v2 036 Morning Ride (Japan)

Hi Bart, but is the speed that you see on the flat is normal? Or is this like Zwift, higher than what you normally would see?

Hi Bart, the speed on the flat will be spot on the same in every film. This is just part of the virtual speed maths. I think what your seeing is the speed of the film is running much faster then you are used to. The cause here is they filmed this ride about 10kph slower then normally for the bike filmed rides, so at your speed, your probably watching a 30% increase in playback frame rate....everyone will be walking like they are in a mad rush....then add to this the speed inside the app is for perfect conditions & thus a bit generous.  For the transition, I think they stopped due to the snow. I think the ride could have been started after the transition but then it would have been short & you would have missed the nice skys at the start. i think that was the only nice thing about this ride ;-). 

@Phil, no, it is not about the speed of the movie.I agree it is not spectacular ride, but it was okay as a recovery ride in a (for me) somewhat exotic environment.

@Menno: I did a quick and dirty comparison of some of my data. This is all from Strava (I assume this does not deviate from Garmin Connect). In this ride, I had a stretch of 2.5 km, 0.0% inclination, 1m up. I did a steady average 196 watts, and it took me 4:13 (35.6 km/h). Then I found a very similar stretch in the Tioga Pass stage that I did in the production TDA on 3 July: 2.5 km, 0.0%, 0m up, a steady 229 watts. This took me 5:01 or an average 30.4 km/h. So in the beta TDA, I did fewer watts but was a lot faster.

Today I did a part of the Mallorca 300 Stage 1, and I also had the impression I was going faster. But that is harder to compare exactly because there is almost no real flat.

I will try to do a real A/B comparison soon (same ride on beta and production TDA).

Then its for sure a global issue your having with the virtual speed algorithm, what you can do (as I doubt they will change it as it would effect everyone's PB times) is adjust your personal settings & this will have a direct effect on your speed. You have a few options, the first is to select a different bike, like select a MTB & your going to go slower mainly due to the higher frontal friction used & the extra weight, to counter that slowing you down on the climbs, simply reduce your weight...I think this might be the best route as reducing the weight will keep the higher frontal CdA number that will affect you mostly on the flat. The other option is just to increase your weight which will increase the 'mass' number they use in the CdA part of the algorithm when height is not there....you will go slower on the flat, but obviously also on the climbs..So think of the various bikes as different CdA numbers (aerodynamic drag), Ive not looked for years but I think you could also set the bike weight, if not then you then just try reducing your total weight by say 5kgs &10kgs see the effect on your speed on the flat & the hills. 

A solution for anyone that has the capability of developing anything reading would be to simply add another bike I guess for 'on the hoods' road bike

@Phil, the bike type is a setting that I had almost forgotten. But in this case it seems to be the culprit. It turns out that my beta account had a triathlon bike set, my regular account has a road bike. I had never thought of the possibility that the two would differ, I have now set the beta account to the road bike, and expect that everything will be normal on the next ride.

That’s your solution, yes a TT bike will have a CdA of say 0.2 & I think the road bike will be 0.4. It’s the same for cars especially now with Ecars as it massively effects the range & weight of the battery pack needed! Your still going to be going a little faster then you would on the tops in typical conditions, but it will be closer.

thanks for looking into this. this then makes sense.
(Thanks Phil)

But still we need to see if we can make sure the recording speed is close to what an actual rider would do, to get the most realistic view
Of course there are faster people, but we know what the avg speed is of most riders

yes, I feel a bit bad for causing a fuss about nothing. Although the other learning point, for the somewhat longer run, could be that the bike settings need to be integrated in the app, not in some far-away corner of the cloud. Because the first thing I did when I noticed the higher speed was to go into the app settings. But nothing relevant was found there.