Check his weight (changes). He did that 5,6 W/kg with 75kg, changed it to 79 and a few days later to 80. At the moment he doesnt exceed the limit of 5,1 with that weight.
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i actually don’t know who the zhq experts are but david seems to more or less know the ins and outs, so maybe ask @DavidP or something through DMs. but the broad strokes are essentially that CE uses a modelled curve based on actual data points, not your whole actual power curve. probably about three or four, it likely isn’t too many since they need to make that calculation for every single user on zwift, every single ride they do, whether they actually race or not. other than a few specific clauses and quirks that staff have chosen to post here about previously, i don’t know which points on the curve are used or how they’re used. i’m pretty confident they’re the same for everyone though, as what you’re suggesting sounds like a practical nightmare
if you go to the “more info” tab next to your fitness metrics and scroll past all of the words you’ll find four intervals listed. it took zwift a whole lot of time to add those so i used to tell everyone to go blow out a 3, 5 and 12 minute effort, on the premise that those efforts are all you need for a reasonably representative CP curve, but i guess whatever is listed there is gonna more or less produce the same result. i’m glad they added that, it could be more visible, but it’s good that it’s there.
i don’t know about that guy’s 5.6. 5.1 for 5 does not mean a 5.1 zmap though. mine tracks my 6 minute more or less to within .1, always has. i don’t know anything about that guy but get off his back, man. dont bring that here. if you were wondering why i’m irritated, this behaviour is what irritates me. it never comes from anywhere sincere
In this case I think it’s a worthwhile question. The person isn’t doing anything wrong - so no slight to them, but maybe they should have tripped one of the cat boundaries given their power looks high for B given their weight.
when i have a question, and i often do, i find the person who might be able to answer it and i go to them to ask it. i don’t start a political campaign. i don’t like CE either, it’s not the point.
I think in this case the hope was someone here would be like “yeah, this is why!”, Looking at the data, I think we’d need David to chime in though. Wasn’t clear from the start.
@DavidP i wanted to write about this in a DM but since it’s here i will just post it.
I have multiple cases where 8min Power is above 6mins Watts and zMAP is only reading from 4 to 6mins…why?
Is Vo2Max on The at Home Cycling & Running Virtual Training App unrelated to 8mins power and is taken from zMAP?
Example:
zMAP and 6mins is 328W
His 8mins is 341W
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All I’m trying to understand is why riders like me who are totally out our depth in A right now are being made CE A but very strong riders like that with better numbers are in B? Using examples illustrates a point better. I never said that rider was at fault, or doing anything wrong, I’m just trying to understand the system. If it’s not taking his 5 min wkg power from racing, can you explain why it is using that value (from training) for me?
As well as my own riding I also captain and have started coaching others and some of them are trying to move up a category but aren’t being moved despite supposedly hitting the boundaries with their efforts. Yes they can race up (and do) but they’d really like that letter change against their name.
My ZMAP has NEVER matched the 6 mins on my Zwift profile - it’s always been higher and more like 4:45-5:15 on my curve. My ZFTP has varied from 40 mins on that curve to 55 mins.
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yeah, i’m sorry for getting irritated really. normally i wouldn’t since this stuff usually comes from people who aren’t used to navigating or learning rules. in your case, you can just move around the mountain, you don’t have to move the mountain. i know CE is frustrating for a lot of people. this system really doesn’t favour testers and like, other actual endurance athletes. female riders get the short end too, because just like pre CE, anaerobic capacity is heavily favoured.
some of the info on the category boundaries is actually incorrect. if one of your riders hits the zmap limit and she is light, she won’t get the upgrade. the zmap ceiling doesn’t apply when the watt floor applies. i don’t know your riders but i wonder if that’s maybe why they aren’t getting the upgrade they want. well, they can always race up. fitness is fitness, strength is strength. i know some people like that kind of external motivation but you don’t necessarily need to put a grade on it
as far as the general CE logic goes, it’s consistent, but it’s weird. i more or less understand my own numbers, but that’s about it. it’s opaque. you can get a 20w bonus to your zftp just because you let a 90 day PR expire and it flattened your curve. zwift actually touch on that in the little faq i pointed you to now, but that stuff wasn’t even given a mention for the first year or so it existed. it started off resembling a CP/W’ curve, but after some iterations and patches, i don’t know what it resembles now. and i’m as curious as dejan as to how whatever the hell is going on there ^ happens
This is the obvious consequence of “security through obscurity”, the totally discredited approach that zwift (of course) doggedly pursues.
