Zwift Chat

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bridgy

Legendary Member
Location
Cheddar
Paul
Certainly brutal- didn't get the chance to go down the grade . Al looked to have good legs holding strong W/kg even up the last climb.
:heat: :okay:

Yeah @IrishAl actually did exactly the same watts up his second ascent of Mayan Mountainside at the end as he did at the start - which is impressive considering how much hard climbing there was in between!
 

mjd1988

Guru
Absolutely brutal ZRL race last night - a brutal course but also we're in a ridiculously hard league which appears to be stacked full of Cat A riders who have temporarily dropped to B during the summer and taken the opportunity to have some fun in Cat B for a few races! In fact 6 of the top 7 are now Cat A anyway, and pretty much the entire front half of the race did well over 4w/kg for 20 minutes. (There's my excuses out of the way!)

(*ZRL still uses the old Cat A-D system not ZRS)

I came 55th/62 and still got an FTP increase! It was a good workout :thumbsup:

@IrishAl came 44th with a strong finish, and Bram came 59th (only 3 of us could make it)


View: https://youtu.be/POmV19Z9vxo


Monstrous. That league is gone, hopefully the zwift racing score will help with those situations (hard to know) but I do think the rule that you've done 3 races so who cares if you upgrade is a bit silly.

Does Remind me of the splitters race up the epic kom, part of me wants to do that again
 

bridgy

Legendary Member
Location
Cheddar
Monstrous. That league is gone, hopefully the zwift racing score will help with those situations (hard to know) but I do think the rule that you've done 3 races so who cares if you upgrade is a bit silly.
Well looks like the guy who won the race was DQ'd for exceeding category power limits!

So the win goes to the guy who cam second - a Cat A rider with a ZRS score of....725 :laugh:

Yeah will be interesting to see if/when ZRL adopt ZRS for category and how they handle rider progression/improvement during the league with that - could get messy!
Does Remind me of the splitters race up the epic kom, part of me wants to do that again
The splitters race series we did back in the day were fun weren't they?! I think things have moved on a bit, but there's probably a good opportunity to get a good number of us involved in one of @alex_cycles race series - I'd certainly be up for that when they don't clash with ZRL.

I'm not sure I'll do the next ZRL anyway - we've barely been able to scrape a team of 4 together each week, let alone a team of 6 as it should be, and that makes it a bit meaningless ultimately as the whole point is it's a team effort
 

alex_cycles

Veteran
Location
Oxfordshire
Well looks like the guy who won the race was DQ'd for exceeding category power limits!

So the win goes to the guy who cam second - a Cat A rider with a ZRS score of....725 :laugh:

Yeah will be interesting to see if/when ZRL adopt ZRS for category and how they handle rider progression/improvement during the league with that - could get messy!

The splitters race series we did back in the day were fun weren't they?! I think things have moved on a bit, but there's probably a good opportunity to get a good number of us involved in one of @alex_cycles race series - I'd certainly be up for that when they don't clash with ZRL.

I'm not sure I'll do the next ZRL anyway - we've barely been able to scrape a team of 4 together each week, let alone a team of 6 as it should be, and that makes it a bit meaningless ultimately as the whole point is it's a team effort

Planning on keeping going with Cyclopathon monthly series for now. The ZRS experiment is interesting but there still seem to be a fair few people not yet in the right place. It will take time to shake out. I doubt ZRL will use ZRS until next Autumn, but I may be wrong.

The pen widths for the zRacing series are way too wide for my liking in the top two pens. Hopefully Zwift will get enough feedback to change that.

At some point I may restart the Friday Smash as well.
 

bridgy

Legendary Member
Location
Cheddar
Planning on keeping going with Cyclopathon monthly series for now. The ZRS experiment is interesting but there still seem to be a fair few people not yet in the right place. It will take time to shake out. I doubt ZRL will use ZRS until next Autumn, but I may be wrong.

The pen widths for the zRacing series are way too wide for my liking in the top two pens. Hopefully Zwift will get enough feedback to change that.

At some point I may restart the Friday Smash as well.

Yeah I agree, ZRS will take time to get right - and might not ever work really well, but I hope it does eventually!

