Alpe du Zwift
 

road up the alpe yesterday. figured i have very little time to do it before my subscription runs out. anyway, i was near the bottom and was somewhere around 3.5 w/kg when all of a sudden a pair of riders passed me like i was standing still with about 1/2 to 2/3 my power/weight ratio. i busted out laughing and lost some power in the process. later on another pair did the same thing at about the same power difference. too pooped to bust out laughing but still thought it was comical.

no PR yesterday. :notamused:

I can't see well enough to see people's power/weight, but isn't speed a direct function of W/Kg on zwift? How are they going faster than you?

i am about a meter from a 40" screen so it is easy for me to see everything. i really don't know how they are going faster unless they reduced their weight/height significantly. someone on BF erroneously set their height to 3 feet and their speed skyrocketed. after fixing it it was back to normal. GeneJocky maybe?

I forgot about height. I might try it just so I can never beat my PR again.
Doesn't seem like being 3' tall would help climb, but Zwift made up their own physics, so it probably does.

maybe they turned the trainer difficulty to zero so they could enjoy the game without the pain?

(which I might do next time France is up. I seem to never have the time to get up Mt Ventop when the world is in and I want to see what it's like past the ski resort)

Going up hill it's power that matters. Weight to power matters too, however not quite as much as people think. A big guy can churn up the uphill at the same speed as you with lower watts/kg, however the number of watts he's putting out will be much higher. Whoever passed you could have just been a bigger guy with much more power.

For example: For a 10% grade with three riders whose weights are 60kg, 75kg, and 100kg all traveling together at 10kpm the 60kg guy will be putting out 230W (3.8 w/kg) the 75kg guy will be putting out 275W (3.7 w/kg) and the 100kg guy will be putting out 340W (3.4 W/kg). So in order to go the same speed as the others the lighter rider has to put out higher w/kg.

Although if you where at a steady 3.5 w/kg and someone passed you at 1.7 w/kg uphill that would be really weird.

and it was really weird. as i said, it was like i was standing still. a figure of speech but that is what made me laugh the first time. the second time i was just a bit annoyed because i had been pounding for about a half hour up. i always get passed going up there so it does not bother me. i am only trying to beat my own PRs anyway.

and by the way, after the ski resort there is...more hill to climb. i really don't like that one because it takes so darn long to climb and not much in the way of switch backs. watch the very end, it gets a bit steep there.

One time I inadvertently put that I weighed 1677 pounds and couldn't figure out why my guy was going up hills so slow. I'm surprised that the software even allowed it. Maybe they fixed that.

1677 lbs? maybe you should visit this thread...

https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...se-weight.html

:roflmao:

Ventop is a bit of a disappointment. I guess it's not a horrible simulation of the real thing at the top.

A lot of times on Zwift, you'll see short term low or high W/kg numbers on other riders or on your own listing but that isn't the longer term average w/k/. Also, the trainer difficulty setting doesn't change your speed going uphill, just what gear you will end up using.

Someone else mentioned that power is what really matters on Zwift going uphill. If you look at the detailed results on places like Zwiftpower, you will see that at work. In general, results sort out in W/kg order but there are anomalies, usually based on weight.

Here's an example from the Tour de Watopia stage 4 I did yesterday, which included the Epic KOM and 2200 feet of climbing over 26 miles. I weight 102 Kg and my finish just happened to be between two skinny balink 60 Kgers:

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...735f9e0eef.jpg
A Clydesdale between 2 gazelles...

I had a lower w/kg than both but had to average much higher power to get my extra kg up the inclines. In other cases, someone may draft a lot more than someone else and have lower power expended with higher speeds.

Then, or course, there are the cheaters...

I always suffer on hills and have just come to accept that any group ride or race, I will get killed on climbs. I am 5'11" and weigh about 190lbs, give or take and not enough power to move this old body quickly up a hill. I'm also over 50 so that doesn't help but when you look at the amount of power a younger, lighter more competitive rider puts out, it's insane. I've seen some riders on A level races who are putting out like 300+ watts consistently and probably weigh 160lbs so they are going to blow past an old turtle like me. :)

This continues to prove that lightweight riders get the short end of the stick when it comes to Zwift's W/kg grouping.

All setting the trainer difficulty to zero does is make all elevations feel like 0%. You'll still go just as slow up a hill, though, because the program only cares about watts, not how you generate them.

There is a bug in zwift where in a workout meetup all riders go at 42kph regardless of power, weight, or terrain. That is what probably happened to you. Doesn't happen all the time but riders are using this bug to get points and level up.

I dunno, I've never tried it.

Yeah, that was me. Apparently cannonball aerodynamics work pretty well on the flat, too, because on the one stage of TdZ where I was 3 feet tall, I was keeping up with people pushing 4 W/kg while only doing 2.5 myself. So you think maybe you were passed by a bunch of fat Hobbits? :lol:

in the words of Gollum they were probably stupid fat hobbits.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...448aae63a9.jpg

They were going to put out an update that hides your height and weight, but they put it off until later.

What calculator are you using to figure out these numbers?

I don't know which calculator @billridesbikes used, but this one that I checked produces similar trends: Cycling Wattage Calculator (omnicalculator.com)

But generally speaking, assuming all other factors being equal (and no drafting involved),
- when two riders are putting out the same POWER, the lighter rider is faster
- when two riders are putting the same W/kg, the heavier rider is faster

Cheers! I was curious because today I hit this beauty.. On a fully loaded touring mtb
I was just curious what it guessed I was doing. Sounds about right ~300w

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b981089346.jpg

Here I used bikecalculator.com

You can find the cycling power and speed equations that bike calculator probably uses in "Bicycling Science", by David Gordon Wilson.

They were almost definitely on a banded ride, in which riders stay together regardless of how much power they're putting out (a meetup with 'keep everyone together' checked)