I don’t pedal on the escalator and it brings me up. Cheers
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Chalk up one more with this experience. Doesn’t matter if I go all out with a feather, I still lose ground to any group I started the climb with. I’ve gotten to the point where I usually just take a break and let it carry me up, then work after catch back up (if I can).
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Yeah, my concern is what happens when I have to race on these like in ZRL. TTT? If I don’t know how to keep up with my teammates, that’s going to be a mess.
I sure hope it’s not “just give everybody 200W” because that benefits little people so much more than me, but I can’t figure out how/why everybody is passing me.
I agree that the “feather” power up does not have a noticable affect.
Considering the grade is 19%, the speed at which I fly up makes me think I will just ignore it.
No power up required.
I think the steep grade and the escalator is trickery.
I’m on a dumb setup (TD = 0) so it doesn’t get harder but unlike other hills, my speed doesn’t really drop. Usually, to maintain position, I have to up shift and get on the pedals for a big hill.
That maybe the effect.
I’m 75 kg and I just sat in and pedaled and stayed with the group.
Non race, zone 2 ride and I was only putting out 140 W.
Weird.
That’s the best way I have found. Then I just maintain a moderate power and the escalator drags me up the hill without too much issue. The feather power up doesn’t make any difference so far as I’ve seen.
I would agree. So far as I can tell you get a constant boost based on your speed at the bottom. Any additional speed from power or a feather appears to be based on the 19% gradient so is minimal. From this the best plan looks to be sprint before the bottom, rest on the way up and then get up to speed again before the top for the small bit of 19% after the boost has finished.
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From my experience so far this seems to be the way. Might as well have a small rest on the escalator and then hit it again at the top.
Eric’s observations inthis article, seem to back up the idea that the escalators are just adding X W to all riders (or removing Y kg).
That is going to make racing (and TTTs) absolutely suck on the new NYC courses for heavier riders. If it weren’t for the fact that 2 of the final 3 ZRL races this season are on the new NYC courses, I would refuse to race on any of them until this gets changed.
It provides an absolutely massive advantage to lighter riders. Massive to the point of being unreasonable. Slows a 50 kg rider down 3.6 kph while a 100 kg rider gets slowed down 16 kph? Who thought that was a good idea?
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Any chance that this is going to be changed so that the advantage is based on a percentage of someone’s weight (or is moved to a W/kg boost) so that light people don’t have such an unfair advantage? Leaving things as they are now to provide such an extreme benefit to lighter riders really screws up races.
You forgot to include this part of Eric’s article:
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Too bad it won’t be changed in time for any of the ZRL races. If they can’t do that, they should just turn them off.
Was asking here in hopes of getting a specific time frame as Eric says it won’t happen before the ZRL races.
Seems a bit of a bummer they have to put more dev iteration into the escalator rather than something else that would improve the experience overall: Putting in a less steep ramp rather than a new game mechanic to help people up a 19% ramp which has to be tweaked and re-tested would have taken less of their resourcing.
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or just remove the escalator and having it like london
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You forgot to include this part of Eric’s article:
Zwift has a real problem with not thinking features through before they implement them. In addition to this issue in the past year we had the bike-upgrade fiasco, where they never thought that people would game the system to upgrade quickly without any real effort. Then there was the Dev that was so proud of the Canyon color schemes that they had all the RoboPacers broadcasting “My Canyon” all the time. They add new features that have nothing to do with how Zwift works, while ignoring feature requests (I wonder how many dev cycles went into getting the Tron rider stance correct, versus how many it would take to have the Tron rider show “draft” like other riders), or the “so and so is riding in ….” banner feed that makes people want to unfriend folks, but hey, we got a pocket squirrel.
And don’t even think about implementing simple anti-cheat methods (massive weight gain/loss, tiny riders, etc)
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With so many 19% ramps (6 on Watt’s the Limit next week in ZRL), that would be very challenging to race. Doable, but definitely change how the race goes.
These escalators shouldn’t be in races. And really shouldn’t have been built in the first place to be honest. Excess complexity and ends up in controversy which then takes more time to rework.
Everyone just pushes up the 19% however they can as happens on London world on the slightly less steep parts, or on climb portals where there are some very steep (25%) sections on some of them.
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Takes several seconds to get up there, not as if it’s a sustained effort though
or….add them to London.
Add two, one for going fast (a left side lane in red) and one for going up slow ( a right side lane in blue) , then add steering.
As has been said, like a real escalator or moving walkway, it should just add the same speed to everyone’s own w/kg produced speed.
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