RoboPacer - Add ERG mode option

Benefits:

  • Can train myself to ride at a W/kg with the RoboPacers swings in output/speed. This could help to both prevent overtraining and help learn what it’s like to ride at x W/kg for an extended time.
  • Allows for a W/kg workout not in custom workouts
  • Allows for a W/kg at in indeterminate amount of time. Say I want to figure out how long I can maintain an average of 3.7 W/kg without being at EXACTLY 3.7 in a custom workout
  • Don’t have to be 100% on point while riding with robo pacer - staying in the fence both forward and backward can be tough

This seems like a lot of complex code to launch into the free ride mode when a custom workout is right there, AND you can just connect and free ride with erg from something else.

Are you essentially saying that you want to do an erg workout AND you want the benefit of the drops or increased speed from the pace partner?

You can get the speed from being on a TT bike while doing a workout/free ride with erg.

I had an idea for a “cruise control” button a few years back, basically the same thing the OP is asking for. Hit the cruise control button and ERG will start at the wattage you are currently holding, similar to how it works in your car except not in relation to speed, but power.

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  1. I want the drops, the speed, and to not have to be on point. Flying off the front or out the back of a RoboPacer is all too common.
  2. Riding a custom workout is often a barren ride, no one is around. Plus to get credit for finishing a workout you have to finish. Sometimes I don’t know if I want to ride for 60 or 90 minutes.
  3. Also, riding in a group at 3.7 W/kg would be tough for me. It would be nice to have that motivation of being in a group and use my trainer to teach my legs/lungs how to do it.

Love this idea, but RoboPacer fluctuates so more like adaptive cruise to keep me in the fence.

It feels like most of what you seek is achieved by just teleporting back to the pacer if you get dropped.

If there is a way to do a basic erg workout and rubber band on a pacer to get all of the upside with none of the downside… I suspect they’d be a lot more cluttered and an eroded experience for others.

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Teleporting back to the pacer resets your drop multiplier to 1x, so someone concerned about trying to do all of these things at once will lose whatever multiplier they are at.

To me this just falls into the category of ‘software can only do so many things and sometimes you have to choose’. But it can’t hurt to ask.

Good point about clutter, maybe build ERG only RoboPacers.

I don’t think you can in workouts - at least I don’t remember seeing it in the companion app.

You can join a robopacer then try to quickly choose a workout (if you can find it). But it’s easy to be dropped.

this is a really good idea!

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TPv stole my idea!

I wonder what else you could make them do?
Free account for level 100 zwifters on TPv?

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