I only do road courses. Can’t Zwift make a toggle to switch all courses to paved
I suspect that would be massively difficult to program. It’s a shared world, and everyone else would still be on the other surfaces.
Is there a significant problem with the other surfaces existing? Your speed slows a bit if you’re on a road bike, sure. But is there any real problem with that?
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For what it’s worth, there are tools that can help you identify what surfaces are used for any route. ZwiftMap.com is a favourite. Details of the Castle to Castle Route.
Just below the route profile you’ll see the list of surfaces with how much of it you’ll encounter.
Yes, for me it is a HUGE flaw. If I wanted to go a bit slower I would get a tricycle. I’m 57 years old and doing everything I can do NOT to go a “bit slower”
Also Reaching my mileage goal is important to me and motivates me. So yeah, honestly, when im going 35 miles which is common) going 3 mph slower adds quite a bit of time and distorts my routine. So Either I go less distance than my goal or I go longer or harder than I should for a given day to reach my mileage goal . Either of those skews my numbers. If I tracked time and watts maybe I wouldn’t care but no motivation for me to say “my goal is to ride 400 hours this year.” Don’t even know an app that tracks that and if there is one I wouldn’t use it anyway.
In the real world I NEVER ride dirt or gravel. Literally would quit riding if couldn’t ride on the road. everyone I know rides on the road.
Plus since there is no quick way to see WITH IN THE APP what the course is I end up riding only a handful of courses which I know are not too bad. But honestly even some of the ones I ride routinely are frustrating in that I end up on dirt for stretches.
If it’s a programming issue then they need to have a filter that categorizas by giving preference to a type of course AND a quick description. For example set the filter for paved preference and so what comes up first is 100% paved options then 95% paved options etc and description could say; 100% paved; 90%pavrd 10%dirt, etc)
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Distance goal on a indoor trainer is not that great of a goal.
There’s not that much gravel in Zwift that it would make that much of a difference. If you are just interested in distance then riding with big groups on tempus fugit is the way to go.
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I find on Zwift a road bike on the dirt is pretty close to my real world speed. Paved roads in Zwift make my average speeds look great since they’re noticeably faster than real world riding.
I would agree that adding the percentage of dirt/gravel in the course description would be beneficial.
Basing your rides on pavement in a virtual (FAKE) world is incomprehensible.
Is switching to a gravel bike or MTB in Zwift–not in the real world–for the unpaved sections against some sort of code?
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but this whole ‘I’m a ROAD cyclist’ identity you’ve put on yourself is just confusing when applied to Zwift. Your effort is going to be the same on the trainer, even if you’re going 2mph slower for the gravel sections. It’s really hard to see how that would mess up your training. If the road was just a bit steeper and paved for those sections, your speed would drop too.
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I agree! It’s difficult to tell if I am improving when the speed slows on gravel. I only ride paved roads and this has been frustrating to me.