Recently a couple of races have been disrupted by people not part of the event inadvertently getting in the way/helping.
The first time I was with a breakaway group doing about 4w/kg, we came round a corner as we caught a rider just riding along minding his own business at 3w/kgish …the others in the group sailed past but I got ‘stuck’ in his draft and had to put out a good 10 seconds of 6w/kg to break free. By this time the other 3 guys had opened up a 15 meter gap, and that was all she wrote for me staying with them that day!
The next ride the category I was racing in had been split apart early on, leaving riders all over the course. A guy on a TT bike who was doing a workout (seemed to be long steady riding at 3.2) was randomly riding the same course, and of course everyone he overtook jumped in his draft and got an easier ride onto the wheel of the next guy in the race! This ended up with a group of about 20 people who would not necessarily have ever caught each other again being given a tow back into contention for top 10 places.
In short, riders not in the event module should not be taken into account for the physics of the event. Keep them on the course, but make them not hold up/give drafts to people racing.
I’d agree with this for races, but for plain old non-race group rides, I think things should stay as they are.
Perhaps the best solution would be to give the event organizer the option of switching this on or off - that way different event organizers will take the approach that suits them and the Zwift ecosystem gets even more interesting and rich…
Perhaps it should be a setting the event organizer can turn on or off.
I think races should be performed without even being able to see the other riders on the island because when you are trying to catch people you can’t always tell if the people in front are part of your ride or not.
You also notice that from time to time you get stuck behind a group of people not involved in your race and it causes a split in the race group whcih is just annoying because it wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t there.
Philip Amos, this is pretty common in most MMO games. Zoned Instances. I am not sure if the Zwift system architecture and technology is setup for this, but putting all people in a race in their own island instance would be a pretty common solution for this problem. Link for those unfamiliar with this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instance_dungeon
I totally agree, but from a totally different angle: i don’t want to ride totally unrealistic speeds because of large groups passing me by!