Robo Pacer Draft Question

RoboPacers
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i remember that one time when zwift tested this… i remember it clearly because i’ve never seen so many complaints from riders ever before. huge groups of people were dropping pace partners stubbornly holding their pace and within minutes it all became a terrible mess.

and don’t get me wrong, i struggle with this a lot as i ride mostly with constance and i’m on my threshold keeping up with her pace… so when this happens and a stronger rider pulls the bot, it gives me a really hard time…

but to be fair i think it’s really an issue only for smaller groups. for large ones it would be very unnatural if the bot could not draft the rest of the riders and keep up with their speed. so what i ended up doing is this - if i’m in a small group where someone is pulling the front and i’m struggling i try to ask them to take it easy and be kind to the weaker riders in the group. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t :person_shrugging:t2:

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The issue is take myself for example if I want to ride Z2 generally Genie would be the best suited Robo for this workout. If however riders go in front of Genie then I’ll end up in Z3 for longer periods which I generally don’t want to do and it kind of makes a mockery of the term Pace now Robo partner if their speed is influenced by other riders.

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I remember this well too, I was riding on Zwift at the time. I remember the Coco bot (the old, lighter one) was doing 2.5w/kg and people in that group were all crawling at 1.9w/kg and easily riding away.

Most of the faster coco riders of the time decided to go ride with Bowie instead.

As Marek mentioned, this was a disaster when it happened - there were so many cries of “why is Coco so slow” etc.

The robo pacer groups are okay if you don’t get groups of people pushing the pace off the front. If everyone is well behaved and rides at the same pace as the robot, everything is fine.

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Problem being, it feels a smoother rider out front - I dont know if that is due to rider behaviour or an oddity but it is the way it feels regardless.

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You’ll never hone your PD4 skills by riding out front :wink: :smile:

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Yeah I thought the idea of a pace partner was to let them set the pace ie ride behind them, not in front, maybe they should have a fence like in normal group rides so if anyone gets ahead, they get zapped

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The only way an individual within a large group ride can be assured a constant pace, would be if both the RP, as well as every other rider was no draft (eg on TT bikes).

Otherwise, even if only the RP has no draft, you still will, and as you go in/out of the draft, as do others (off the front, toward the back, pushed to the sides, etc) the pacing effort will change for each individual throughout the ride. Hence why there are whole other threads about Zwift’s ‘group dynamics’. ‘Dynamics’ is the key word here – you can make the RP “UnDynamic”, but that doesn’t by itself make everyone else so.

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What if you aren’t riding with them and have to overtake the group? You’d get zapped too! :wink:

People just have to remember that others might be in the group and struggling. And moderate pace accordingly. If the want a challenge, then there is always a faster robot or they can join me on ADZ, usually around 5:00pm AEST starting road to sky and usually 3.8-4.0w/kg average pace.

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I never understand how this is possible. If you are riding behind the RP then you would only need to increase your power when climbing. On a flat road the RP power stay the same if there are 1 or 100 riders in front of the RP. The speed change but not the power.

It will be harder if you fall out of the draft that is tue.

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Come and join the very fast robopacers for 150-200km (or 300km in 7 hours) then you will soon see all sorts of interesting things occurring that are not part of the normal script.

Some of these days I wish I’d taken videos of this behaviour.

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No Gerrie that ain’t the case as if the group is travelling faster on the flats due to the Bot being pulled along my w/kg in the draft will rise above my Z2 it’s not fiction it’s fact.

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But the Bot w/kg does not change in a big group?

If they have constant power then sure, but not if I have to race up every climb. I would rather do my Z2 long rides in erg watching GCN+

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Everyone wanted the dynamic bots, now we have them so you have to learn to love them. I don’t particularly like the 5.0w/kg surges to stay with Constance uphill but that’s how it is so I have to live with it.

They are not on very hilly routes anyway. Spending longer amounts of time you notice the effect of the guy doing constant 6.5w/kg pushes on the front on the group and the bot. The bot gets the draft and moves quicker then everyone else scrambles to catch up.

Using erg with the bots is one of the things I have seen people doing that also accelerates the pace. They don’t respond naturally to hills, no shifting for instance - they have a constant power while others have fluctuating power as they change gears.

But in certain places with Genie or Constance the group can also drop these ERG riders. I’ve seen that done, it almost look coordinated.

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Im not every one if I want to do Z2 then my graph need to be blue for 2 hours not blue with spikes of red. :roll_eyes: . but this is another thread.

One guy can only create so much draft and if he is to fast he will just go off the front. So there is is limit in how fast any bot will go because the front will just break off because the Bot is maintaining the set power number.

the only time ERG will work with the bot is if you are 75kg and the road is perfectly flat.The RP’s will drop ERG riders on every climb because the bot accelerate on the climb and the ERG users don’t

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4 posts were merged into an existing topic: Feature Request: Bring back static pace bots please

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This is my dream. We need more in between RP’s.

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I did two 50km pace partner rides yesterday and today with Coco. Yesterday was on Three Little Sisters, c600m elevation and my average power was 150w. Today I did the same distance on Tick Tock, 150m elevation, and average power was 168w. (I didn’t make any profile changes, weight, height etc).
I stayed with the PP throughout except that yesterday felt much easier and I was straying ahead of the banding quite frequently. I needed much more power to keep up today.
Clearly totally different elevation profile, and today was more crowded. So what is the main driver for the power difference today? Is it more riders on a flatter route? Would that create a higher average power requirement for each rider to stay with the same PP?

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That or how much of an effect drafting has.

Anyone here happen to know what the height of the pace partners? We know they’re 75kg, so you can base watts off of that, but curious about their air resistance too.

Od, out of curiosity are you a lighter person? At those watts I assume you’re around my weight or even a touch lighter.
And yes, I’m willing to agree, the flatter routes are a little more tough now, requiring higher watts to keep up on the flatter routes. Where the climbs are “easier” or perhaps better put “more stable”.

On the climbs you have to be more concerned with w/kg than the flats, where for lighter, or heavier people, you end up inverse; where the flats may be ‘too easy’ for a heavy person, and the climbs are killer.

I’ve said it a few times around here, but I’ve mostly stopped doing longer rides with the PP’s mostly due to the inconsistency, and I guess that’s fine depending what your goal is for the day.

I think most of us just aren’t used to the robo’s inconsistencies of years past / doing it for so long. Too accustomed to what it used to be. Things may normalize after a while, I think it’s just shock to the system.

I would be curious to know how things would feel if the robos no longer climbed harder and coasted; but went back to the steady efforts.
I’m curious if that would fix this surging, that… perhaps if it did exist in PD3, didn’t seem to be a “problem,” but now exists in PD4 / is more obvious.

If that could be a test; a pace partner that holds steady w/kg again, could be tested, if that “feels right” again.

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Pace partners are 175cm

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Yes I’m lighter, so on the climbs it was relatively straightforward to stay with the PP. However coming down Volcano was next to impossible not to drift forward and I lost the PP behind me.

But that’s not the part I’m struggling to understand. Given my weight was unchanged between the 2 rides, it seemed to to require significantly more w/kg on the flat compared to the climb with the same PP. I can only think a larger crowd on the flat route was giving the PP more draft to go faster. But if the PP’s stick to the advertised power (adjusted for incline only), surely someone riding in the same draft wouldn’t need more power to keep up with them than if they had a lesser draft from fewer people?