BUZZZZ! “The ass sat on this bike is significantly greater than the figures you have recorded. You will need to change it from your daughters weight to yours before you can enter the pen”
2 Likes
Meh, mine’s well outside the return window.
2 Likes
Mines lasted me years. Only 12 new handles and 8 new forks.
3 Likes
I’ve got a few extra pitchfork tines embedded in my ribs if you need replacements. I won’t even charge you for them!
6 Likes
Perhaps you can use them to create a big bonfire to burn the zwift bike project so everyone at ZwiftHQ can stop wasting time and money on that and start supporting you with what is really important adding value and making the software platform better , 
Well done and keep up the good work.
Sadly you cant sell them to Peloton for the same purpose , they already set about self combusting on that failed business model on the own.
1 Like
Since it’s an OR between the CP and MAP criteria, don’t you also need a watts boundary for the MAP criteria? Otherwise this screws the lightweights again…
3 Likes
I guess this is what the test races (or more rider cases) would be for. If the pre- or post race evaluation entails to determine ‘which metric put rider X in category Y’ followed by the question ‘how did this rider do in category Y’, then it should be relatively fast to spot outliers and make adjustments. Maybe aided by post-race feedback such as “felt over-threshold in the draft, was dropped after 3 minutes and had to ride solo to the finish”. There are some cases posted here now so I do agree that this needs to be looked at.
I’m personally not in big favor of hard boundaries because it goes ugly the further away from the norm you get. It shouldn’t be too difficult to take the CdA calculations and normalize the w/kg boundary to body profile (weight + height).
Yes, this seems to be affecting the super lightweights. Has been pointed out above, probably just needs a wattage floor like CP does.
1 Like
Im all for hardware restriction, anyone better than me is not allowed on a bike, sorted!
2 Likes
Can I have my pitchfork back, as feel far more appeased after the above. Thank you for your efforts
1 Like
Less of the super-lightweight, this will put a huge number of women in the wrong category, so needs to be fixed.
Nah, rankings first. Those zPower users with whacky numbers will just get promoted to somewhere suitable for the dodgy trainers anyway. 
3 Likes
Well, no. It categorises based on the logic clearly defined. I don’t think it’s a gender thing. There is a disparity where lighter weight riders may be able to hold very high w/Kg maximal aerobic power values due to their weight, which distorts the categorisation due to much lower raw watts over a longer duration. Or are you suggesting that females hold higher 5-8 min power values in w/Kg then men, regardless of weight?
I guess what I am trying to get to is - should a 60kg male and a 60kg female be potentially categorised differently? Is there a physiological reason why that should be the case?
The female only cats in Zwift Power are a way to split female only fields more evenly. This could come with organiser defined cat boundaries in the future, but the broader logic is applicable for either gender.
1 Like
Heres a thought, and probably a bad one (and a pain to implement), how about a badge, label or verification for legit riders, ie those that calibrate their trainer weekly, update their weight at least weekly, race always in the correct category etc and then you could limit a particular race to verified users only. Absolute killer to implement, but would be great knowing you are racing against 100% legit riders for once. It is a far flung wish for way down the line, but hey I can dream
There kind of already is one. The orange tick that Verified riders have, e.g. for the Premier League. Though that’s for going through the Zwift rider verification process.
I’m saying that as an averaged-sized white European female, I have a CP of around 185 W, and a VO2 max that may be around 50, but I am being categorised as B rather than C. I used to live in Japan - and there I was big for a woman. So while it may only effect a small number of “super-lightweight” men, it effects a large number of youngsters and women, and quite a large percentage of the world’s population.
As for your question of how different people should be categorised … as many others have said, all that is required here is a system that more or less mimics the current zwiftpower categories. Then hopefully sooner rather than later, a ranking system where categories are based on actual performance.
How about for the masses 
Resource heavy granted and totally unrealistic
This is a tough one to fix, my other half is currently impacted by this, C mixed Cat rider but now being placed in B.
Though, from a racing point of view, those ceiling limits gave those using them a fairly hefty advantage any time there was a long hill.
For me, everyone racing together should have to race to the same rules – Those previous boundary limits meant for example a C Cat light weight rider could climb for 20mins at 4.1/4.2wkg or more and not get DQ’d whilst the rest of the field was limited to around 3.4wkg before being getting a postrace DQ. I don’t see how that is fair racing?
I get there are physiological barriers, but the same applies to all riders (light, heavy, tall, short) and they don’t all get leeway over their numbers.
As a fix, I would hope with these changes Zwift could do away with post-race disqualification of races for exceeding boundaries – As you should be in the right category to start this would mean they could then re-apply the ceiling limits (though I do feel they need to be changed a little as someone with over 4wkg 20min effort should not be a C, or over 5wkg for a B).
But without post-race disqualification I feel the cruisers and sandbaggers will just game the system again as they know they wont be disqualified.
2 Likes
What matters in a race is speed. A rule to limit w/kg inherently advantages heavier riders as they are faster at the same w/kg than lighter riders. This advantage persists up hills, on the flat, all terrain. How is this fair?
In practice w/kg is a reasonably good equaliser in zwift as I’ve explained (as zwift uses weight to determine frontal area). But when you compare 90kg to 50kg, there’s a big discrepancy at the same w/kg level.
3 Likes
Interesting Model if it works as you explain.
Using me as an example:
Previous = Bcat with 3,85w/kg (avg 3 best last 90 days)
Now A-cat, despite these values:
CP= 3.69 (using 2 or 3 points in intervals.icu)
MAP 5-8min = 4,78-4,29
Well below the limits for A-cat on both CP and MAP.