Zwift Chat

[Whorty]

I'm back in cat D

 

[Legs]

Wednesday evenings for the foreseeable future are quite convenient for me to do the Bologna TT events. I screwed up the pacing tonight, burnt too many matches on the flat, and wasn’t able to raise my effort much on the hill.

I came second, 6s behind Danny Lake, whom I’ve raced against in IRL hill climbs in the past few weeks (he’s always beaten me). 17:19, definitely improvements to be had.

 

[alex_cycles]

I'm back in cat D

Good old CE. Put in a good 20 minute effort and go down a group.

 

[IrishAl]

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.

Yeah I surprised myself too lol. I had to let the pack go on the climb up the top portion of the Grade (well I was distanced well before then in fairness) but managed to claw back some places on the big downhill and then jump across in slow motion to a small group and sprint for 45th place!! Woohoo!

 

[Whorty]

Good old CE. Put in a good 20 minute effort and go down a group.

I know, the irony wasn’t lost on me 🤣🤣🤣

I must be very close to the boundary. I’m actually confused why I’m D as I thought the cut off was 2.4 w/kg? I’ll stay in C rides anyway.

 

[IrishAl]

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

I think I’m of the same mindset. I enjoy the camaraderie of racing with the team but it’s not the same when we are down to bare minimum numbers. Also having riders clearly a league above in the same race makes a mockery of it. I had planned on doing more racing on Zwift this year but I might try and find a series taking place so other evening given Tuesday’s is pretty much dominated by ZRL races.

On another note I gave IndieVelo another go this evening. I had planned just an easy recovery spin but I got signed up for a couple of races. Mixed feelings about it - first race was a short sprint race and the lead in had a pacer bot. I made the rookie error of drifting by the bot close to the start line so in fear of being DQ’d I eased off and next thing I knew the bot had peeled off, the pack zoomed by, and it took me an age getting up to speed. I took it easy and tapped it up the hill to finish 2nd last.

The 2nd race was a points race and I was impressed here and a lot for Zwift to learn from. All entrants for the race were divided equally into 3 pens - which I think was based on historical power. The “big innovation” was that the sprint points were clearly marked on the route map and there was a live leaderboard showing points earned. How many times do you see a points race in Zwift that only a handful of the riders know it is actually a points race, and no one has a clue who’s winning and you need to go onto a third party website for the results!

 

[Whorty]

Good old CE. Put in a good 20 minute effort and go down a group.

I still think the old cat system was more realistic than ZRS - my race yesterday had As, Bs, Cs and Ds in it - on a relatively flat course the Cs and Ds were dropped in the first 2 minutes. Even Bs were complaining the pace was too high. And at least one B purposefully came last to try to get his ZRS lower.

The problem for me with a number, like ZRS, is that it can be manipulated fairly easily. The CE cat system was good in that unless you were at the top of a cat then it wasn't easy/worth even trying to game the system. Now riders will just use a race as a Z2 effort purely to lower their score - which means I may beat a much higher ranked B rider (like yesterday) that then messes up my score as I only 'beat' them because they stopped on purpose. So where once the game only effected the individual, now it effects others in the race.

It's sad that Zwift just don't seem to be able to get this right after all the years it's been talked about, and are now forcing a flawed roll out to everyone when it's clear it's not ready yet.

But I am D and we all know that's the hardest cat to race in

 

[bridgy]

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

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.

I don't know the exact formula they use for adjusting the score (I assume it's secret) but I know it takes account of not only your position but the ability of people you beat/are beaten by. It looks like 5 of the 9 people you beat have a higher ZRS than you so I wonder if that has an effect on how much your ZRS drops? If that's the reason it only dropped by 5 points and not more, and some of those 5 people were purposefully going slow to finish at the back and try to reduce their score then that is definitely a problem they need to address!

This sort of thing might be worth raising in the Zwift forum - I might even do it myself.

If Zwift didn't foresee that people would try to game the system by purposefully losing to try and reduce or keep their score low, then they were pretty naive!

