Looking for some advice, think i might have missed something obvious?
Just finished my first race for something a bit different from training. I raced in Cat C ZHQ FutureWorks Crit City Race - Anti-sandbagging, crit format was great fun and takes the intensity to the next level!
About 2 laps into the race I turned a corner and the group I have been following literally vanished in fornt of my eyes. The reappeared some 10 seconds later quite a bit down the course? There was no way they dropped me so quickly, and looking on zwiftpower the watts seemed similar.
It isn’t a big deal as these races are just a bit of fun however, obviously the race got a whole lot more difficult without anyone to follow! So…
A. A technical glitch? Wifi cut out?
B. Was i sandbagging? (i was getting a bit to competititve in the first few laps)
C. Did people move up catergories?
Your wifi or internet connection dropped, your avatar coasted and when the packets caught back up, you were behind.
Chances are they use some sort of client/server architecture that if there is a handshake that is missed, the power just gets dropped to prevent rubberbanding and active exploitation.
Main usual suspect is that you lost your internet connection briefly. If you get the log file and use zwiftalizer you might be able to see what happened. Otherwise it can be a zwift bug, but those are unusual now when running latest version and small events (zwift struggles with mass participation events, with fields of several 100s).
It’s when those 120% FTP Trainer Road workout practice efforts come in useful, when you try and get yourself back on to the back of the pack… last glitch I had was a power glitch, zwift shown 0W for 10 seconds, I coasted off the back helpless as I watched the gap grow, still had resistance in the trainer, I was still pumping out the watts as the Trainer road app was still picking it up my power data so I know it wasn’t my hardware, was still seeing the pack so internet was okay… lots were experiencing this at the time on the France map, one other had the same in my pack several minutes later and I gave him some encouragement to get back on… !