I am still a beginner, although I’ve been Zwifting for over a year I’ve only really started cycling regularly in the last couple of months. I’m just interested in getting fit and losing weight at the moment. I ride for exactly one hour every other day (fasted, before breakfast) and I just try to keep my cadence steady (around 90) and try to increase the distance travelled in an hour on a particular route every day. I’m not a fan of hills. I’m currently using the Tempus Fugit course in Watopia as it’s so nice n flat. So far I’ve only encountered a Pace Partner once, for the second half of my hour long ride. They swept up behind me and I managed to stay with them for the rest of the hour. My results that day were spectacular. I went from doing 33km in a hour on that route to 37km in the hour (and only half of that was chasing the pace partner). My FTP went up from 204 to 216. I assume that you get some sort of drafting effect from being in the group with the pace partner but I know that it definitely helped me to push myself further than I would normally have gone. I’ve since managed 35km in an hour on that same route without the help of the pace partner so I know I can improve without it but it would be a lot more helpful if I could use one every workout.
What I’d like to see is the ability to have a personal pace partner. One I can preset to follow for a set time, on a specific route, at a specific w/kg or maybe ramping up the w/kg from 2-3 over the course of the hour (or whatever time I set for the workout). I think I would find this hugely beneficial, judging by the results of following a pace partner for just half an hour.
I should say that I am on the spectrum and have social anxiety so I’m neither very comfortable nor very adept at the more social aspects of Zwifting. I really don’t need to see or interact with the rest of the community when I’m riding. I try to give thumbs up but always feel guilty if I fail to return a ‘ride on’ in time when I’ve received one. I feel like I’m being seen as being anti-social but in reality I’m concentrating on beating my PB and can’t really concentrate on that and keeping tabs on what everyone else is doing. Therefore I’d like to suggest an option to not see any of the other riders, to just ride alone against my own personal pace partner. Surely not having to render and calculate all the other users would save processing power/boost display performance at our end? (not that I’ve noticed any problems).