 

[bridgy]

I know, the irony wasn’t lost on me 🤣🤣🤣

I must be very close to the boundary. I’m actually confused why I’m D as I thought the cut off was 2.4 w/kg? I’ll stay in C rides anyway.

You're thinking about the old, old system. Category enforcement was/is based on this Zmap/ZFtp score - something that for some reason never seemed to worked well in my opinion (hence the chage to ZRS). But the boundary for Cat D is a Zftp of less than 2.65w/kg and yours is 2.5w/kg

 

[bridgy]

I still think the old cat system was more realistic than ZRS - my race yesterday had As, Bs, Cs and Ds in it - on a relatively flat course the Cs and Ds were dropped in the first 2 minutes. Even Bs were complaining the pace was too high. And at least one B purposefully came last to try to get his ZRS lower.

As far as I can see there was only 1 Cat A and he is 55kg and has only done 2 races all year - he probably got upgraded to A during this race by the look of it

 

[Whorty]

You're thinking about the old, old system. Category enforcement was/is based on this Zmap/ZFtp score - something that for some reason never seemed to worked well in my opinion (hence the chage to ZRS). But the boundary for Cat D is a Zftp of less than 2.65w/kg and yours is 2.5w/kg

Ah, I wondered what the zFTP was - mine is 208 on ZP even though it was 230 from the ramp test, and I'm holding over 210 in races for that first 20 mins.

Strange thing is I don't feel like a D, although I think as Martin noted recently even the C races now are mega competitive so maybe I am just a D after all

 

[Whorty]

As far as I can see there was only 1 Cat A and he is 55kg and has only done 2 races all year - he probably got upgraded to A during this race by the look of it

There was definitely at least one A in the pen pre race, and half the others were B with the remainder what we would recognise as top powered C riders ... then me and 2 others at the bottom, one of whom was definitely a D poor chap. When others were complaining in the pen that the Cs were having to race against Bs, and the Bs complained there were As in the pen, the poor D rider piped up his situation haha

I don't know how Zwift can judge if someone is trying to reduce their score - they could easily look at me, for example, and say ...well his ZRS seed is 400 and he's at the back of every race so he must be trying to lower his score even though I'm genuinely busting a gut and at my limit, yet another rider could be in the exact same place as me, with possibly a lower seed, and yet is trying to game the system. With the volume of riders involved, almost impossible to identify.

 

[bridgy]

Ah, I wondered what the zFTP was - mine is 208 on ZP even though it was 230 from the ramp test, and I'm holding over 210 in races for that first 20 mins.

Strange thing is I don't feel like a D, although I think as Martin noted recently even the C races now are mega competitive so maybe I am just a D after all

Zftp isn't the same as your FTP from a ramp test. It's all rather complicated to be honest! But it's some sort of secret power calculation Zwift came up with taking into account lots of things.

I don't think many races will now be using A-D cats now anyway so could all be pretty irrelevant

 

[bridgy]

There was definitely at least one A in the pen pre race, and half the others were B with the remainder what we would recognise as top powered C riders ... then me and 2 others at the bottom, one of whom was definitely a D poor chap. When others were complaining in the pen that the Cs were having to race against Bs, and the Bs complained there were As in the pen, the poor D rider piped up his situation haha

Are all those moaning people unaware that the category system has changed?! 🤷‍♀️

Of course there's some overlap with the old categories - that's kind of the point of a new system - if it was all Cat C's it would be no different to before!

I looked at the riders in that race on ZP earlier - there's no way anyone in the ZP results was even close to being A Cat apart from possibly that guy I mentioned (and even he I reckon only went to A after the race) so I don't know what they were talking about.

Feel free to have a look yourself and point out who else was Cat A and I'll happily concede that, but I can't see them.

And the "poor chap" D rider I saw had a racing score of 196 - he wasn't a "poor chap" at all he was an idiot who joined the wrong pen

 

[Legs]

In the Bologna TT I did last night, the top riders in the 350-520 band (C) put in some pretty fast times!