Just looking through my latest pacer rides:
Yumi on Flat route for 1hr: 212W average.
Coco on Wattopia’s Waistband for 1hr: 194W average.
Yumi on Wattopia’s Wasitband for 1hr: 216W average.
Yumi on Tempus Fugit for 1hr: 207W average.
Yumi on Wattopia’s Wasitband for 1.5hr: 213W average.
Coco on Tempus Fugit for 1hr: 192W average.
So overall the average wattages seem pretty consistent for me. That said, these are mostly all big blobs of riders.
Edit: I try my best to only choose flat routes to minimize dynamic pacing.
Not sure if it is just me or the pack dynamics (at least since version 3), but I find it a lot harder to ride further back in the blob (typically behind the pace partner) than in front. Once near the front of the blob, my preferred pace tends to be somewhere between Maria and Coco, which means I usually pick Maria and pretty soon end up in one of the groups in front (the sooner I get out of the pace partner nagging range, the better). This proposal would basically make that kind of riding impossible.
(And yes, I too have been advocating for putting the pace partners on TT bikes for quite a while…)
I’m sure the answer to this will be No, but I’ll ask any way, just to make sure. Is there any possibility that you have joined the PacePartner while on a TT bike? Or a Mountain bike, or gravel wheels?
To @Tom_J 's point, if the PP is going faster at the same w/kg, because they are getting a draft, then so should any of the riders in the pack. And that’s certainly been my experience. Same PP goes faster in a larger blob, but the power I put out to keep in the group is the same (for the same course), because I’m getting that same draft. Up and down hills is the only time I see wild variations (so I reduce my trainer difficulty when riding with a PP to try to limit that a little; and I limit my PP rides to flatter courses), but otherwise, it feels the same.
But if someone was on a TT, they wouldn’t benefit from the draft of the group. In that case, a larger group, going a faster pace, would need more power to keep up with, because they aren’t benefiting from that draft. Similarly, an MTB or gravel wheels could impact the overall power someone needs to keep up in order to stay with the PP, and that could change depending on the size of the pack.
Like I said, I’m sure you would have already mentioned it if you ever rode a TT with the PPs, but thought I’d check just to make sure.
No definitely not on a TT; always on the same bike when I’m free-roaming on Zwift (usually only change when sitting in pens or just before going into said pens).
I and quite a lot of other people I ride with have similar experience, so we make sure to stay near the front of the group where the feeling of resistance/slowness is less.
Or we just go and ride on Alpe du Zwift where you never find 100+ mega groups.
I was riding around Makuri today.
I saw Constance coming up behind me, there were 2 other riders that were riding with her. As they passed me, the 2 were out in front of the RP.
Based on what I’m reading in this thread, they were wrong for being in front of the RP, right? Or maybe their plan for the ride is to see how long they CAN remain in front of the RP.
Maybe someone who rides in front of the RP wants to do that to challenge themselves, to see how long they can be in the front, before falling back into the pack.
Not everything that happens in Zwift is nefarious, and does not need a “solution”.
I ride with Maria generally for my Z2 stuff especially the longer rides. I am around 84kg, ride the Tron, and stay ~5-10m in front/behind the PP. Rides from Sept look like this (Route - Time, AP, VI), so this should encompass all the PD4 iterations:
Tempus - 29:24, 170W, 1.0 (then Coco, Waistband - 39:54, 205W, 1.01)
Tempus - 38:08, 170W, 1.0
Tick Tock - 2:00:00, 168W, 1.01
Waistband - 1:24:00, 167W, 1.04 (incl 3 min coffee break)
Tempus - 1:29:00, 167W, 1.01
Country to Coastal - 1:16:00 171W, 1.02
Volcano Flat - 25:58, 169W, 1.01
Makuri 40 - 39:21, 173W, 1.01
Perhaps not as many as some but I did take a 2 week break end of October and did do other rides !
I wonder if the term “Robopacer” is the issue? Perhaps this suggests that someone should join a pacer for a ride at a particular pace/speed?
I personally don’t think of them as “pace” bots but rather “power” bots. I know when I ride with Miguel/Maria/Coco I am going to end up riding within a particular power range as opposed to at a particular pace/speed. That said speed is generally irrelevant to me when I ride though so this might be my own particular bias.
