Today I joined an event 7 seconds too late. For about another 15 seconds I was in the starting pen with “Finding Riders” across the screen despite pedaling with about 3W/kg. Eventually I jumped to the pack of 12 riders with Pedal Assist. However there was really weird behaviour for the rest of the event (Climbers Gambit).
Firstly, for a while after I joined I had a positive gap against the others and it just crept up by 1 second per second. That is, it was as if the others were standing still in comparison to me.
Secondly, I couldn’t hold the pack. Sometimes I would drop them while only putting in 1W/kg and have to almost stop to let them catch me. Other times they would shoot ahead and despite their stats on the nearby riders list saying they were mid 2W/kg, I couldn’t catch them with 4-5W/kg (and only 12 people so not a huge draft).
Eventually I decided trying to stick with the pack was a waste of time so I went on ahead. I was putting in around 3W/kg up Titan’s Grove but easily gapped the others who weren’t putting in much less power.
We got to Epic KOM and they came up behind me in a rush and overtook me while I was putting in mid 3W/kg but dropped me like they were 3W/kg higher (i.e. 6+W/kg). I couldn’t get close.
There were three instances climbing Epic KOM where my avatar suddenly sped up for several seconds at a time as though I was going downhill at 60km/h despite climbing hard. I never caught the pack though.
At the top the KOM leaderboard said they were 90 seconds faster than me. I wasn’t going for a PR but I was putting in 3-4W/kg the whole way.
The event total leaderboard said I was 3rd overall and the whole time it said I was like a minute faster over the whole course (despite them dropping me).
During the whole course despite the weird glitches my effort felt correct to what my W/kg was displaying and I was connected with LAN so network should have been robust.
I can only attribute the strange behaviour to the late start and then catch-up from the pen.