company (barring the developer that made it).

I am not opening this up to clubs - without (significant) development work it is approx 20 minute works to create a a pace partner and add it into an event (we made 160 for Tour de Zwift, imagine the joy) which I am not prepared to offer when Clubs number well into 5 figures.

4 Likes
7

The features you are looking for, I believe are supposedly going to be served whenever they finally launch the ‘keep together’ (rubberbanding) option for clubs.

Your listing of desires though would also be met if there was an available speed bias setting – allowing each individual to adjust (downward) their speed for the power they’re putting out.

8

This doesn’t address everything related to this suggested feature, but a ride leader can pair their trainer to an external app or cycling computer in ERG mode and control power from that. Then the ride leader is like a human pace partner. One of the Castelli ride leaders did this and I thought it worked pretty well.

9

Is that a ‘technically against the TOS but no one cares’ situation, or a ‘there’s a loophole or purposeful exception in the rules’ situation?

10

You are still powering the bike yourself so that is fine.

What would be against the TOS would be using a bot to replicate power. Which as you say is against TOS although there are a few people out there using them

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11

Thanks for the insight, I can understand that to implement this feature would cost way too much time. Maybe somewhere down the line, when creating PP’s is far easier.

1 Like