I’d really appreciate being able to teleport to a climb portal.
If it’s possible to teleport to other riders who are on the move, I assume it should be possible to teleport to a static point on the map.
I like to ride with a robopacer before taking on a climb, I know that most people like to warm up before the portals and currently the options for this are fairly restrictive. Currently, I have to either end my ride & start a new one or hope that my pacer happens to be close to the portal when I’m ready to turn off. I’ve even attempted teleporting to another pacer in the hope that they are closer to the portal. But it rarely works, and it’s quite easy to get lost riding around trying to get to the portal.
But people wouldn’t get an adequate warm-up. That’s why this doesn’t happen and we aren’t allowed to do that. You are lucky the portals don’t require a 5km long hilly gravel route through the jungle.
Direct teleports to the start of Alpe du Zwift or Ventop get proverbial cold water poured on them (because of the “wArmUp”) reason, so I can’t see this happening either.
I would love to teleport straight to just before the start of any big climbs (or portals) to save time, but I guess we aren’t allowed to do that.
It’s not a “warm up”, it’s a “lead in”.
You should be glad that the lead in to the Alpe isn’t 1/2 of the route distance like the Lava Legs run I did yesterday. Route distance is 2.5 miles, lead in is 1.3 miles, making 3.8 miles total distance.
That’s not really that bad as far as distance goes, but the point is that 1/3 of the total distance run is a lead in.
Mayan Bridge Loop is worse - route badge distance is 3.3 miles, lead in is 3.5 miles…
I think he is saying he’d like to start out with a RP to warm up, but then teleport to the climb portal when he’s ready, as opposed to having to try to coordinate the timing of an RP to put him near the climb portal when he’s ready.
@Torin_Cannings: did I summarize that correctly? Also, from where I’m sitting, I am wondering if the new Watt Lock feature would meet your needs. You’d still have to ride to the start of the portal, and you wouldn’t be with a group, but you’d have complete control over the wattage you’re putting out during your warmup. And, if you head toward the Volcano CP entrance, you’d never be too far from the CP when you’re ready. Even if in France, you’d never be could always go a bit past the CP, if needed, and then do a U-turn to get back
Another use for this would be teleporting straight back to the start of a climb when you have finished, for instance - you want to do 2000m+ or more without interruption.
Yep, this is exactly what I meant. For me, the lead-ins are too short to allow for a proper warm-up, and as explained above, warming up with a pacer can leave you riding a long way back to the portal just to start your effort.
The new Watt Lock can be somewhat helpful. However, warming up with a freeride (with or without Watt Lock) or a workout means you have to think about where to turn around to reach the climb at the end of your warm-up. It’s easy to miss the turn if it happens to coincide with an intense part of the warm-up.
All options make it difficult to warm up efficiently and go straight into your climb effort, which is often what I want to do when I’m short on time. I don’t want to waste time riding from wherever I finish my warm-up back to the portal start.
Currently, the only time-efficient option is to do the warm-up as a separate ride and then start the climb portal as a new activity. However, you still have to ride the lead-in, and your feed ends up cluttered with multiple activities instead of keeping the entire session in one.
It’s a minor thing, but it would make climb portal sessions so much easier to fit into a busy schedule, without having to do mental gymnastics to time your warm-up, avoid wasting time and energy getting to the climb start, or risk cooling down before you even begin the effort.
Yeah, a U-turn is the best current solution, but teleporting would still be much better and should be easy to implement; hence the suggestion. I love the climb portals but find myself just doing workouts instead when I need to be time-efficient because of this issue.
As Chris suggested above, it could also help to gain more elevation without interruption; it could be a game changer for everesting on Zwift, I guess (although I don’t ever want to spend that long sitting on Zwift).
