Is it considered “ok” to pull a robopacer? Like to sit infront of the robopacer and provide draft to the bot.
I was infront of a bot the other day and someone in chat asked me nicely to stop “pulling” the bot. Is this a looked down upon way to ride with the bot? Are we supposed to stay in the draft?
What are your thoughts?
Ride your ride. Pull away!
People like riding in groups that are faster than they can really ride
They appreciate the draft but want the group to slow down.
They could always ride a slower robo Pacer but they don’t want to change .
Why not ride a faster robopacer instead of pulling a slower one?
Specifically I was doing 5-8 minute pulls and riding for 1+ hour. I don’t mean pulling nonstop at a constant pace.
But yea, riding with a stronger group would be an option but I enjoyed the sitting-in pace for this particular bot as well.
Not really okay. You can do your 8 minute efforts solo elsewhere then use teleport to come back to a robopacer. That won’t impact your efforts. Your fellow robopacer riders will also thank you.
Think of the people at the back who might be struggling not to get dropped, especially when they are pushed out of the draft these days and then stuck behind a slower rider. They are riding at regular speed until someone comes along and pushes everything faster.
I’ve seen people trying this “towing” the robopacer with Constance group get told by the fast regulars to stop.
Their argument: it’s a group ride so ride at the pace of the group, if you want to go faster then ride alone where it doesn’t mess up the group pace. That’s what everyone else does.
Teleport is your (and - in this case - everyone else’s friend) 
The higher up the RoboPacer ladder you go, the more likely it is that people are going to prefer to have the RP on the front. So, it’s going to be much better if you can find two or more different RPs, one where you’re in the draft at your sitting-in pace, one or more others where you can do your effort pace while still drafting the RP.
I had never considered that a robo-pacer could get a draft benefit from a rider ahead.
Why would this feature be designed that way? Seems strange.
It’s a normal rider that gets draft like everyone else. Just that it rides with fixed power levels depending on gradient. Constance 315w/4.2wkg and 345w/4.6wkg for instance.
Join a fast robopacer group and you can see it will get a draft from you in the 5-10m gap region. Some people intentionally use that to speed up the bot and enjoy watching people at the back get dropped away from the group.
I’m on the ‘no’ side here too, but I also don’t see it as some sort of massive criminal offense (the ‘nice’ request you got seems fitting). It’s one thing to end up randomly in front of the bot from time to time, but sustained purposeful pulls have the effect of changing the bot’s intended speed-slash-w/kg-slash-pacing. So someone showing up and needing that pace, and not a faster pace, is in trouble.
It’s tough because there aren’t all that many bots, so there can be big jumps, and you might not always find a bot that’s exactly where you want it to be that day. But purposefully pulling it faster can hinder other people’s workouts.
Thanks. That explains a lot of what I thought was weird and inconsistent behavior during robo-pacer rides.
Seems like a weird design choice, if the purpose is to ride using a referenced power level. No wonder people may get miffed if someone is messing with their planned pace effort by speeding up the pacer.
Having a speed limit for the bots (a maximum speed they won’t exceed) would solve a lot of this excessive pace (eg, Constance hitting 50km/h on Tempus Fugit).
The robopacer would just hit say 45km/h and then puts a comment about holding steady pace.
That will prevent the huge surges in top speed that people are getting annoyed about.
The worst case is Constance overtaking a steady stream of slower riders and being towed faster by a few people on the front. It often ends up with the entire rest of the group behind by 2-3seconds if they are not careful.
This whole discussions seems a bit weird. Just a random screengrab from fanview of a RP. Over 100 riders, so visually it looks like you’d have to tell off about 50 of them that they’re doing it all wrong.
Yeah, but it’s just really not the same with the higher wattage RPs.
Yeah I’m not sure this is even relevant. I’ve sat out front before, with others, and no one has said anything. I don’t see that this is even an issue.
With which Robopacer group do you ride? It looks like you were recently with Bernie Group on Triple Flat loop.
Where you see people getting asked to stop towing the RP is the Constance group. That’s the one detail the person who started the topic didn’t give, but I suspect it is the Constance group, I’ve not seen this being asked with lower speed robopacers.
It might not be as much of an issue for slower groups that don’t have the massive surges of speed (ie, not going up to 50km/h), but the faster ones yes.
I don’t think people should tell other people how to ride with a robo pacer.
My opinion is Zwift should put the pacers on TT bikes or the equivalent so it doesn’t matter if folks ride ahead or behind the pacers. But as it is people can choose to go ahead or behind the pacer if they want.
When someone sits on steady 5.0w/kg deliberately towing the robopacer along faster, for sure the regulars who are keeping to the advertised pace have a right to nicely ask the person on the front to stop doing that.
The folks asking that are not being mean or nasty. I note when they want to go faster, they split from the group and ride a different way so they don’t influence the robopacer speed.
I disagree. Why do you think you can tell someone how to ride while in Zwift?
Why don’t you ask the others who’ve had the same opinion as me above?
I’ve said as much as I’m going to say.
I’m asking anyone who thinks they can tell someone how to ride why they think that’s ok. The pacers have a behavior and different people have different goals when they ride. Maybe they want to go harder for a bit and then relax a bit.
Again, I don’t like the way the pacers are implemented but I don’t think “regulars” have a “right” to dictate how someone rides with a pacer
