Zwift Academy Group rides
 

Although I'm not usually a fan of the Zwift structured workout plan I always enjoy group rides and since they've now combined them as a scheduled event, I've been jumping on them when it suits my schedule. I understand that the workout ties in with my FTP and uses this to set my expected numbers but how does this work with the group ride?

I was doing one of the rides yesterday and it was a small group (guess peak riding season hasn't started yet?) and it's natural to stay together with the group in hopes of drafting maybe? When we reached the intervals my expected number is high (because of my FTP) but I didn't want to leave the group riding up to meet those numbers so I came in significantly lower. I also looked around at the other rides numbers and they were riding much lower than the intended power output showing on my screen. Is that because their FTP's are lower than mine or were we all just mailing it in? ha ha

Is there a rubber band on the group so that no matter how hard you ride you won't get too far ahead or too far behind? The max VO2 interval would have had me riding at 265 watts but that was way more than what most of the group was riding at so I just hung back so as to not leave the group.

You have 2 baseline rides. One to start and the finish to show your progress. You have 6 Group workouts in between. They are all banded, meaning you will stay with the group as long as you are pedaling even though there is a large disparity of power wattages being produced inside the group.

Ah, ok that makes sense now. Zwift kept indicating "more power"!!! ha ha but I was ignoring it because I didn't want to fly off from the group but I was looking at the wattage of the other riders and it also seemed low so I just assumed we were all mailing it in it together.

Yes, they are "no-drop" group rides, so the road speed of the group is just a function of the average of the total collective group power. Individual power targets for the workout are related to your personal FTP. So you can smash away as hard as you like and you won't move ahead of the group. You will just move to the front of the pack and very slightly boost the overall group speed with your extra contribution!

I'm not a fan of group workouts because the banding means that I'm often not going as fast as I would on my own. I know that's not the point of a workout, but it just annoys me.

Just pretend it's a very windy day!