Zwift Fondo - no 2.2 W/kg robopacer

General Discussion
1

I wonder why Zwift Fondo events don’t include Maria - 2.2 W/kg robopacer?

It does not represent a specific category, being in the middle between C and D, but its absence creates a wide gap in the group ride… I was riding Medio Fondo yesterday and ended up pushing air almost all by myself for the 2nd half of the ride…

2

seems like they could have multiple robopacers per category, or set up others as sweepers. I rode the fondo on Saturday with Coco and played the game of “don’t let Coco catch me” after dropping her on the first hilly KOM section early in the ride. I still had a good group for most the entire ride even after getting dropped on the jungle climb, another group wasn’t far behind.

3

Yeah, I was a bit late to the pens to catch Coco, so not sure if I could have hold on to it all the way, that’s why I feel that having Maria as a middle ground would have been better.

4

When people sign up there can be only 5 choices. I imagine they could add more pacers but they could not be associated with a specific starting pen so they could not be selected. There are more standard pacers than there are pens.

5

Does it have to be once pacer per pen?? You sign up for a category but nothing really prevents you from following any robopacer once ride starts…

6

I suspect that might be possible. No idea if they would choose to do it.

7

They could be sweepers, just list in the description that C for example has Maria leading and Miguel “sweeping” even though they will never pull anyone back to the group. They could still get the red beacon.

8

Yeah that’s probably possible, you just would not have an option to choose a pen that says 2.2W/kg because there can be only 5 choices.

9

I think, pen choice in a group ride doesn’t matter much unless you treat it yourself as a race :wink:

10

It doesn’t really matter because you don’t get a drop bonus from riding with the pacer anyway. I wanted to ride easy z2 with low cadence strength work on the climbs so I picked a lower category but naturally a faster group formed from straglers from the higher group and faster people from the lower group