The problem I can foresee for ZRL using ZRS (and for ZRS in general actually) is how you prevent riders who are right at the top of a category boundary from winning a race, getting lifted up to the next category, but then purposefully doing badly in a few races over the next week, and dropping back down again - rinse and repeat?

I think they may have to build into ZRS some kind of delay in how quickly your score can drop you back down into a lower category after you get upgraded - like in the way the rolling 90 day power data does with your seed score (and did in the original Cat system based on 20 minute power only). This is complicated by the fact ZRS cat boundaries don't always have to be the same for all races I suppose
 

alex_cycles

Veteran
Location
Oxfordshire
I think they may have to build into ZRS some kind of delay in how quickly your score can drop you back down into a lower category after you get upgraded - like in the way the rolling 90 day power data does with your seed score (and did in the original Cat system based on 20 minute power only). This is complicated by the fact ZRS cat boundaries don't always have to be the same for all races I suppose

Some kind of anti-tanking measures are being worked on to alleviate this problem. But I don't know what they are.
But certainly the feedback they have received from people has suggested something like a longer lookback e.g. 30 or 90 days, so you can't easily saw-tooth between categories.

Probably also there will also be some kind of limitation placed on how much you can drop from multiple races on one day or consecutive races. Certainly it's far too easy to tank by using the Tiny Races if you don't have any self-respect and are willing to Zone 2 round and finish last. (People have done it :laugh:)
 

Whorty

Gets free watts from the Atom ;)
Location
Wiltshire
Well looks like the guy who won the race was DQ'd for exceeding category power limits!

So the win goes to the guy who cam second - a Cat A rider with a ZRS score of....725 :laugh:

Yeah will be interesting to see if/when ZRL adopt ZRS for category and how they handle rider progression/improvement during the league with that - could get messy!

The splitters race series we did back in the day were fun weren't they?! I think things have moved on a bit, but there's probably a good opportunity to get a good number of us involved in one of @alex_cycles race series - I'd certainly be up for that when they don't clash with ZRL.

I'm not sure I'll do the next ZRL anyway - we've barely been able to scrape a team of 4 together each week, let alone a team of 6 as it should be, and that makes it a bit meaningless ultimately as the whole point is it's a team effort

Until the ZRS scores are any value I wouldn't use them if I were ZRL. Last night I was the highest scored ZRS going into the race (of the riders I checked anyway which was most of the riders) - I came 8th out of 16 (15 in ZP). Those in ZP who beat me are all lower than me on ZRS and yet my score still went up. In what ranking would someone's score still rise when they are beaten by lower ranked riders (who's ZRS score is still significantly lower than mine?)

I know you're a fan of ZRS, as are others, but to those of us affected by this nonsense it's clear than the scoring is totally messed up.

On the plus side though, thanks to @alex_cycles adjusting the pens this league, at least I had a proper race with others around me. Beats the normal ZRS races where I don't see anyone after the first 3 minutes :laugh:


Edit: another plus, I had my best 5 minute power last night for some months. Definitely improving on the fitness front :training:
 
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alex_cycles

Veteran
Location
Oxfordshire
On the plus side though, thanks to @alex_cycles adjusting the pens this league, at least I had a proper race with others around me. Beats the normal ZRS races where I don't see anyone after the first 3 minutes :laugh:

In my opinion the ability for organisers to set ZRS pen thresholds is one of the most valuable aspects of ZRS.
The seeding algo isn't great - and they know it. But it's always challenging at this time of year anyway.

Hopefully it will settle while your fitness improves, and you'll be in a good place again before long.
 
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13 rider

Guru
Location
leicester
Until the ZRS scores are any value I wouldn't use them if I were ZRL. Last night I was the highest scored ZRS going into the race (of the riders I checked anyway which was most of the riders) - I came 8th out of 16 (15 in ZP). Those in ZP who beat me are all lower than me on ZRS and yet my score still went up. In what ranking would someone's score still rise when they are beaten by lower ranked riders (who's ZRS score is still significantly lower than mine?)

I know you're a fan of ZRS, as are others, but to those of us affected by this nonsense it's clear than the scoring is totally messed up.

