Workouts - Real road simulation mode

Today, there’s no way to use real simulation mode during workouts. When ERG is selected, the watts goal drives resistance, and when ERG is disabled, the Watt goal is driven by an external device. I understand your logic behind this, but it would be nice to offer an option for the resistance to be controlled by the road inclines and downhills (during workouts). Here is an easy solution: for free ride segments during workouts, let the road determine the resistance, not the watts goal.

I agree. It would be nice if the workout mode had an option to not only disable ERG but still simulate hills etc so you have to adapt to the terrain in order to achieve your wattage targets. Yes; this will be more difficult to do, but just makes for more of a challenge!

Ricardo,

Having the terrian come into play will throw your workout entriely.  You can disable erg mode.

erg only locks you in a specific wattage, there is a lot of things you can do with it. such as cadence transions. 

Thanks Matt. I agree that when you disable ERG, terrain should not be the default option. Most riders will prefer to control the wattage goal using their manual settings. However, there are plenty of workout programs offered in other static bicycles / software based on resistance determined by a pre-defined virtual road. One way to support this option in Zwift is to switch to the terrain settings *only* during “free ride” segments (which can be added through custom workouts).

the problem about a terrian based resistance is keeping the power to the pedals.  lets say you have a goal of 200 watts for about 1 minute or more.  Because of the varied terrian in zwift you are going to have hard time keeping in goal.

I have a kickr and set the varibilty up to 100%.  on a downhill slope in it there is close to no resistance, i have to spin over 120 rpm’s in highest gear and only generate 100 watts.

Heres the thing i think would be useful, inline with your thinking.  Using a powermeter for pacing is the ideal situation.  I think on a course like richmond it would work fine.  But a course like watopia where variabilty is high keeping the power on with an interactive trainer is difficult.

I think that the concept of “workouts” is usually associated with training based on a wattage goal. More rudimentary training systems are simply based on resistance from the static bicycle, which is the world that I come from (I just started using the Kickr two weeks ago). I’m assuming that others in my situation will expect to see something similar to the simulation offered by those systems, eventually evolving into a wattage goal workout. I hope the context helps.