Yes, but I slow down at the stop signs and DONT have auto pause turned on, and still average 20, I worked way harder than they guy who had it on, because I would have had a higher average, let's say 22, if I had turned it on. That's my point. I still think we agree.

Exactly this.

And now he's "training" 50% longer. Absurd.

We don't. Your "logic" is ridiculous and makes no practical sense whatsoever.

You're simply twisting my example to fit your completely irrelevant one.

You talked about two people averaging 20 having different efforts and the one with autopause putting out less effort. When in fact, in the example I gave, it'd take someone with autopause who is constantly slowing and stopping considerably more effort to average 20 than someone who doesn't have autopause on but has open roads with little to no stopping.

So my example is exactly counter to your initial example and illustrates how NP would be much higher than a steady state to average the same 20. Now you turn that around with an example about averaging 22. So you averaged 22 with your slowing and stopping. Still significantly harder than a steady-state 22. Still totally counter to your notion of two equal speeds with autopause equating an easier effort. Not the case in this example.

Hold on, you and I both go on a ride, and you have auto pause on and I don't, and we both hit the same stop signs/lights, etc and I have auto pause on, and you don't, who has the higher average speed when we are done?

You right? And we did the exact same ride. Same effort, same everything. Assuming we are identical riders. But your speed was 20 and mine 19.

What I'm saying is that if I go back out and hit the same lights and don't have on auto pause and I average 20 this time, I worked harder than either of us the first time.

How is this example related to my example again? My example countered your one about autopause being easier. If you're not stopping at all, the autopause is redundant so your comparison to someone else that has autopause but slows and stops and all is incorrect as they are the ones working harder and have a higher NP. It's two different examples.

In any case, your notion of autopause doing a disservice to a rider is just b.s. You can't qualify something like that as it's of no practical importance. Any one with an accessible road and any sense is not doing long interval workouts through multiple intersections with lights and signs and all. And that's the only part that would actually be of significance, but even then, not so much in certain races, like...a bike race. Like I said before, in a bike race you coast anyway. That's the direction I was heading before I used an example that clearly didn't come across the way I would have liked. So apologies for the regression.

I don't really know what to say except this is the same point I made from the beginning, albeit worded very differently. I frequently encounter 50 year old men with bowling balls where their abs should be who tell me they can average 20 mph on the bike for x distance. I'm almost always shocked to hear this, until it occurs to me they are auto pausers. Here in Chicagoland there is no route you could take within 50 miles of the city where stoplights don't have an impact of roughly 3-5% of total ride time, unless you choose to ignore them altogether, as many do. My lunch loop crosses 2 major roads and I spend at least 5 minutes of my hour stopped. Just a fact of life here, so I maybe pay more attention to rest time than others.