On the plus side though, thanks to @alex_cycles adjusting the pens this league, at least I had a proper race with others around me. Beats the normal ZRS races where I don't see anyone after the first 3 minutes :laugh:


Edit: another plus, I had my best 5 minute power last night for some months. Definitely improving on the fitness front :training:
Your score went up ! ,question by how many . Obliviously I had a good result, matched by best 30 sec and 1 Min power for the last 90 days and my score went up just by 11
 

Whorty

Gets free watts from the Atom ;)
Location
Wiltshire
Your score went up ! ,question by how many . Obliviously I had a good result, matched by best 30 sec and 1 Min power for the last 90 days and my score went up just by 11

Went up by 3. Not much, but shouldn’t have gone up at all 🙄
 

bridgy

Legendary Member
Location
Cheddar
Until the ZRS scores are any value I wouldn't use them if I were ZRL. Last night I was the highest scored ZRS going into the race (of the riders I checked anyway which was most of the riders) - I came 8th out of 16 (15 in ZP). Those in ZP who beat me are all lower than me on ZRS and yet my score still went up. In what ranking would someone's score still rise when they are beaten by lower ranked riders (who's ZRS score is still significantly lower than mine?)
Two of the 7 riders who beat you have higher ZRS scores than you. Your score did go up but only by 3 points so it barely changed. I don't know, a mid-field finish pretty much keeping your ZRS the same - sounds about right to me?

Remember - as I've mentioned before a few times - your seed score was affected by that performance you did within the previous 90 days of 7.3w/kg for 30 seconds. I suspect that put your seed score a fair bit higher than other riders who beat you for example, and limited how far you could drop. It does look like that might have dropped off your 90 day figures now though.
I know you're a fan of ZRS, as are others, but to those of us affected by this nonsense it's clear than the scoring is totally messed up.
I'm a fan of the concept but I do appreciate it isn't perfect and will take time to (hopefully) work well for most people - I say most because they'll never make everyone happy whatever they do.

Also, it may be messed up (for you and others in some situations - for some races it's working very well) but don't forget that the old system was rubbish a lot of the time too. The ZRL race I did last night for example was ridiculously bad in terms of category and that was the old system.
On the plus side though, thanks to @alex_cycles adjusting the pens this league, at least I had a proper race with others around me. Beats the normal ZRS races where I don't see anyone after the first 3 minutes :laugh:


Edit: another plus, I had my best 5 minute power last night for some months. Definitely improving on the fitness front :training:
Good to hear your fitness is improving.

I don't mean to disagree with everything you say about ZRS (honest!) - I just think there are often logical reasons for some of the problems you're having with it, which I know are frustrating but aren't necessarily in-built problems with ZRS. For you, one problem is that outlying performance that affected your seed score, and another is your recent drop in power which would have caused you problems with any Cat system - hopefully these two factors are now changing for you!
 

Whorty

Gets free watts from the Atom ;)
Location
Wiltshire
I'm a fan of the concept but I do appreciate it isn't perfect and will take time to (hopefully) work well for most people - I say most because they'll never make everyone happy whatever they do.

Also, it may be messed up (for you and others in some situations - for some races it's working very well) but don't forget that the old system was rubbish a lot of the time too. The ZRL race I did last night for example was ridiculously bad in terms of category and that was the old system.
Plenty not happy in the race I just did - lots of complaining (not me, my companion app crashed again lol). I came 71st on the road, 57/61 on ZP, and my ZRS drops by 5 to 365 :wacko:

Oh, and the guy who came last was in the lead pack but 1km out he stopped, let us at the back overtake him - it was his second ride today where he's come last (even though he's a B rider and could finish higher. Already the gaming of the ZRS has started as many do not seem to be happy with their score and try to reduce it.

For me it goes up when I come mid table to riders who are lower scored than me, but only drops 5 when I'm practically last? You show me any ranking system in any other sport where that happens and I'll support you that this is even remotely working.

Thankfully again today I found a small group at the back the same speed as me so I wasn't riding solo and could have a proper ride. ZP not processed numbers yet but I think I may have my best 20 mins numbers again for some months so at least I'm still progressing despite ZRS.
 

Whorty

Gets free watts from the Atom ;)
Location
Wiltshire
@Whorty re companion app has your phone done a recent operating system update ? , don't get cycling did a vid about what to do re setting

Not as far as I know - it worked the other day fine, but yesterday and today just not happy in races. Works fine outside the race though. Not that important, means I don't annoy other riders whilst I'm racing haha
 
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