First question - did I see a bear sh*tting in the woods?
No crashes, no ANT+ drop outs. Everything worked fine.
Unfortunately I still see a 2-3 second lag between my effort on the bike and when my virtual rider responds on screen.
As far as AIs and pacing - it seemed the first 30-45 minutes I hardly saw any AIs. None passed me, although I passed a few. The longer I rode, the more I saw it seemed.
Towards the end of the ride I jumped on with an AI with the goal of trying to draft an entire lap behind him. I started coming dpwn the backside of the hill and stayed on his wheel through the orange and green jersey sprints. I had to slow greatly to allow him to keep up with me on the hill. After the first crest he took off and dropped me but I caught him on the hill again. I paced him up the hill and then anticipating another acceleration from him on the downhill, I tried to get the jump on him a bit. Never saw him again, guess he popped on the hill!
I took the Orange jersey sprint from the AIs around mid-ride. Sometime shortly after a couple of the AIs put up some pretty outrageous times on that sprint. 10.81 seconds and 11.18 seconds. These are substantially faster than I have seen any humans do that sprint. The fastest time I have seen there is 13.67 by one Scott Barger…so IMHO those AI sprint times were unrealistic.
I wondered how long it’d take for somebody to spot the bear. He’s not very obvious!
I can’t say I’ve seen times like that from an AI, I’ll put that on a list of things to check out. I’m curious if the data on your garmin or other bike computer is just as lagged as what you see in Zwift. Generally with ANT+ power meters there’s 2-3 seconds of delay, which really changes the game a bit for those sprint arches. If you wait until you see your opponent go, it’s already too late.
Hey Jon - I had never seen any AI times remotely close to that but 10.8 is pretty dang fast. I thought maybe Taylor Phinney was back on riding under the cover of an AI. Actually, he was on when I first started riding.
I’ll play closer attention to my Garmin display next time. Typically on my Garmin I view 3s average power as it tends to be smoother, so yes, I do see a delay in response there.
You are right on the money about the sprint, if you wait until you see an opponent react you are too late. Also, you need to make sure you pedal a second or two past the banner.
BTW, regarding AIs and the sprints…I actually like that the AIs came back and took the sprint jersey from me. I want the AIs to make it challenging. If I’m not contesting the sprints I want them to keep enticing me too by beating my time.
At the same time, I want their times to be realistic so that if I do put in a good effort, I can challenge them. What would be nice is if the AIs could check my history and keep their pace on the sprints at or just below my personal best times my last handful of rides.
