I was on the Big Spin Stage 1 ride this morning and I have a few requests/suggestions because of what I experienced. (1) Only allow riders to join late up to 10 minutes into the ride (5 even better). Today, many riders kept joining and then latching onto my wheel after 8 km+ and I noticed most of them had <1 km on their ride. This dragged me down (and I’m 62 and overweight so I use Zwift to get in shape and don’t need the excess drag).
(2) If riders join late, put them at the back of the ride or don’t let them drag off another rider (or both).
(3) Don’t allow riders to engage coffee break unless they’ve rode 30 minutes or more.
1 - A rider drafting behind you doesn’t “drag you down” in any way
2 - Most group ride leaders want late-joiners dumped at the “center of mass” of the ride, not at the back.
3 - It’s 35min for a coffee break now, isn’t it?
It’s still 30 minutes, but can be obtained earlier if you do a warmup ride and join an event using the on-screen join button while you’re in the warmup ride. I have no idea whether that’s a bug or not. Seems like a bug to me but it’s been that way for ages, and I don’t care if they fix it. Every forum post asking to punish people for how they do group rides is frankly tiresome. If people drop from the sky to join me in a group ride, or take a rest so they can stay with my little group, I’m happy about it.
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A rider getting dropped in front of you, but not producing the power to stay there, can let a gap open in front of them and you can get stuck behind. Not the situation OP described but it does happen. With late joining riders seemingly getting dropped at the front of the big event rides it’s more likely to be an issue.
And riders late joining can get a 30s coffee stop immediately.