I think it would be great for each ride to to be for everyone of all abilities, possibly leaving at staggered 30 second starts based on your predicted pace or power.
You could have a virtual pacesetter in a bright lit up colour with large flag/banner advertising the pace like at a running marathon. Have about 6 different pacesetters at 0.5w’kg gaps or whatever measure (possibly predicted ending time?).
This would mean that everyone can join every ride and not have to ride under or above their ability and would stop the moaning about riding off the front.
Everyone would naturally get into groups of equal abilities.
Then Zwift could have a different route starting every 15 or 30 mins to mean the rides are more evenly staggered.
At the moment, I either have to rush home to start the few rides that start just after work, or wait until after dinner time.
Isn’t this over complicating things as you could end up with 6 (or what ever number) organised rides within a ride which basically means you have 6 group rides and not 1 group ride now.
This is a good idea. And, although races (as opposed to “rides”) don’t usually have leaders, I would advocate something similar for races, in that Zwift might consider populating every hour of every day with races for all levels over all routes and a variety of distances. As somebody who really enjoys the racing side of Zwift, it is sometimes difficult finding ones that fit into my schedule. Thus, why not just make races happening almost all the time? (I know some riders get annoyed by races passing by, but that is a separate issue, I think, to be dealt with separately, for example by making racers visible only to the folks in the race.)
Why do riders join a 2.5 w/kg ride and then ride off at 4 w/kg? no one knows…maybe ego, having fun and games, who knows? What is bad is when the rider leader for that 2.5 w/kg ride follows suit and chases these guys at 4.5 w/kg. Blows the ride apart. I can ride all day at 3.5 to 4 w/kg, but when I join a 2.5 w/kg ride I expect to be with a group at around 2.5 w/kg, not hammering at 4 and 5 w/kg trying to catch back on. Every ride should have a purpose for the athlete. NOT every ride should be a hammerfest.
I have had 2 or 3 bad experiences with so called paced rides so I just quite trying, no point in planning to ride at max 2.5 watts and realize it is a 3+ ride all of a sudden and you might just as well have just decided to free ride the course… at least then if I happen to find someone riding along at a pace I like we can stick together for a while.
While I understand the thought behind this idea- I want there to be rides that blow me apart. I’m a fairly average cyclist- my FTP is 3.4 w/kg. So it’s good to have some rides I can do as recovery, some that are harder, and some that are at or above threshold. Some of the hardest and most productive training I have had recently has been while doing rides I knew where harder than I should be in- but I wanted to push myself to the point of failure. If there is an easy way out, most the time we will take it.
