James Bailey and friends have been hard at work over at Zwift, testing and tweaking Pace Partners to dial in the best mix of bots, paces, routes, and events.
This week we’re seeing a Zwift first: events led by Pace Partners. And they’re heading up the Alpe! We’ve also got a pile of running bots on trotting around the 5k Loop, and some other changes. Let’s dig in…
Alpe du Zwift Pace Partners
The biggest news this week is a series of test events happening every three hours this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (see upcoming events).
These events are held on the Road to Sky route and have 5 categories to choose from, each “led” by a Pace Partner at a pace that gets them up the Alpe du Zwift climb within a particular target time:
- A – Andrew Alpinist – 4.0 w/kg – 49 minutes
- B – Beth Baroudeur – 3.3 w/kg – 59 minutes
- C – Christopher Climber – 2.8 w/kg – 69 minutes
- D – Danielle Danseuse – 2.15 w/kg – 89 minutes
- E – Émile Étape – 1.6 w/kg – 119 minutes
These events start at a lower pace so riders can warm up through the Jungle on the way to the Alpe. Warmup pace is just 1/2 of the climbing pace listed above.
If you’re wanting to finally break that 1-hour Alpe mark, or just need a consistent pace set for another target time, give one of these test events a try!
These events have been set up thoughtfully. All categories are visible, and the faster groups start first. That means if you get dropped from your starting group, you’ll have the next-slowest group just behind. Then you can choose your own adventure: try to stay away ahead of those chasers, or drop back and join the slower pace group.
Read “Fastest Climbing Bike Frames and Wheels at Each Zwift Level” for tips on the best bike for your record attempt!
Events include this note: These are Futureworks Events. Futureworks Events use functionality that we haven’t officially released in full. This means that the event has been set up with our best possible endeavours to ensure that the pacing is as accurate as possible, but may not be 100% accurate.
5k Loop Runners
Nine new bots are now trotting along Watopia’s 5k Loop at various paces, so if runners want a bit of company, there’s a bot available:
- Tracey Trot: 8:00/km
- Albert Amble: 7:30/km
- Sarah Stride: 7:00/km
- Benito Bounder: 6:30/km
- Hettie Hare: 6:00/km
- Brendan Bolter: 5:30/km
- Rebecca Rocket: 5:00/km
- Stuart Speedster: 4:30/km
- Patricia Pacemaker: 4:00/km
This Week’s Ride Routes
James has also updated the riding routes for each Pace Partner this week:
Watopia:
- Anquetil (4.2) – Out and Back Again
- Brevet (3.3) – Volcano Climb
- Eddy (3.0) – Triple Flat Loops
- Coco (2.5) – Flat Route
- Daniela (2.0) – Two Bridges Loop
- Diego (1.8 ) – Volcano Circuit
- Diesel (1.5) – Volcano Circuit CCW
- Dorothy (1.15) – Watopia’s Waistband
Makuri Islands:
- Bernadette (3.8 ) – Neokyo All-Nighter
- Charlie (3.0) – Three Village Loop
- Denise (2.0) – Wandering Flats
Bug Fixes
Two Pace Partner-related bugs have been fixed, according to James:
- “We believe that we have fixed the issue that those on tvOS, iOS and Android were experiencing when trying (and failing miserably) to join a Pace Partner.”
- “Stealth Mode on the Epic KOM bridge should be fixed in our next release” (which should arrive in the next day or two).
Share Feedback
James is looking for feedback on the new Alpe du Zwift events, as well as the fresh running Pace Partners. He requests that you share feedback (and any questions) in one of these spots:
Thanks for the direction about where to put comments. That was helpful, as was the list of where the partners are this week. I don’t know if they plan that out well enough in advance for you to add that to your calendar without it getting too busy or not, but it would be helpful to have that info all in one place (and, yes, I’ll suggest there that they consider talking with you about posting a schedule for those).
I think the route schedule is very much in flux at this point. If it ever settles into a regular rhythm hopefully I’ll be able to publish something about that!
For those whose motivation for pace partner rides is drops, the rate of accumulation going up the Alpe should be extra candy. Put a multiplier on that, and they’ll really pour in.
I assume these pace partners use the same approach, with adaptive w/kg on slopes — only now we have shifts like the 6% moments high on the Alpe to consider. It’ll be interesting to see how dramatically Beth Baroudeur adjusts to those grade changes.
