Poor Instruction Around Academy Recovery Ride

Hi, not sure if this is in another post but just completed a ‘Finish Line Ride’ before doing the 2nd recovery ride, as its not available, and it is not counting in the Companion App is this going to appear after the 2nd Recovery ride or did a lot of riders just complete a second ‘Base Line Ride’?

Update - it just decided to credit me with a ‘Finish Line Ride’ after a few attempts at refreshing the Companion App.

Gerrie i read some other suggestions that you made. I agree, if you follow the instruction less than 65%of ftp. The rides in the workouts adjust to your ftp. If the recovery ride was just another workout it could just have some ramps between 40%-65% of ftp. Like you explain every individual recover at a different rate. Inexperience riders will just follow the group and try and keep up but if the plan adjusted to a %of ftp they would be forced to ride at that pace.

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Looking at the makeup fortnight additions (starting 11 October), it’s heartening to see that the constructive criticism in this thread has been taken on board: Recovery Rides are now listed as 1 or 2 right in the title of the rides, and the former now take place on Tempus Fugit instead of Sand and Sequoias.

There does seem to be an overlap between the older events and the new, so some un-numbered RR2 (Flatland Loop) are also on the schedule:

Nevertheless, people should find it easier to navigate this final phase. :slightly_smiling_face:

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This is good news. Now if they’ll assign a bot or something to give some basic instruction… yeah, I know, one thing at a time. Still one can hope.

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I did my 2nd recovery ride yesterday evening and it had a ride leader. He seemed to be chugging along at around 2 + w/kg. I was quickly dropped from the group doing around 1.2 - 1.5 w/kg. Tons of people were flying past me at 4+ w/kg trying to catch back on the group… seemed like they didn’t know it was a recovery ride :confused:

Also, the messaging radius or however it is scrubbed now is ridiculous, you can’t be part of the conversation unless you are right by the ride leader. It really takes the social aspect of Zwift away…

I did RR2 a couple of days ago. The ride leaders were pros. It was probably a recovery for them to be fair. It wasn’t for the vast majority, that’s for sure.

There were a lot of little groups off the back…I was in one of them.

I did the Recovery Ride today (Oct 9th @ 8am). No guidance at all. No Pros. No leading banner to stay behind. Nothing. Not at all like the Recovery #1. It was a free for all today. People bolted out of the gate and full-on raced. I held back at 126th spot and stayed with a specific group. We all took turns leading/drafting. Some of us sprinted but rejoined our small group.

I mean… WTH today?

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I joined this forum just to vent about my experience doing the 2nd “”““recovery””“”" ride the other day.

There was a ride leader, who started off at 2.4W/kg and didn’t get down to the 1.5W/kg level I was expecting until near the end. At first I tried to catch up and worked much harder than I should have, but the gap became bigger and bigger so I just gave up and rode it at the suggested pace of ~65% FTP.

When I finally finished the prescribed 45 mins, the ride leader had logged off maybe 10 minutes earlier. There was a long tail of people who were riding completely alone, both in front of and behind me.

I can’t help but wonder, what’s the point of making us find time in our schedules to join these group rides when the ride leaders themselves don’t seem to understand the requirements, and we all end up riding by ourselves anyway?

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Hi @adamant

Welcome to the forum.

I am sorry you had a bad recovery ride. I think recovery rides should not have ride leaders.
The reason I say this is for some people 2.4w/kg is recovery especially the leaders that ride a lot.

It would be better if they just had a ride with no ride leader and everyone settle into their own pace.

Yes, some guidance would have been fantastic. I’m in the opposite situation as most of the others here. I did my first recovery ride on October 5; then the second a few days later. Came here to check on why I didn’t get credit but now I know I’m locked out from completing the Academy since I didn’t do the first before October 3. Bummer.

Apparently ZHQ has listened to some of the comments and suggestions with how the Zwift Academy was run. Hopefully they’ll change the recovery rides to have more instruction and less of a free for all. I believe it would’ve been better if they’d set up the recovery rides as a group workout with limitations on individual power output so it doesn’t turn into a race. This way newer riders can learn the how and why of recovery. As it is right now, nobody learns a thing just checks off the box for the diploma.

I checked another thread and the events calendar; they’ve now updated the recovery ride titles for this make-up week to indicate “Recovery Ride 1” and “Recovery Ride 2”.

i think it’s a 3 minute gap radius for ingame chat, i don’t think it’s changed in the 2 1/2 years i’ve used zwift

It’s also pointed out in this thread, seven posts before yours :wink:: Poor Instruction Around Academy Recovery Ride - #66 by Roule_Thoune

They “fixed” it a few months ago. In group events you used to be able to see everyone’s messages regardless how far away they were, now it is limited, maybe to the 3 minute gap radius as you say?

This was the last official word from Zwift on how chat was changed in July…

As you can see they actually don’t define parameters by a specific number of nearest riders or a time radius, so it’s difficult to say how it’s supposed to work other than that it’s been purposefully throttled.

Edit: They say it’s limited to those you can see but it’s unclear of whether it’s those you can see on mini map or main screen. In any case, it doesn’t actually seem to work that way as I can often see chat from those I can’t see in mini map, on screen or on the riders nearby list. Overall it’s just inconsistent and hard to know what anyone’s talking about.

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I have now done 5 recovery rides and it says I have still only done 3/4 group rides. This is so STUPID! This morning I did something called “Recovery Ride 2” but that has changed nothing. Also now I am seeing options for “Recovery Ride”, “Recovery Ride 1” & “Recovery Ride 2”!!! No idea which one I have missed and if I keep doing recovery rides I will never get fitter…haha

The 4 group rides consist of:
1x Baseline ride
1x Recovery 1 ride
1x Recovery 2 ride
1x Finishing line ride

Whilst you can complete each of those events multiple times, you’ll need to complete at least one of each event to complete all the required groups rides. If you visit the ZA Road page and log on, the dashboard should show which event you’ll need to do in order to complete all the group rides.

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So does this mean I just have the finish line ride left?