They say Christmas comes but once a year, yet certain Zwifters may feel their letter to Santa Claus has been answered a week early.
That’s because Zwift has announced that it has released one of its most requested features: a draft indicator.
The indicator is one of two “quality-of-life improvements” the indoor cycling app released yesterday, alongside an updated report screen, which enables you to track your fitness progression and more.
Draft indicator
Although it's a virtual platform and you don’t get the literal advantages of riding in a group, Zwift’s drafting feature enables you to conserve energy.
Zwift Insider estimates that drafting behind a single rider on the platform earns you a power saving of approximately 25 per cent.
Even if it won’t quantify your energy saving as a percentage, Zwift’s new draft indicator shows how much shelter you are getting from the riders in front.
“The wider the draft indicator bar, the better your draft position is,” Zwift says.
Progress Report screen
Also released yesterday is Zwift’s new progress report screen, which focuses on 'career stats' and an overview of your cycling performance.
The screen means you can track your progress after every ride, and is said to build on the success of Zwift’s fitness tracking, which was released in the spring.
“Zwifters can track their weekly goal progression, streak totals, training score and status. The training score represents training load – intensity, duration and frequency as an easy-to-track score,” Zwift says.
You now have the option to set weekly goals in kilojoules, stress points, calories, distance or time, too.
Similar to Garmin’s training status function, Zwift will provide you with status classes: ready, fresh, productive, overreaching or detraining.
The fitness tracking is also available in the Zwift Companion app, where you can see your fitness progress over time, with graphs showing metrics such as training goals, training score, training status and Zwift streak.
The career progress function enables you to see stats such as how many XP points you earned on your last ride and how many you need to level up.
The bike upgrade function means you can see how far you have left to unlock your next bike upgrade.
Performance statistics, such as a one-year power bests over 5 seconds and FTP, are also displayed on the summary screen.
