Apologies for the vague subject, but my question isn’t easy (for me) to boil down.
For the past few months, I’ve been riding with the B RoboPacers once or twice a week, and almost every single time I’ve witnessed the same user doing the following:
Teleport to the Pacer’s group and pedal at ~1.5 w/kg during the brief pedal assist timeframe
Get dropped by the group
Repeat Steps 1 & 2 multiple times (sometimes shortly after getting dropped, but sometimes 10-15 minutes later)
Sometimes, the user will pedal at a little above 2 w/kg after the pedal assist has worn off, but since these are the B RoboPacers, it’s not enough power to stay with the group, so they eventually get dropped.
What’s the point of this? It’s become a running joke inside my head - is so-and-so going to show up today? They always do, regardless if whether I’m riding with Jacques or Genie. I can think of one time they actually stayed with the group and rode with us (but IIRC it was after doing the join-and-drop dance a few times).
I’m not suggesting that they’re doing anything wrong/bad. I’m genuinely curious as to what’s going on.
Reminds me of one or two characters during FRR this past round through the stages;
We had two specific users who would either push the front, or try and hang onto someone of a higher cat on the TT’s
Rider 1 would sit at the front of the group I guess trying to push the pace, but after a few days of seeing this person try and push off, we all came to realize this person absolutely wasn’t capable of doing so… before the end of the week, we all stopped chasing them; by week 3 I was still wondering why this person would do this.
They’d ride solo off the front until destruction.
Rider 2 would try and “sit on” during the non draftable TT events to someone of very obviously higher power and skill. Same on climbs…
They’d do this until total destruction.
Teammate and I got a laugh out of it in voice several times a week at least; as by the later rounds we started betting how long they’d survive until they’d drop themselves.
Also, I don’t mean they’d stop pushing and sit in… I mean literally they would hang on as long as they could and then proper explode and drop off, and finish several minutes behind every single day.
if i see stuff like that i will just dm the guy or ask in public chat. but i’ve never been shy about bothering people when i’m curious about something and they might have the answer. maybe they are just seeing how long they can stay with the pace partner before they get dropped and doing intervals that way. it sounds like a pretty interesting way to do that kind of stuff. i would just ask them directly though because my guess is just some BS i made up. maybe they just have a lot of dropouts
@S_A_ccc I did consider that they were doing intervals or had dropouts, but except for a few rare cases their power output is always much, much lower than what would be required to hang with the B RoboPacers. I’d think it would make more sense for them to latch on to the D Pacers.