Workouts - climbing is easy, downhills are harder

Did the Long Ride workout tonight wanting an easy ride and used Figure 8 Watopia Route as the basis which has a small bunch of minor ascents/descents.

Oddly however, when doing the gentle climbs, the power felt easier the steeper the climb got and conversely, as I went down the hills, it got harder the steeper the drops got. If I didnt have ERG on I would have said I was feeling the exact opposite of what I normally would.

The Long Ride uses ERG mode so theoretically I shouldnt have noticed anything, but to notice the opposite of what I expected on the route without ERG was fairly odd. Anyone else experience anything similar before I hit up the support team directly.

Totally normal.

The route and scenery have nothing to do with the workout you selected.
So of course your trainer will set the resistance your workout tells tells him to.
That this will not match the Figure 8 route should be clear.

If you want to avoid that, choose tempus fugit as route when doing workout.

Thanks Ben but perhaps I wasnt clear - theoretically, and consistent with the hundreds of workouts I have done in the past, I could close my eyes and go anywhere in Zwift and not feel gradient changes until the plan changed to its next step … my point is that I could feel the changes in gradient - in the middle of an ERG workout I should only feel the watts that the plan is targetting.

A practical example, I was in the middle of a 10 minute 200w step. With ERG, I will stay pumping out 200w for the whole of that 10 mins regardless of the environment. I would go up a 4degree incline. I felt less resistance. When I went down an equiv drop 4 degree drop, I felt more resistance.

So to summarise, in ERG mode I was feeling gradient that required different power levels that werent part of the plan, and the power changes were the exact opposite to the route features I was on.