For the record, Zwift CAN force 100% trainer difficulty on for events.
There is no notification about it either.
For those that recall when that was a thing during ZRL like two years ago or whatever in Cat A.
2 routes of Ventoux would just cut the small crowd in half. I believe the Alp is favored because it is beautiful and the turns break the boredom that Ventoux issues.
The Ski Lift Climb is the best I have ridden, but I think it would work best fleshed out in detail. (It has lots of teeth. There’s no way to get down without also pedaling up those teeth on the descent.) Perfect for Italy, maybe?
Rouvy has two downhill routes. One is Stelvio. It’s a nice long descent but the turns can make you dizzy if you stare at the screen too much. It’s free mileage and good for a warm-up.
On real hills in Zwift the draft effect is less, although it is still a thing if you are going fast enough. I was talking about trying to get a difficult PR a while back with some very fast racers and they suggested “get a group together and attack it”. I didn’t try it, but seems that’s the way to go.
Would these folk (I’m one of them) be in the minority, I wonder.
I tried that on my Tacx Neo 2T a while back (I put my TT bike on the Neo). It just didn’t feel like the shifting on my kickr bike for instance, or even a real bike with actual gears on a trainer. One experiment with the virtual shifting was enough.
I can save around 150-180w on the flat in the draft and around 10w to 30w max on a 5%-6% hill. On the flat I can stop pedaling and stay in the group, on a hill I’d be dropped.
There is some draft but it’s very different and it leads to very different racing. The futility of breaks on the flat leads to more rests. If you aren’t prepared to push constant power the duration of the climb 3min, 5min, 20min… then you are likely dropped.
So that was somewhat my point. With virtual shifting’s overall gearing range, the necessity of moving trainer difficulty to a lower value is much diminished.
Getting back to Drew’s original topic, tweaking the amount of drops offered when riding uphill would seem simple enough.
Just depends on the majority of users (who don’t ride any hilly routes) and if they would completely object to that (even though they might also benefit briefly on very short hills).
If they object, then the entire idea is probably not happening.
Are they just going to band rides uphill for it or actually do it? How else could it be games. Does it matter…
Imagine if we got bonuses for dual recording, smart trainer primary, and weigh ins.
What if the pens at top of Alpe had free ride routes starting from them?
Alpe would become very popular. Maybe do same for Ventop.
Obviously there is demand for it, I saw the same guy today go downhill twice in the time it took me to go about 3km uphill. Not once did he pass me going uphill. He isn’t the only one - so people want that.
It would also make easier for them (no need for complicated teleporting to friends) and more people would be on those routes.
They probably didn’t realise they would get any progression by doing that
I think they want distance progression for the ultimate distance totals. There is an unofficial “competition” for that and it is taken seriously. People may scoff at that, but for those folks it is a big deal.
The guy today was 80.5km at 1h:35min before teleporting back over to Constance. Quite an average speed. Doesn’t do them anything useful aside from virtual distance.
What reason could anyone have to object to that ? According to ZI you already get a 63% drop increase when climbing. Would anyone object when that gets put to 75 or even 100% ?
I’d hope not. It wouldn’t impact the Zwifters that are allergic to inclines in any way.
Do you know if this is a fixed rate or does it fluctuate with the grade? I didn’t find anything on ZI about this figure or what the % threshold is for when the multiplier kicks in.
I found this :
Elevation
How much does elevation factor into your Drop rate? It’s significant. Our tests up the Alpe with a male holding 300 watts for 1 minute showed he received around 770 Drops on a gradient averaging ~9%.
Hold that same power for 1 minute on flat ground and the same rider receives around 470 Drops.
So climbing increased our Drops rate by 63%. Interesting. Zwift is certainly giving people an incentive to climb.
It has previously been suggested to give more incentives for riding uphill in sim mode and people have objected (quite furiously). I don’t care, the incentive that matters for me is riding faster outside.
However you aren’t going as far, so 2 hours for instance might get you 53km depending on how fast you can go uphill. Some folks might take 90 minutes to go 12km.
While on the flat courses you can zoom along at 38-45km/h average speeds (depending on the route and the robopacer group) and go much further.
I don’t have a bot available to go run tests to compare both (and using bots with robopacers is kind of not allowed), but I don’t exactly get huge amounts of drops on a 2 hour mountainous ride, though I’m not holding exactly 300 watts the entire way.
I would not want to overestimate the importance of objections or lack there of. That kind of noise does not always matter at all. Just focus on what you want and the reasons and they’ll sort through it and make a decision. The noise doesn’t always reflect a majority opinion.
I believe it increases with the grade. The icon starts showing up at about 3%. It’s hard to tell exactly how it works as there are multiple layers of factors in the drop rate, some working for you and some against you on a climb.
The NYC escalators give a very high drop rate as long as you’re pedalling when you go up them. 20% grade and the boosted speed both helping there.
Over 1km at say 9% gradient (like on The Grade), would a rider at say 60kg doing 250 watts get the same drops as another rider at 80kg doing 333 watts? (both 4.16w/kg).
I get 15, 25, or 40 K drops at the top of Ventoux. It’s about 100,000 drops for a full ride.