Category Enforcement - How is my category calculated? [February 2022]

of course you are an A racer, you were well before the cat enforcement came in but you managed to race B because of the issues that zwift have in dealing with lightweight riders plus the fact you have a 7.7wkg ftp showing on zwiftpower, so if that doesn’t put you in A then nothing will

if you think the 430w number written in my FTP field on my profile is real then you should have seen it when it was 8008135

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I know its not real, shows that you manipulate data, same as your weight not changing for 3 months

yes, i manipulated the FTP text box on the zwiftpower website to say “boobies”. 54.6kg this morning btw. lighten up. i like zwift racing enough to spend a lot of time on this website helping people have as much fun doing it as possible

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I don’t know, does signing up for a Zwift race 2 minutes before it starts count as tapering?

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I treat most Zwift races as B type races, not a lot of taper but max one per week. It will be my hardest session of the week if I race. If someone race +4 times a week and still finish in the top then they are not in the correct category.

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What about those doing so in cat A? :slight_smile:

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Though what if someone is a constant racer? How 'bout 2 races a day and 7 days a week. Whatever cat and performance that they can sustain with that schedule then does become the correct category. Sure, if they take a few days off, then in that next race they might WKG.

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i respect it, but i also know an 85kg+ guy (i’m mentioning his weight only because rich is in danger of rupturing a temple vein if i don’t) who races B cat enforcement races almost daily and wins prolifically, because he is a gifted sprinter and i respect that too… i don’t see why it has to be one or the other. but one way of looking at it is if people are racing less often then there are going to be less people racing, that much is for sure.

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As a first step toward disclosing to riders how the new Cat enforcement system is calculating your category, can at least ZP start showing your 15s to 20min averages based on all Zwift activities? Or what reason would there be to not do this?

John, I’ll play devil’s advocate here and say that the more transparent Zwift makes their CE system, the easier it will be for people to start gaming it. I think the information that’s been made available on here, when disseminated more widely, should be more than enough to give riders a rudimentary understanding of how CE differs from the old best-of-3 FTP.

I don’t know why people want to know the “inner workings” of it etc. Why not accept it for what it is in good faith; a new (better?) system with, I’m sure, its fair share of flaws that will need ironing-out in due course.

People should just give it a chance. My understanding may be misplaced and/or naive, but surely if the stronger riders from each of the current categories are all bumped-up one cat, then there shouldn’t be a problem with e.g. former D-cats racing C and C-cats racing B etc?

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No
8char

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But I’m referring to just showing ZP stats based on all activities – in theory any user can look at their own activities anyway and determine their 15, 30, 5min etc by themselves – it’d just be a bunch of work.

Also, there seems to be an entire “Activities” menu under our profiles in ZP that’s including non race activity?, though looks like it hasn’t captured ride info since end of 2021. What’s that about?

Maybe if everyone got a smooth progression through a category (i.e. they gradually improved, started getting a few podiums, a few wins and then got promoted) this would work. A significant number of people routinely get beaten all the time and then get promoted and then look back and see others from their previous category winning regularly and not being promoted whilst they languish at the bottom of their new category.

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Wow what did I do.

Let me clarify. Racing is based on your best performance and in my mind your best performance is achieved after a taper and a few days rest. But it is impossible to force everyone to do an all out effort to get their true category. So if someone race regularly (multiple races a week or day) then they would probably be able to perform better after a taper and good race prep, that may put them in a higher cat.
I did not want to imply that someone racing multiple races is cheating or sandbagging, they just stay in a fatigued state and can not go any harder.

I hope this make more sense. (Gerrie should not type while doing workouts :rofl:)

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You can say boobies here ?

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no. you’re banned

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For some, Zwift racing is like a stage race that continues indefinitely. And perhaps just like IRL at the TdF or similar, you’ll have stages where some types of riders (eg. sprinters) will purposefully not be going all out on a climbing stage in order to conserve for future stages (races), which might be designed for the sprinters that do believe they could podium. They wouldn’t call it sandbagging though to purposefully hold back on stages they know they can’t compete on.

22 posts were merged into an existing topic: Race ranking discussion

It’s training and/or for fun - it’s a training video game. While outdoor racing was shut down, had a few goals, but were related to power performance (was trying to get to A minimum category last spring) not race results.
Obviously Zwift is entirely secondary to real-life activities.

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