Yeah, or you could just have validly have written: the heavy rider can ride at 320W and finish in the placings, the lightweight is disqualified at 270W.
Or: the heavyweight rider can ride at 43kph, the lightweight is disqualified at 42kph.
A W/kg limit is basically nonsense anyway, it inherently disadvantages the lighter rider in all comparisons. How is that remotely fair or sane? It shouldn’t have survived any initial setup and testing phase in the development of zwift.
(It also inherently disadvantages taller riders too, which is equally nonsensical and unfair, though the effect isn’t quite so striking.)
Why is why the current development of a new w/kg-based system specific is a complete waste of resources, which should instead be going into a results-based system.
Great! - just a reply to Lee’s suggestion that DQs are not fair if the w/kg limits are different for different rider types. Sounds like we are all agreed. The enforcement system takes care of it.
I know you know this, but we don’t manage those races.
I’d foresee (and this is how I have ZP set for these events) events set with zero category/power based restrictions, with the exception of Power and HRM stuff.
Appreciate that was directed to JB, but from the OP (direct from Zwift):
Whilst your CP is calculated from a range of efforts, it is still a single number that is a sort-of proxy for your LT2 / threshold power. Alongside the CP calc you get W’ (W prime), which is a measure of how much work you can do above threshold. Seeing as how critical above threshold work is to success in a Zwift race, it make sense to factor this in too.
Zwift have gone for 5m-8m duration, I believe because they want to map it to VO2 Max numbers, and this range is the most valid for this sort of mapping. Personally, I would look at MAP values between 2m-5m, as I think these sort of efforts are actually more representative of Zwift racing success, but that is purely an opinion piece.
I did not plot your suggestion yet. We should just be careful not it focus to much on the flat roads and forget about the climbs. We have one system for all types of races, lightweight riders should not expect to be in the top 10 of a flat race, same with heavy riders should not expect to win on the climbs.
but it should be:
(4w/kg OR 5.4w/kg MAP ) AND 250W
Pointing back to this plot. There is a huge difference in weight and power but it can be seen that the lightweight rider was able to match the speed of the heavy rider be drafting in the pack. If that race was going up any climb the light rider would be a lot faster than the heavy rider.
It makes sense to start with that formula, as this mirrors the existing system. If there is room for improvement after more testing, perhaps it can be tweaked.
Maybe I should have elaborated a bit more; but taking these boundaries:
A: 5.4w/kg MAP (60 VO2 Max)
B: 4.1w/kg MAP (50 VO2 Max)
C: 3.9 w/kg MAP (45 VO2 Max)
It intuitively “feels” like the gap between C and B is somewhat small especially when the wattage floor protection is “lost”. Keeping the wattage floor at the CP level at least maintains what everyone is “used to”, and I think would also be the easiest fix. This wattage floor may need more “personalization” in future to account for rider height and weight (because currently the further away you deviate from the limit the bigger the advantage you receive), but that is an entirely different question IMO and already exists with the current ZP wattage floor. Intuitively I also think that part of personalization is better addressed in the CP section of the formula rather than in the MAP section. But in all honesty if the goal is to upgrade the punchiest of riders regardless of rider weight then you may indeed want a wattage floor on both sides of the equation, I don’t really have a strong opinion on either. Mainly because I don’t have any background on how MAP is supposed to scale/relate to CP.
I would say running through ZRL data to see which riders are upgraded either way, and how that correlates to performance, may provide the most “informed” answer. Assuming that ZRL racers will typically show a greater punch power than the average Zwifter.
Yeah all good points. Once the new system (with a wattage floor) has been in place for a while, we can get a good idea if it is promoting enough (or too many) riders.
Not to harbour this point, but the below 200 / 250w FTP group contain what seems like a rather large group of users who cruise/sandbag the boundary and never manage to eek out that extra 1 watt to take them over the boundary.
There needs to be a potential sliding scale that moves with their MAP - As the MAP number increases the ceiling moves down to move them into the next cat.
I dont think changing the boundaries and rules to limit the efforts of 1 set of cruisers to then completely ignore a further group doing it is a good approach.
There should be enough races in the daily calendar so strong raw Watt racers can pick a flat race and strong W/Kg lightweights can go and have fun up mountain races, or rolling course for something finely balanced between the two, without the need for “safety nets.”
