Zwift Chat

[steverob]

I've got it now on Strava. Is it 30 miler?

Not even 16 miles. A mere sprint.

 

[bridgy]

I've got it now on Strava. Is it 30 miler?

No, that's the Cat A & B route that's over 30 miles - for Cat C it's 1 lap of the route Alex has shown above so 25.4km/15.8 miles

 

[alex_cycles]

I've got it now on Strava. Is it 30 miler?

Should be 15.8 miles as it's 25.4km

 

[steverob]

Tempted to sign up for Flamme Rouge just to see what category I'd get put in - fairly certain it would be CAY, but if they only look at the last month or so of results, my poor recent form might drop me to JLP. There's no other reason to join though, because I can't actually race in the league - most days coming up I won't be getting home much before 9pm!

 

[<Tommy>]

I agree with you, but because of the way the Cat system works I'd argue there's a 3rd reason for some riders who ride in a category below their true ability, and this is simply the nature of the Cat system and of most races and how they're raced.

The Cat system as we know is based on JUST 20 minute power and nothing else, but most races are decided on 1-5 minute power and/or a sprint, not 20 minute power. If you're racing sensibly, for the vast majority of races there's simply no need or reason to do high 20 minute power becuase you'll be sitting in a drafting pack and don't need to do a particularly hard 20 minute long effort. This isn't really sandbagging as such, it's just racing logically and sensibly, but it protects some riders from getting upgraded when they probably should.

Some people I'm sure go out of their way to game this part of the system too, but some who are capable of racing in a higher Cat still genuinely race as hard as they can, but simply don't exceed the Cat limits for these reasons.

That's why, if you want better categorisation (and you can't have results based systeme which most people would prefer) then you need to take more into account than 20 minute power alone. This Flamme Rouge event uses Normalised Power (NP) which is a great idea because it takes into account those high 1-2 minute power efforts which separate the top riders in a category from everyone else. E.G my 20 minute power in the last ZRL event was 273w (3.5w/kg) but NP was 324w (4.16w/kg). The Cat B winner of that race had NP of 4.53w/kg.

Precisely!

And well said too. There are definitely more than two types of tragic gimp. You have the entirely pathetic gimp. The sneaky gimp. The delusional gimp to name just 3. Sometimes of course you can be all 3 of these in one. But normally we just call this unfortunate being a ‘C cat racer’

 

[<Tommy>]

All jokes aside… there is a third bracket of people who as Paul says would be in the catergory above but for the fact the cat system doesn’t promote people on the metrics relevant to most zwift races. Which is obvious to everyone apart from zwift…It’s then up to the individual to realise this and self promote. Or be prepared to be called a sandbagging gimp!

 

[<Tommy>]

Where do we sign on to the series?

 

[bridgy]

OK so I have been appointed "Team Manager" and have set up the Cyclechat team on the Flamme Rouge Racing site (https://www.flammerougeracing.com/?page=home)

If you've already registered yourself, I think you need to login, go to your profile and choose "CycleChat Riders" as your team.

There are 3 possible teams within CyclChar Riders but I believe it will default you to the first one which I've named Team CC. We can have unlimited riders in the team, so please feel free to join even if you can't make every race - our top 10 results, whatever category you race in will count each stage for the team competition.

I think we'll probably only need to use one team for everyone for now based on the responses so far - if that changes and we end up with loads of people wanting to do the whole 9 stages we can move people to another team and create a second (but I doubt that!)

Let me know if you have any problems signing up to the team

 

[bridgy]

Where do we sign on to the series?

Create an account here - https://www.flammerougeracing.com/?page=home

Follow the instructions - when choosing a team "CycleChat Riders" should come up on the dropdown list

 

[berty bassett]

Maybe this flame rouge thing will address the sandbagging a bit better and put people in the correct cat , hope so - must be so frustrating for a lot of people not to be able to compete on level playing field
Wish you all best of luck and will keep reading - Enjoy all

 

[bridgy]

Maybe this flame rouge thing will address the sandbagging a bit better and put people in the correct cat , hope so - must be so frustrating for a lot of people not to be able to compete on level playing field
Wish you all best of luck and will keep reading - Enjoy all

I think it's a good system - an improvement on the standard Zwiftpower one anyway.If you were back on Zwift you could join us and contribute to team points - AND we'd be racing together because it's a mixed Cat start....

 

[alex_cycles]

OK so I have been appointed "Team Manager" and have set up the Cyclechat team on the Flamme Rouge Racing site (https://www.flammerougeracing.com/?page=home)

If you've already registered yourself, I think you need to login, go to your profile and choose "CycleChat Riders" as your team.

There are 3 possible teams within CyclChar Riders but I believe it will default you to the first one which I've named Team CC. We can have unlimited riders in the team, so please feel free to join even if you can't make every race - our top 10 results, whatever category you race in will count each stage for the team competition.

I think we'll probably only need to use one team for everyone for now based on the responses so far - if that changes and we end up with loads of people wanting to do the whole 9 stages we can move people to another team and create a second (but I doubt that!)

Let me know if you have any problems signing up to the team

I seem to be in team "spectre" no idea what that means

I logged out and back in again and it's sorted now...

 

[berty bassett]

Thanks for the offer but don’t think I could contribute ! Would still be lower A with this system - guessing all points would be mopped up - and like pushing myself into a workout too much !

 

[berty bassett]

I seem to be in team "spectre" no idea what that means

View attachment 664951

So you’re not all in the same team ?? Not quite following it yet

 

[alex_cycles]

So you’re not all in the same team ?? Not quite following it yet

No we are - i think the site forked up. Cleared it by logging out and in again