🚀🚀🚀 Announcing: SYSTM, the new home of The Sufferfest 🚀🚀🚀

Quite a few and they are being added to.
I believe all of the new content now supports Climb in videos that have an elevation component and it’s being added into older videos also over time.

No, no elevation gain logging and I, personally, think this is a good thing because, well, you’re not actually covering any elevation…
Simulated distance is one thing, because you can make a reasonable guess based upon power and weight (but still ignores elevation, wind etc) and most people wouldn’t be happy without a rough idea of distance covered.
However, if you were to include elevation then it causes problems…

At the moment, if a video says “12%” then your Climb gets set to a 12% gradient, but the resistance is not that of climbing at 12%.
If the resistance accurately represented 12% then it becomes a lot harder to make the videos work properly because they are about specific training impulses at specific points. Suddenly, they either have to make the gradient dynamic, like the power profiles are, or you’re going to have videos which are tempo for some people, threshold for others and completely unachievable for a bunch of people.
That or you make the gradient mean nothing because you just say someone is managing to climb a 12% gradient at 120 watts…

Basically, the only “value” to adding an elevation component while retaining the current aim of the videos (which needs to be the priority) is to allow people to complete Strava challenges that they haven’t actually completed.
I also, personally, strongly believe Zwift elevation data (or possibly even all Zwift data shouldn’t be counted in Strava challenges because with their drafting and boosts system their speed and elevation calculations are pure nonsense).

Basically, in my eyes, there is no way to give sensible elevation data while also remaining true to what Sufferfest is actually about.

13 Likes