Seems a little harsh to fail to give XP when you fail a workout segment!

i still cycled the km’s !!

thoughts?

Liam

P.S. and while i am on it, shouldn’t there be XP for elevation gained too?

This is a common feature request. See XP for elevation gained.

Failure makes your coach cry. Someone has to pay for that!

Don’t make coach cry.

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I found a solution to this from happening. I don’t fail workout segments. Period. My ears may bleed, my eyes may pop out of my skull, but I will hump hard for every XP. I earned them, I get them. My coach won’t cry for me due to failing. My coach cries from the number of XP’s I earn.

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Counterpoint: if you never fail workout segments, you’re not challenging yourself enough

:grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning:

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Very true. But - more to the point - who cares about XP that much in the first place?? So many posts about it… how to get it? why didn’t I get it? why don’t we get more of it for ________ ?

Seriously. If you miss 30 here or 100 there because you flub a segment or your trainer’s plug came out of the wall? Life goes on. Pedal, do the work, keep riding, and the points will follow! It should really be the last thing anyone cares about imo.

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Sadly, Zwift blocks off certain parts of the course if you don’t have enough XP. Fortunately, I had enough XP before they introduced the Jungle Loop but I’d be damn pissed off if I was paying full price and not able to access all routes.

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I agree with that, although i of course love getting cool new kit and gear as much as anyone else :slight_smile:

You’ll get there!

Someone pointed out that elevation gain counts toward other goals like the concept bike (i.e. Tron bike), so if you got experience for elevation and distance you’d be double-dipping.

The answer for me for workout segments was to always be on erg mode for workouts (if you have a smart trainer). No matter how off your cadence is, you’ll pretty much do the power output you need for the segment so you’re unlikely to fail the segment.

The exception is very short, high-power segments (like 5 second sprints and such) where you could fail to ramp up the power very fast (typically just before the segment starts) and the trainer just can’t compensate fast enough in the power ramp-up and you end up undershooting the power target. For this, you should anticipate the segment and start upping your cadence a second before the sprint segment so you’re already at a higher power output when the sprint starts.

You also can fail segments if you OVER shoot the power target. For short hard efforts, everyone’s power profile is different, and percentage of FTP is not the best way to prescribe training stimulus. So, the workout might call for one minute at 120% FTP, and you may find you can do 130% and still recover in the time allotted (if you’re more the sprinter type).

What I do when this happens is switch erg mode off and use gear shifting to hit the power i want, because hitting the +/- button is too slow and only gets you 10%. But if you do this, you will fail the segments.

Distance counts toward other goals such as every persistent challenge other than Everest/Tron (i.e., California & Italy, 2 of the 3), so if you got eXPerience for distance you’d be double dipping?

And since distance during Fondos, tours and races counts for XP as well as for the event, isn’t that just as much double-dipping?

Those are all fair points, but if you’re climbing, you can blow some minutes by going back downhill for very little effort to get back the distance/XP you didn’t get for the amount of time spent climbing. For example, everyone I know who does Alpe du Zwift makes sure they go back downhill for the XP since it’s little effort to do it (you can literally climb off the trainer and just let it go downhill all the way).

Zwift has recognized the extra effort required for distance while climbing by awarding Drops at an accelerated pace.

Zwifters do not get back the distance/XP they didn’t get for the amount of time spent climbing. Alpe du Zwift is 12.2 km. The amount of effort required to climb those 12.2 km in a given time, say one hour, would get the same rider far beyond double that distance in the same time. The rider who climbs AdZ in 60 minutes would go far beyond 24.4 km in 60 minutes on the flat. So all the downhill with no effort doesn’t make up for the fact that they’d have to turn back time to cover the same distance in the same time as on the flats.