This whole string seems really crazy. It seems like people are saying that no one should ride in front of a bot. That is the only way a person can affect the speed of a bot. The many times I’ve ridden bots, 18-20 hrs a week, I’ve seldom seen the bot in front of the pack. In fact, the only times I’ve seen the bot in front is when there are VERY few riders, on Volcano Circuit and when they are just starting up. I do agree that if a bot is in the front it is a little slower. On the Volcano Circuit with Miguel I’ve seen a 10-12 second difference in lap times. That’s a long way from the time of Maria which is where you want to bump someone. There is a huge difference between being in front of a bot and going to a faster bot at a .4 w/kg increase. I can easily stay in front of Miguel for 3-4 hours but can’t come close to that with Maria. This is really one of the least needed and most harmful recommendations that I have seen on Forum.
That’s probably because Maria group is stacked with Coco and Yumi crowd when those two faster bots are on undesirable routes.
Watch, you’ll see the same familiar people in all of them changing to whichever has the flattest route. Sometimes you’ll see those people with Jacques and Genie if they are on flat and fast routes.
The bots on the flatter routes are by far more popular, so it’s not just one or two people doing this, the vast majority of people seem to want to self-select into the flatter option (if there’s a coco on flat and a coco on hilly the one on flat will have way more people the vast majority of the time).
Multiple reasons for this, one is as you suggest - they want as many km/XP as possible for their efforts, also on a flat route there’s less dynamic difficulty involved, so less power swings than on a hilly route.
But in a large group you are always going to see some people off the front of coco or yumi, every time. So I would think your power should be pretty consistent when you ride Yumi on a flat route with lots of people on any given day unless you get kicked off the back a bunch in a specific ride and spend a lot of time fighting to get back to the bot. I can imagine there’s a much bigger swing in power needed if you’re comparing a small Yumi group with a large Yumi group simply because in the small group Yumi would be on the front some of the time, and sometimes not drafting as many people etc.
You’re preaching to the choir. As I said I spend 300-400 miles a week on bots mostly Miguel unless he isn’t on flat routes. Maria isn’t any faster because of faster riders. The bots will not go any faster than the draft algorithm warrants. They all go the set power. The speed doesn’t vary unless they are not in the draft. I’ve timed many laps on Volcano Corcuit just to prove that. When they are uncovered they go slightly slower. Are you suggesting that they are too fast. The group I ride with think just the opposite that the new draft is too slow.
It’s not the draft but rather the dynamics of riding in the pack that makes it harder now for lighter riders who get dropped very easily. While they had no complaints in the older days.
Feels like the whole pace dynamics is just a patchwork of adjustments and fixes for the adjustments in order to allow solo riders to break away in races, to the detriment of riding in very large groups. Its like riding with the brakes on - get ok away from the huge group and it’s easier.
Understand completely about pack dynamics and it affects everyone. Ring off the front a little is the best way to negate the deleterious effect of them for anyone. That’s my point the answer is not to punish those who are trying to conserve energy by kicking them up to the next bot. That doesn’t affect PD in anyway nor does it help anyone else. Kicking someone like me that is riding up front will result in that person being dropped by the next higher bot. It won’t solve anything and is crazy.
I’ve been riding with the PP a fair bit lately and the thing I’ve noticed that ‘ruins’ the pace the most is people joining with workout mode on - this removes gradients for them and also sits them at a constant wattage if they are on ERG mode. One rider has managed to do it on 3 of my rides this week when there was only a small group and it made a noticeable difference to how stretched the group got each time.
I would think someone on ERG would need to keep fiddling with their bias settings fairly significantly to stay with the pacer through small elevation changes. Usually the folks I see in ERG mode just happened to be on a workout and end up stuck with the pacer for a bit but tend to end up either getting dropped or continuing ahead of the pacer as part of their workout.
For a big group like coco or yumi on flat I wouldn’t expect those folks to do much to the pace partner’s pace however since most folks will still clump around the pace partner.
Biggest issue I encounter with Robo partners is the pace can vary greatly depending on the size of the group and how many riders are in front pulling Robo along.
A pace partner should be travelling at the same pace on a given route every day so you can choose an appropriate partner based on the effort you want to ride at and not let’s see how fast Robo is going today on x route.
As suggested TT bikes would be a welcomed addition for the partners or drafting turned off for them.
I guess with a pink jersey? They seem to do it a lot.
They keep a constant power on the flatter routes and do stretch out the group. Although when Constance was in high speed mode (48-50km/h because of a bug) a few riders could work together to tow the Robopacer very quickly and drop the workout mode folk, without the draft they would quickly end up 30 seconds back.
I’ve used workout mode a few times this week but steer to the edge of the course so the group won’t get any draft from me, I don’t want to ruin it for them. Sometimes I will u-turn as well.
You can get a decent benefit from workout mode if you use it correctly and you don’t even need to be tweaking the power much.
TT bikes for robopacers would be something to try.
!