We aren’t allowed to know how the numbers are calculated, by deliberate policy decision of zwift. The claim is that this stops people from gaming the system, but what really happens is that the system is full of bugs and anomalies that don’t get fixed because no one knows what it’s really supposed to be doing.
People gaming the system was never the problem even in the good old days of 20 min power where people knew exactly where they were. Sure there was a little bit of gaming, but the real problem was that the system was stupid, not that it could be gamed. The new system is stupid in slightly different ways. Stopping people from gaming it doesn’t cure the stupidity but does reduce confidence because of the anomalies and apparent bugs.
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An open algorithm would also encourage knowledgeable people to point out flaws, undesirable edge cases, and other design consequences that could be fixed or improved, more or less for free. It doesn’t seem like analysis of human performance is really an area of strength for the company (and why would it be?) so this would likely provide more benefit than risk.
You need to move your 3min Power higher to move the zMAP closer to 6mins…sorry but the steeper your Power Curve is the lower your numbers will be…so riders that are on the Category Limits have problems cause stronger punchier riders will be Category Down and Time Trial specialist will be category higher. This is the opposite of what everyone wants.
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I really wish I could raise that 3 minutes right now 
I’m trying really hard to get my top end back but I have to be patient whilst my vitamin deficiency improves. I had about 4 weeks unable to do anything above low Z4 (mostly just Z2 riding).
It almost seems to me like someone made an error in the code for the ZMap calculations and something went in backwards. The more punchy a rider you are, the higher your ZMap will generally be, not the other way round.
There should IMO also be a different formula for men and women based on differences in the power curves. Coggan data obviously isn’t the only data available but it’s still highly respected and you can see here the differences in the top end of the curve taking the 5s/60s/FTP (I plotted that at 40 mins) from where the 5 minute power is at 5.1. Or maybe they have applied a different formula but again it’s the wrong way round to what it should be so it’s overestimating VO2max in women compared to men. For men the 1 min power against 5.1wkg is 8.74wkg (male cat 2). For a women to have an 8.75wkg 1 minute, the 5 min wkg is 6.05wkg (female world class).
Don’t they (Zwift) also take in account changes in weight and use an average, so it isn’t just an exact point in time on your powercurve, it’s an average based on weight history?
Watts are over Wkg…so if you set your PR in Watts it will take that weight to add to the weight average.
It’s not like your best Wkg but your best Watts.
Example my 5min PB is 360Wkg at 80kg and that would be 4.5Wkg. Next day i’m 81kg and i will do 364W and that is 4.49Wkg…so my PR in Watts is up but my Wkg is down 
will leave the curve analysis to the others, but there’s more direct ways to navigate the system when it isn’t in your favour too. this is advice for everybody really. if you’re injured or ill and you’re stuck in a category, negotiate something with the organiser. hope he doesnt mind me mentioning it, cant imagine he would, but with dave’s permission i used to sit up the A cat in the kiss 100 and just watch the Bs race from last wheel without getting in the way. actually, you can learn a lot about the game doing that, it takes a lot more concentration than you’d think. sure beats sitting behind a pace partner for 3 hours. the point is though, you can always do something to carve out some fun for yourself when things aren’t really going your way
just use your common sense, granted sometimes we all come up short there but that’s life, and ask for permission where you think it’s probably necessary to, be correct where it counts, and in the long run nobody is really gonna care all that much about what you do. just treat whatever allowances you’re given with the appropriate amount of respect and people will more or less take care of you when it matters
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