Zwift really needs the option to be able to ride & run on a track. Early beta Zwifters have been screaming for a Velodrome for a long time already. Now with Zwift running starting to pick up an important future feature has to be the inclusion of a standard 400m running track for runners. Group the Velodrome and/or Track running with a few pacer bots to challenge goals and you have a really awesome why of during speed workouts indoors.
*way of doing
Think Zwift should start thinking more seriously of the requests for Velodrome & now Track courses.
Of course having a few hundred riders/runners at once isn’t feasible so the groups functionality in Zwift would have to be expanded to allow private sessions - another frequently requested function, and organised team/club/group sessions.
Sure the functionality is there for multiple sessions/instances at once where separate sessions don’t see each other.
The previous problem was “How?” Zwift was not set up for small events.
However, now there is a way. The velodrome would not be available to just go and ride. There would be race events and either a small number of riders would be invited or qualified to enter and it would be held as a private event. Event organizers would be responsible for this. It could be hectic to get in. It was suggested as groups of ‘A’ cat , first 10 or so to ‘join event’ or possibly qualifying heats (like Keirin racing).
The reason being, you can’t have 100 or more people on a 250 or 333 track. It may mean some people would not get to ride often. Already some organizers are planning that some future races will have qualifying statistics (such as 25 races or more, member of race team, cat ‘A’, level 25, etc).
Nobody really wants to limit race entries. But some races are simply over-crowded.
Well while I’m sure it can’t be easy to program, a motor racing sim I use they don’t have the problem. If you enter in practice mode then you are on your own unless it’s part of a race weekend in which case you ride with the same group you will be racing with. They make it easy to host a race just set the course, laps number of racer and experience level(s) and then wait until enough people join or the cutoff start time is reached.
System works really well and just like Zwift I’m rubbish and normally end up last :)
My interest in this is about eliminating fake climbing numbers. I have a fluid trainer, so there is no variable resistance like a smart trainer. I would like there to at least be a route with 0 climbing so my Strava numbers don’t get so falsely elevated. It would be even better if Strava simply aloud you to turn off virtual hills, but they don’t seem to want to do that for some reason.
During race only race participants are visible, so velodrome would be crowded too much. During free rides… there would be plenty of riders of course.
If Zwift was able to handle crowd of riders… I don’t see any issues in such solution.