you would be fine as a B in low attended daily races like crit city etc but you will probably struggle against the scandinavian 1200w 15s guys that ride DBR or league races
you can always choose to race up a category, but also you’re not obligated to and i don’t personally agree with the notion that it’s unethical for anyone to race their minimum cat at all if they want to. maybe you can have some close threshold racing with the japanese guys up the alp in B but race flat races as a C. whatever suits your training goals or brings you the most satisfaction
I also got bumped up to cat B after doing some short sub 20 min events. Your CP is calculated based on your 12 and 3 min power and definitely does not account for the event duration, which is a flaw as far is I’m concerned. Zwiftpower excludes event shorter than 20min. I think zwift should do the same. Otherwise riders that never do short events have a lower min cat.
I think you are wrong…CP is calculated from 2 to 50mins and MAP/VO2Max from 5 to 8min. It can be that you were upgraded because your MAP is more than 4.1w/kg (50 VO2Max).
99% of Races on Zwift are decided by Sprint or 1 to 5min power and i think this boundaries are FAIR. CP Category Boundaries
A: 4w/kg and 250w CP
B: 3.2w/kg and 200w CP
C: 2.5w/kg and 150w CP
Think he is saying that if you do short events your MAP or CP gets overstated as that is used in the model, while of course at end of a longer event you can’t sustain the same 2 minute power (for instance) then you can at a short event.
However, model just models a curve and the short term power is meant to be derived from your absolute best effort at that time window. Hence, people doing short events get better estimates for their short term power than those who only do long events.
This also points to an issue, and apologies for bringing up the same point over and over again, that time window (60 days is far to short) to base the CP and MAP on. Can only use myself as an example but for a brief period I was categorized as A. Which surprised me as my long term power is not particularly impressive (3.7 wkg or something) so assumed it was based on my 5m power as I just set a record for that in March. Anyway, March dropped out and was categorized as a B again. Did a similar event as in March and matched my watts almost exactly for five minutes last week… But no upgrade. only looked at the why now and over last 42 days (intervals) my best powers are set at all intervals except for the 20 minute one. MAP over last 42 days is 380 while it is 420 for the 84 days. Which to your reply above put me in A historically (above 410).
Now to my point: 60 days is too short to determine this one. That best 20 minutes was on the Alpe (for some reason I did worse in ZRL in Innsbruck) which falls out of the window. Think if I need to I could probably do it again but hardly ever do 20 minute efforts. While new categorisation is better than old one it suffers from similar issues in the cat determination. I honestly believe a longer timeframe over which it is determined (and a buffer to make dropping down less likely) would make it much better (and on long term make it dependent on race results).
Long story short: make time window for determining parameters longer.
@James_Zwift i know this is sensitive topic but i think we would all appreciate some feedback from Zwift about plans/ideas how to prevent this in the FUTURE?
I had some time to think and i wonder if everyone should be under a microscope before downgrade with MAP/Vo2Max within last 12 months that is higher than the category boundary. This riders are most likely to be the ones that are sandbagging.
On the other hand we need to prevent weight doping as in this case
A little feedback after weeks of ce races…
I was pushed to A from B with one zrl race, as I was peaking and gave everything… so since this race I only raced A category whereas before I used to race B on flat races.
I am only 55kg.
I finish every race with the lowest raw watts of any A, and I am now very efficient at drafting and sitting in wheels.
But even like that, I still get dropped in the descents (I have to alternate sprinting ans supertuck in someone else’s wheel to stay with the bunch), and on the flats I have a really hard time as my ftp isn’t high enough to stay with the bunch : I have to ride at my ftp just to be able to hang in the wheels.
Still ok for me, I am progressing and after a big block of training will probably be able to do it more easily…
But that’s a very strong argument for the raw watts limits : most of lightweight B’s need that, or they will just stop playing this game.
We have to remember it is a game and people want to have fun.
I still do, because I feel I am progressing so this is an incentive, but having fun is necessary if Zwift wants to keep their players.
About the pro movistar cheater : it is a Movistar thing. A few months ago another pro movistar rider used to come on B races, he made breakaways and only the best B riders could follow him. I could, as some others, I didn’t follow him except when another B rider did…
That screwed a lot of races.
And it was all ready Movistar… you know that team with the worse race tactics ever seen!
i don’t know how they’re calculating map because i’m back in CE B for a week now and i still have a 5.7wkg effort in my 60 day. i can probably take a decent stab at where they’re actually basing MAP from (i wont) but it’s certainly not from 5min
From what Zwift have said it’s 5m-7m average. So if you had a big 5m but not much from 5m-7m it could be below the MAP boundary (remember ZMAP != IRL MAP)
Zwiftpower minimum category has a different set of rules and does not have to equal Category Enforcement category, including just race results vs everything you do on Zwift and the average of three 95% 20min efforts vs one single effort of 2-50mins.
This is the catch…it’s not 1 single effort.
CP is calculated from all your best efforts from 2 to 50mins. The more you Zwift the more accurate the CP and MAP/Vo2Max will be.
The Boundaries are different from ZP to CP if you are looking at W/kg
example for Cat C to B:
Zwiftpower - 3,36w/kg (20mins)
Category enforcement - CP 3,2w/kg (2 to 50mins) or 4.1w/kg MAP (50 VO2 Max) that is 5 to 8mins)
This difference of 0,16w/kg is the reason for most upgrades .
It doesnt need a formal launch date, it needs information put out there for additional feedback to come in from all sources in case something new comes out of the woodwork. plus then also let people know why they cant sandbag anymore…
They need to start talking about it and getting the message out sooner rather than later
I’d wager that part of reason for silence is precisely because CE is still technically labelled as “FutureWorks”. Same reason there’s not a lot of press releases about enhanced Club features. Have there been any email blasts about the increased number of pace partners, etc?
When such time comes where CE is the de facto means of organizing races, AND, Zwift feels they’re comfortable taking that stance, then and only then it seems there will be formal communications. I don’t consider these forums a channel for formal membership communication – more a venue to try out stuff.
