Hi
I rode the ZA Road 2020 - Segment Ride #1: London Course this morning. There was no instruction given during the ride so I missed the sprint completely and guessed where the final effort was meant to start. Was there meant to be any instructions on the ride?
I had previously ridden Zwift Academy Road: Workout 2 | Sprint Profile, and Zwift Academy Road: Workout 3 | VO2 Capacity, all of which gave me instructions during the ride, so I was expecting the same.
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I assume you did the group ride not the workout?
It was called segment ride #1. Targeting energy systems - sprint power and threshold power. Nothing telling me it is either a group ride or a workout. I assumed it was a workout.
Apparently it is called a segment group ride. There is an explanation of what to expect in the ride description. But having limited experience with zwift, I did not know where I was on the course. Considering there were on screen prompts in the previous ZA rides I had done, both workouts and group rides, I was expecting screen prompts for this ride.
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I did the same ride yesterday - no, there were no prompts. It appears you have to remember to sprint/climb hard from the event description.
I assume respective segments use the standard segment markers - so sprint green laser marker for the start and the banner in the Mall for the finish. And the KOM red laser marker for the start and the banner at the top for Keith hill.
If it was a group ride, then the ride leader will call out the sprints if he/she remember.
I did the Innsbruckring segment ride yesterday and I assumed the same as you all did - that either a ride leader (as with group rides) or automatic instructions on screen (as with workouts) would tell me what to do.
Instead, we got neither - and I sadly had one of my least fun Zwift rides.
For a quick fix/improvement, I’d like to ask Zwift these questions:
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Where can we find key info about these rides, such as the fact they run with no slipstream and that we have to remember where the key sections our ourselves, with no prompts?
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How quickly can you add something along the lines of the following to both the event descriptions for segment rides and the ZA FAQs page?
“What happens in a segment ride?”
"A segment ride is a unique type of challenge which combines aspects of a time trial, workout and group ride in one.
"Like a time trial, there’s no drafting and it’s you against the clock, measuring your performance in key segments of Zwift courses.
"What makes segment rides like a workout is that it’s only the key segments which count - you should aim to recover fully in between efforts and go hard in the segments. You need to read the event description carefully to see which sections count because this is also a test of remembering when to go hard and when to pace yourself - you won’t receive regular prompts.
“Just like group rides, you start in the pens with lots of other people so you can chat and measure your performance against others. But remember there’s no drafting - so don’t focus on keeping up with others and instead concentrate on how hard you can go in each of the segments.”
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Well i did that entirely wrong yesterday it seems 
Hi Dennie, That’s how I understood it from what people on the ride were saying but I could be wrong! It would just be great for Zwift to give a clearer description of how it works.
What did you do on the ride?
Yep that’s what brings me here. I’m in the London segment ride as I write. No in ride instructions whatsoever. I missed the sprint as guessing and I went too early. Still came third as Barely anyone else did it at all. It’s no drafting so everyone is spread out by kilometres.
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That’s a good description. I didn’t get it right the other day. More I know what to look for and what to expect/do from your description. Thank you!
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Chasing so i could be in a group for draft haha and i did not recover in between.
That’s exactly what I did at first, until someone mentioned that the draft was disabled. I’m not sure if I missed something and how we were supposed to know that in advance.