Originally Posted by
zacster
The difficulty setting does NOT make the hills easier, it gives you a lower range of shifting. 15% is 15%. If you lower the setting like I did I could spin on a 15% grade in my lowest actual gears. In real life though you may be going so slow as to stall, but you never stall in Zwift because you are on a trainer. At one point I was doing 2mph. So, is that realistic? Maybe not. But from an effort standpoint it is still the same. When my butt started to hurt I stood and had to go to my big ring so I had enough resistance to stand. At that point I was around 250 watts, which I couldn't maintain anyway. I'm 69 years old and there's only so much I can do. That I do it at all surprises me sometimes. I had the setting at 25%. If I had it at 50% I'd have put it in a lower gear to get the same overall resistance/watts while standing. If at 100% lower gear still. But at 100% I'd have run out of low gears to spin and that would make it impossible for me.
10 years ago I attempted to climb Mt Haleakala in Maui, 10,000' of climbing over 36 miles. I had to stop at around 5800' not because I was too tired, although I was, I had just run out of gears. My low gear was a 34/28, which was lower than my own bike, but still not low enough. I'd have liked to have had a 34/34 so I could spin out where the grade had lessened enough to do that as a recovery point. 36 miles of continuous uphill is very hard even if it only goes to around 8% at points. When I attempted Haleakala in Rouvy I couldn't even make it up the first section. Something about Rouvy always seemed off, but that was years ago since I tried it.
The choice with Zwift is to have a bike with the gearing you ride with outside, or the gearing you might have if you are regularly doing 15% grades over a long distance. I would never even attempt a 15% grade to the radio tower, especially after already having climbed the KOM. I'd take one look and say fuhgeddaboudit. I was already close to the bottom of the list for the KOM.
Anyway, it is what it is. You have a choice.
However you dress it up, reducing the Trainer Difficulty reduces the trainer slope resistance and makes it easier to pedal. Your avatar speed is realistic (based on virtual slope and power) but your trainer resistance is not realistic for the slope. How you use this setting depends on what you are trying to simulate. For some it's a way of compensating for a higher gearing on their trainer bike. For others it's simply a way of allowing them to ride a hilly course beyond their normal capability.