I believe the Alpe bots behave differently in terms of dynamic pacing. Their “dynamic” simple means half pace on the lead in (flats and descents) and full pace on the uphills.
Exactly what I was thinking about. 2.5x up those grades, that should be a hefty amount of drops!
In the Zwift forums it says no multiplier for these
The Alpe pacers run at half pace when the gradient is less than 2%. Full pace when 2% or above. There are no other pacing rules set.
I did one the Alpe Pace Partner rides last night and no unfortunately there is no “drops multiplier”, and in terms of the pace it was an entirely fixed pace up the “KOM” and exactly half that in the run from the start until you hit the KOM. So in the case of the 59-min bot that I joined (I did NOT expect to stick with it the whole way!) it was about 1.6W/Kg at the start and then a fixed 3.3W/Kg on the Alpe KOM itself – it meant a lot of riders dropped off the bot on the hairpins as human riders take a little time to adjust their gear/cadence/power to changing gradients but the bot just powered on at 3.3 and you could easily lose 10-15m in the blink of an eye.
The idea definitely has a lot of promise for paced route challenges, but needs a little fine-tuning in terms of dynamic pacing, “warm-up” pre-Prime pace, and the various paces offered (i.e. 10-min pace gaps for Alpe is a large gap)
Coco, not Coco, always Coco to some is officially Coco again? Then again it could be Cocoa 😂
It will always be Coco!
Awesome Alp Bots, just what I’ve been waiting for let’s hope its a long term addition to Zwift
Thanks for the writeup, Eric. Cheers.
Why on earth no sub 40 option? Thanks Zwift! 🙁
Aren’t those two Korean bots still around who always climb at a steady 5.5 (?) w/kg? They finish in roughly 35 minutes IIRC correctly, so you could ride with them.
My best time up the Alpe is 55 min, I think. So now I feel like I just MUST turn myself inside out to try to stay with Andrew. Maybe there is at least a _bit_ of draft effect that will help me? I hope…
I thought about Andrew since I’m consistently a little faster than Beth. I haven’t gone sub-50 yet though. However today at a more convenient time for me there was a 3R Octane event and it ended with a mini race. The leaders finished somewhere around 51 and I finished at 55, so that sounds right up your alley. The Octane regulars are a great bunch and up until the race it was a fun group ride with intervals. Something to think about if the timeslot suits and they do AdZ again. Of course all their other group rides are also fun, but there are some monsters in the group who can humble you.
The times that are listed, are they the times from the start, or just for the Alpe segment?
They are segment times
please make the Alpe bots a permanent “on demand” feature – that would be awesone
This isn’t an on demand route we can use sadly as it has to be a “loop”. So it currently only works as part of a group event.
oh well, thanks for the reply anyway
Tried the Alpe ride with Andrew bot yesterday. I enjoyed the distraction of riding in a small bunch and the aggregate timing was exactly as advertised. I was completing each hairpin segment at around 8W under 4W/kg.
The 0.5x pacing through the jungle was sufficiently slow that 50% of the riders in the pen got fed up and just rode off to climb at their own pace. Completely understandable since they may well be warmed up anyway and not fancy a dawdle for 10 minutes. Perhaps the 0.5x could ramp up Keirin style to the foot of the climb.
Only a couple of us finished with Andrew. The bot climbs very differently: by maintaining 4W/kg it feels like it surges on the flat hairpins. It also seemed to surge on other parts of the climb which took a few riders by surprise. I think that’s why a few experienced the dreaded snapping of the rubber band.
Lots of good natured chat from the participants.
An experiment worthy of encouragement… and refinement. A microcosm of Zwift itself!
Did one of the rides today. SUPER cool feature.
I also rode with the bots today, except with Beth. A few observations:
– I was significantly faster than Beth but I used her as a valuable pacer. They are great for that alone (i.e I know I’m going to hit X minutes by my relative position).
– many around me (obviously) also didn’t ride with her.
– it was strange to be riding around people from other categories but they were invisible on the leaderboard and the map.
– same as D Crowther’s comment about half our group were flyers before the climb. That serves no purpose in an event like this but it’s hard to resist. I wasn’t anticipating that and by the time I realised it was too late so I split the difference at about 75% (even though I should have dropped back to Beth).
– I would definitely stick with the pace partner if there were drop multipliers. Like glue.
All in all a fun ride and I hope they stick around.
I really do LOVE ALL the names you guys come up with for the bots. So very creative!!1