First up - I said last week that we were going to be dropping Brevet down to 3.0 (from 3.3) and Daniela down to 2.0 (from 2.15). Quite a few of you said that that would mean a really big gap from Brevet to Anquetil, which I agree with.
Luckily, Eddy has been bragging to his friends about how he’s been doing all his 1.0 base work for the last few weeks and that he reckons he can hold 3.0, so he’s going on holiday to Watopia to show his friends what he can do. Daniela is pretty pleased to have a bit of a break, so she’s looking forward to giving her legs a bit of a rest and dropping down to 2.0.
I also mentioned that we were looking to implement some step changes for the dynamic pacing. I’m holding off on this for now, partly because when one of them hit a hill, the change in pace isn’t instantaneous, but takes about 3-5 seconds, so I don’t think implementing a step change will help that much.
Here’s our routes for next week:
Anquetil (4.2) - Out and Back Again
Brevet (3.3) - Volcano Climb
Eddy (3.0) - Triple Flat Loops
Coco (2.5) - Flat Route
Daniela (2.0) - Two Bridges Loop
Diego (1.8) - Volcano Circuit
Diesel (1.5) - Volcano Circuit CCW
Dorothy (1.15) - Waistband
Bernadette (3.8) - Neokyo All-Nighter
Charlie (3.0) - Three Village Loop
Denise (2.0) - Wandering Flats
To touch on a couple (may be more than a couple) other things over the last week.
We believe that we have fixed the issue that those on tvOS, iOS and Android were experiencing when trying (and failing miserably) to join a Pace Partner. I’ve seen a couple of people flying aimlessly in the sky, but it seems to be resolved for everyone else.
Stealth Mode on the Epic KOM bridge should be fixed in our next release which we’re aiming for middle of next week.
I asked and the Community answered! A bunch of Running Pacers will be appearing on the 5k loop next week. I haven’t decided on all their names yet, but there will be 5 different paces ranging from 4:00/km to 8 minute/km. Your feedback is really important here, because I don’t run unless being chased by a bear (it has to be really annoyed and running at me with its mouth open) and I’m really keen to understand if this makes your overall experience better. Additionally if additional paces are needed and if the route feels a bit busier.
Keep your eyes open for Futureworks Events. I can neither confirm nor deny that there may be a Pace Partner (or Pacer Bot, whatever) led climb up the Alpe which may or may not do the KOM in a smidge under 60 minutes.
I didn’t notice a gradient change going down the hill to the Italian Villas today, though I had noticed it both times I rode in the opposite direction last week — but there was a visual “bump.” (Kickr core & ATV).
Looking forward to the sub-60 Alpe bot ride! Also glad to see Brevet on a route with some elevation and not dropping to 3.0. I rode with him for an hour on Triple Flat Loops yesterday. It was fun, but I enjoy (“enjoy”) it when he’s on a route with punchy climbs like Titan’s or even Volcano CCW. Makes it a nice (“nice”) C+/B-/Cat 5 race simulation instead of a steady tempo effort.
So I did two 40-ish minute PP rides today. One with Charlie Chaser, and one with Brevet.
Charlie Chaser felt exactly like C Cadence for me for some reason, when I went back and checked my average power over my 40 mins with him it was 180W which is pretty much the same as my average for the last hour I spent with Cadence - For an hour with Cadence I tend to average somewhere between 170->180W (happy to share those screenshots if needed)… Is there a chance Charlie isn’t pushing 3.0w/kg?
Then I went to Brevet for 40 mins-ish, My average wattage was 208W (vs. 225 last time I rode with Brevet), which is actually a pretty good spot to be in, except when he was going uphill I had to push more watts than I wanted to, the hills were short, so it wasn’t a problem, but if there was a longer climb it would no longer be a good Z2 workout for me. Personally for my purposes I prefer less dynamic pacing as I’ve mentioned before.
Also, at the point I was trying to choose a pace partner it was super confusing to try and figure out which pace partner to choose. Anquetil was showing “B” and 3.4w/kg, while Brevet was showing 3.6w/kg (can post screenshot if needed), so if I didn’t know any better I would probably have chosen Anquetil. It was impossible to know if Charlie Chaser was supposed to be on average faster or slower than Brevet because of the shifting w/kg numbers in the menus - basically just depends on if you go to the menu when one of them is going up or down a hill - I had to go back to this post to figure out what the setpoints were before jumping in. I know this is a known issue, but it’s very confusing, so hopefully that gets fixed soon.
The fact that the join screen for the PP shows the actual wattage at the moment vs the “inteded” or average wattage for the bot makes it confusing unless you happen to have memorized what they should all be…which was easier when they were static but not so easy when they are dynamic and there are…what 12 different bots now?
Aaron I’m with you I don’t like the dynamic pacing for the 3.0+ PPs. I think this sort of forces you do do an interval workout on the climbs to keep up because the delta between the power required to ride in the draft on the flats and the power required to maintaing a speed similar to the PP on the climb gets bigger the as the power increases. [Edit: this was already true before dynamic pacing, but the higher power on the climb really exacerbates it to the point where you are forced to go from Z2 to Z4 every time there’s a hill of any reasonable length.]
With static paces, it was always an option to ride ahead of the PP on a climb if you wanted a workout and wait a bit over the top for it to catch up…with dynamic pacing, that’s less of a choice. Again, I think this is especially severe for the faster bots but dynamic pacing makes some sense with the slower ones.
Andrew Alpinist is wild. Cool, experimental feature. He was on 2.0 when I joined him - thought that was weird for an ‘A’ partner. Total acid trip riding with him. 2.0 on the flats up to 4.0 on the hills, Changing from yellow to blue to green to red and back. Great interval workout on that hilly route.
