Pace Partner tips

Hi,

Today I tried to ride with Diesel, my first group ride but I found it quite challenging to stay with him. At 1 point I was cycling 130Watts and riding away from him, at another point I was doing 388Watts and gained slow. Is he cycling so eratic? Any tips appreciated!

Hi Robert. I rode with Dan Diesel today as well and experienced something similar. I’m sure in good time someone will come along with a better explanation, but it seems to me that he keeps to 1.5 w/kg most of the time. This causes him to slow significantly on hills, especially >3-4% grade, relative to the effort we would normally put in to get up the hill. I found myself needing to back WAY off the effort to stay in range on climbs. Then on the downhills he often surges ahead while I pedal harder to catch up. I am a smaller, lighter rider so this happens to me in normal rides all the time. I also noticed there are a couple of areas on course where he speeds up significantly, sometimes with a “hammer time” or something of that sort in the chat, often at/near one of the sprints. Finally, note that the Pace Partners are still part of “Future Works” so presumably Zwift is still working on the details. Hope this helps and hope you are enjoying Zwift. Ride on!

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Firstly, if you Fanview them, they do keep the same power the whole time (including hills as post above mentions). The partners all have different weights so these also play into dynamics too.

What I think happens on the flats though, and why I stopped using them when they became popular, is that the Drops incentive gets everyone hanging really tight with the Partner and then if someone scoots through the peloton (whether they are part of partner group trying to catch up or someone just riding faster), the draft they create sucks a few people in and before you know, everyone is surging through at a huge rate.

I’ve been in group rides that are quite strict and have the same issues. Others, which I enjoy more, are more relaxed about bunching, and are a lot more “smooth”.

Zwift have some other “dynamics” work that they have are playing around with so hopefully this is all small steps to creating a more realistic experience.

If you are doing the rides for recovery or endurance work and need steady’ish w/kg, I’d suggest you create custom workouts.

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Well, I am a big heavy rider and have the same thing. I was doing 130watts and he could not catch up, when I was behind I was going 380 watts and I could not catch up lol. At one point I was thinking he mimicked a race, trying to get away, reserve energy… try to get away again. I was thinking it was like an even pace ride and I just wanted to add 20 minutes of workout after a training.

Also lost the multiplier 2 x. I found that if I really slow down a lot for him to catch up because he having lunch or something on the bike or stopped to take a leak, they pass by quite fast and then I am in trouble.

There might be a trick to it, but I found it not easy to honest.

hi Dean,

I am doing a 12 week program and sometimes there still some juice left in the tank. Sometimes I do a free ride but I thought I would try this for 20 minutes thinking that perhaps it is also an insight in riding in groups :).

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When they were new they were handy for pre -warmups and post-race spindowns too. Not so much when you want a nice steady/slow pace.

Its probably good practice for racing too - sit around 70% of ftp then someone tries to make a break and everyone’s at full noise!

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