Last spring, when I stopped Zwift to ride IRL, I was in C group. I enjoy zwift racing but now category enforcement won’t let me race in D group because it seems to think I am still have C group fitness.
I can currently only ride periodically this winter, meaning there’s no way I can accumulate 90 days of getting fit again. That aside, I want to do Zwift races to mix up the riding, but if I’m getting dropped at the start of every C group, it gets boring. I have neither the time or interest in trying to build up to C group intensity.
So category enforcement has effectively barred me from using Zwift for racing in a category that reflects my current fitness and interest.
Is there a way I can get category enforcement revoked? If it can be seen that I am not riding regularly at the moment and when I am, my power levels are way down on what they were, isn’t that sufficient justification?
If someone can advise on how best to get category enforcement revoked, that would be great.
Category enforcement only looks back at 90 days of history, so whatever you were doing last spring does not affect your current category. But there’s more than one reason why you might be in C category - maybe you’re doing C category power and you belong there, or maybe you lowered your weight for a free ride (common problem when sharing an account) or maybe you had a trainer overreporting power on one ride.
If you take a look at your profile on my.zwift.com and post screenshots of your PRs people here can probably provide more insight into how you ended up where you are. This info is private so it’s up to you if you want to share it.
If you do end up stuck in C and want to race, there are still some options open to you, such as TFC Mad Monday which splits up the categories and would presumably have you racing with the lower end of C category, or events that use the zwiftracing.app category system which combines both power and race results to rank riders. If you’re interested in team racing there are more options for zwiftracing.app events such as the 5v5 Club Ladder and Dirt Racing Series.
you do you brother, but id like it if you at least did it in B/A races. all the new racers go to d/c, i dont really want them to get put off from racing because their first race was a sh*t experience
haha, sounds about right. i jumped on a bot/spinbike guys wheel recently, i thought it was you actually but it probaly wasnt. with that said, zwift really could just do something about it. i’d like them to, since getting my legs ripped off at 7wkg by guys who couldnt actually do the power was what put me off A racing years ago. it’s probaly why the A cat is so empty nowadays
Doesn’t 90 days of zwift history equate to 90 days of activity? So it’s the same point I’m making?
If I do zwift once a week, it would take 90 weeks for category enforcement to be removed, so long as it’s clear my sustained power output is lower than C group? So it does not allow a rider (aka paying subscriber) who wants to get straight back on the turbo after a break and race at a lower level because their fitness is lower (for example).
Yesterday, on returning back to zwift after a month of inactivity (illness), all group D rides were category enforced. I can’t hang around a few days till the next race which might not be category enforced. That doesn’t aid recovery fitness at all as there’s no structure; and, what are the chances that the race is on when I have availability? That’s basically a massive step back to the days when races first started to appear on the events list.
If zwift operates on a 90 day history, well, that’s back to e.o.October last year, when I returned to zwift after riding IRL. So I have to wait till end of January this year before (hopefully) the enforcement is removed? I’ll be back riding IRL e.o. Feb!
As I am trying to rebuild turbo fitness, I’m not putting out enough continuous power at C group levels to start with and stay with the bunch (or even tail-enders). That might’ve been what I had last spring when I finished with zwift winter turbo, but I can’t sustain that now.
Tom’s right - it’s 90 calendar days. But my question is what happened that caused you to end up in C? If you post the information I mentioned, I may be able to answer that, and the PR data will provide dates you can compare to your ride history to identify the ride that did it. If your fitness is increasing and those PRs are recent, then you’ll probably just stay in C. If you’re having a problem where your trainer overreported power once, you can get Zwift support to fix it for you, but if the problem happens again you’d be right back in C.
I was in exactly the same situation as you (expect Zwift was convinced I had A fitness which I didn’t). In FRR the organiser let me ‘race down’ based on my chilli category, and it was a superb fitness boost.
Whilst Zwift still has me A, I’ve gained enough fitness to be able to do some A races now and FRR races have also reclassified me to Emerald on the Zwift Racing App so that’s opened up some more lower category races to me too
Zwift are looking into it. Meanwhile in answer to your question:
Q. question is what happened that caused you to end up in C?
A. Because I was fit enough at the time to move up into that group. My summer break for riding IRL: last ride on zwift was in April last year and I resumed in October, leaving a calendar gap of 7 months. That’s quite a lot more than 90 days. Which led me to suspect it was 90 days of zwift activity instead.
category, and it was a superb fitness boost.
(90days)