I’m doing the ‘Sprint Test’ workout from the Zwift Camp: Baseline.
In between the sprint efforts, the gear gets reset to 8. There’s no way to change that. I could disable ERG for the complete workout after the warmup, but I shoudn’t be thinking on doing that.
Gear 8 is way too low for me to start from. Please add a setting to set the default gear.
Yeah it’s broken. I mean it would be broken whatever gear they defaulted to but 8 is particularly broken. Not as broken as 1 to 7 I suppose.
It used to be 12 which was the middle of the 24 gear range, there’s some kind of logic there - and the change to 8 was claimed because it would make it easier to start moving.
But in all the scenarios where you’re already moving when it defaults to 8 no one wants gear 8.
Like, your workout example, and, e.g if you join a robopacer ride - the D racers need gear 10 or 11, perhaps 9 if you spin really quickly. So in all these situations we’re all having to start pressing the gears immediately to get a sane higher gear. In your case, for a short sprint it’s ridiculous.
Now what about the person who is starting a ride from the side of the road not moving and they want an easier gear than 12? Well that’s the scenario where making a couple of gear changes is less of thing - there’s no time constraint.
So it made no sense at all to change the default to 8. Even without adding a feature to (a) Give people a choice over which gear to start with and/or (b) Not changing to a silly low gear in the middle of a workout every time erg mode switches off.
Developers of zwift - please buy a book or watch a youtube video about storing settings - I don’t want to have to choose ‘first person’ every ride. I don’t want to have to click ‘Ok’ on the pointless message that tells me I need to pair a device. And I don’t want to be in gear 8. If in doubt, the last setting I picked, the one I have to keep choosing over and over again because you skipped the ‘how to write settings to a file’ lecture - that’s the one I want to be in.
In one of the last updates the default gear was changed from 12 to 8. I also would like to see it back to 12 or higher again.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. We’re looking at ways to improve this.
Probably the best fix would be to add a setting for virtual shifting in the ‘settings’ menu allowing the user to input a personal default gear. Unmodified can be 8 to cater to the audience the update-shift from 12 to 8 was targeting, but that would allow users who prefer to start in a higher gear to do so.
I think the first thing is that the ‘default behavior’ should be like a real bike. Whatever gear you left the bike in during your last ride, should be where it starts the next ride. That simple. Before you hop off the bike and ‘end ride’, put the bike’s gear in what you prefer.
Barring that, and at the very least, during a single event (such as the Baseline Sprint test), the gear you’re in, should NEVER reset. When the workout hits a freeride portion, it should remain in the virtual ‘gear’ it was in, and revert back to that same gear when the workout goes back to Erg mode.
Please can this be a priority. While gear 8 is OK at the start of a ride, it really messes up any workouts with short free ride sections. The obvious solutions are a setting to specify the default virtual gear or simply to retain the last gear used (from ride to ride) without having a specific setting. The problem with the latter might be that for workouts with short sprint sections you may find yourself in a really big gear at the start of the next free ride section. For this reason, I think a setting for default virtual gear is probably better and more flexible.
I think on the Zwift Ride anyway, how many people have their preferences set for shifting to emulate a 2x12 bike, vs just having the controls set for gears 1-24 sequentially (the “Mixed Terrain” option shown below)? That would definitely be a big issue and lots of shifts needed. Eg. to go from gear 8 to 20 would mean 12 button presses?
It occurs to me, the best option for a workout-type that’s being discussed, with free-ride portions, would be the 53/39 virtual setup chainring. One shift on the Left paddle will get you get you a better jump in effort. For comparison, I think this would reduce the shifts need to get from effectively the 8th gear to the 20th to only about 5 button presses (one for the virtual front chainring, and 4 for the rear virtual cassette).
Actually, the “Climbing” mode gearing setup would get you a ginormous jump (perhaps too much)… maybe that’s also worth trying?
This is absolutely necessary. Even at a moderate pace, pedalling again after ERG is being disabled automatically causes you to spin almost freely. You then realise it’s because the default gear was set to 8 and move it higher until ERG engages again. I thought that having the default as 12 made sense and would fit most, as that’s the middle of the range. I’d be happy to see it back at 12 or to make this configurable in settings.
I think the best solution is to enable virtual gear shifting during workout “freeride” segments. As currently using the zwift click to change gears just changes the bias for the whole workout (and doesnt change the resistance of the freeride at all).
Apparently I’m not the only one who has no resistance at all in free rides. Coasting for ever
