If the system stays this way, yes, it will be a complete failure for borderliners like myself, who are barely top of a Cat they believe they’re part of, but are “calculated” to be put in a Cat higher than their abilities.
I’m saying it is potential to be a failure for myself and others like me, who find themselves in this no-mans-land, and having no other choice but to not register if this is what happens.
And my point to that is “this is a waste of time from all hands involved if this fails”
I’m just trying to make my point, that this system will not work for me in its current form. I have no idea how the system will change, so I’m not going to bother extrapolating how it can, I just know where it stands right now.
Warmup or not James, I was never going to hold a lap with that group. Not anytime in this year.
I literally said that I pushed as hard as my body would allow and was dropped in the leadout. I’m not sure where that means “maybe you’re just bad at racing”
The only way I see myself looking back into this is two ways.
The system has a way to recognize I cannot compete in any fashion with the category it puts me in after X races, and drops me to a lower cat.
More cats are produced, yes it lowers numbers of entries, but would make for tighter competition.
I agree for you the new system will make it hard but that’s where i hope the power can be given to race organisers so not every single race has the same boundaries. Maybe others can have more cats like tfc mad monday so each can is split in two.
but right now for every rider that is finding the new system hard i bet you there are 10 other riders that find the old zp 20 min cat with sandbaggers much much worse so the improvement with cat enforcement is massive.
Worth noting that it’s entirely possible the reason the Cat C races that I was able to at least keep up with (and still push myself), ignoring cruisers, can also be in my case. (But worth noting, I say competitive here; not… winning, nowhere near in fact. Just able to peak perform
But my case doesn’t extend to this single cat. This is an issue that will exist because the cats are too wide.
I’ll continue to argue that Zwift needs to take control over cats and change their values versus letting organizers adjust things; in my opinion that just makes things super duper confusing.)
During one of the TDZ events someone was like “this is cat X, why is everyone so fast!” Only to recognize after everyone stated cats were distance.
Zwift dug themselves a hole by making that choice though.
You should try presenting your arguments in a more constructive way that doesn’t make it sound like you are whining. I am in no way saying you are wrong, it all does likely need some tweaks here and there but it’s impossible for it to be something that everyone will like. As someone else said, for every case like yours there could be many many others that are better off due to the sand baggers and cruisers getting booted up (not saying that is you).
Personally I’m at the upper end of B (in both ZP and this new system) and I’m busting my butt to try to get to A even though I know full well that I will get absolutely shellacked there. If/when I do, I will analyze my weaknesses and try to determine what I need to do to improve more to get better results.
For my argument’s sake again, I am trying to be noisy, because a change has to be made, or else this means I am forced out of the system, at which point, I see no point in it being worked on. (yes I realize it works for some, but again; at the cost of how many others like myself in the same place)
Side note; how does one find what ZwiftPower states your cat as?
(don’t worry Steve, I have a thick skin I can handle it lol, I’m prodding, I realize I am, but doing it with purpose)
As an extended response to James, yes, the purpose of racing is to push oneself.
I want to see the system succeed, and I’m not going to turn a race into a cruise for myself, I want to see where I truly lie, so that’s why I turned it into basically a TT race. I’m not whining or complaining about that.
Now that I’ve done that, between Friday’s 20 minute record, and last night’s records, I know what I can do in an hour…
And still can’t do AdZ sub one hour lol… maybe one day!
But again that misses the point; the point of me never standing a chance at the fringe of C/B
The system as it stands won’t allow me to race in C and realize I’m at the top and might come top 10. It’s not giving me that chance. And I find that as a flaw.
this is the whole point of the system is to put people in the correct pen. The new system shifted the boundaries a bit that is why you ended up bottom B.
I do understand being the bottom of the pen, I have been there in D C and B. But now your focus should change aiming to finish with the back markers.
One big improvement is to properly warm up before the race.
Another tip: join many races and just do the first 5km and try to stay with the front. A race can be won or lost in the start.
You’re not being forced out. You’re just a bit unlucky to be at the level where you’re not competitive with the cat you assigned to. Judging by your numbers from last 3 races - you’d be upgraded to B in zwiftpower in the next few races anyways. Given if you’d really would push them and not cruise.
And don’t underestimate power of warm-up. Just give it a go and try before next race. Google “gplama ultimate warm-up” and do it right before next race. You might even feel "tired’ after that warm-up, but you will be surprised how that race after warm-up is gonna go.
For clarification’s sake when I mean forced out, I am really just meaning “not interested in signing up, knowing I will be dropped within 5 minutes because I’m too bottom barrel to compete”
To me, the point of this system is to GAIN interest in people attending, right? I would hope so at least.
So that’s all I mean when I say that.
No, I was at my maximum yesterday : the day before I just had my personal best all time 20 minutes power. 244w the day before. And yesterday I exactly gave the same power.
So I am right now at my personal best ever, at 46 years old.
And I was just able to hang with the group, riding at maximum heart rate… if there hadn’t been a double draft, attacks would have worked, and i wouldn’t have been with the front group. I am never able to stay with a+ usually.
I have yet to race under this new system, but while I sympathize with those now at the bottom of the Cat and not having a good race, in all honesty that is a separate “issue”. And if you were in C at 3.1x w/kg and now in B at 3.2x w/kg, then you’d be experiencing something very similar very soon anyway. I remember that when I upgraded from C to B was the same race where I set a new 20-min W/kg PB (in all of Zwift). Made worse because I always push a higher W/kg on hills than on flats (that’s on me, not expecting Zwift to account for this). That was also where racing stopped for me for a good while, as I had to focus on mass start events. I could literally not survive the start. It was a VO2 effort until you pop. Just saying this to highlight it is not an issue of the Cat Enforcement Test, but rather the fallout from the fact that the spread within a category is too big if you split the entire Zwift userbase into 4 buckets. No matter where you draw the line, the bottom of each will always struggle. Added to that, not all w/kg is the same (weight). Going up a course feature from threshold/VO2 compared to from Z3 is just miles different and no w/kg system is going to “solve” that simply because a 60-65kg rider requires about .2-.3 w/kg more to stay in the draft than an 85kg rider would.
As often mentioned, race organizer controlled variety for pen boundaries could keep racing interesting to more people. And the alternative dug out from a previous suggestion of mine is to have an option of the “E” pen, where riders in “E” can see and draft all other category riders, while A-D category riders can only see or draft their own category. It sounds complicated but in my understanding a “Private meetup” works pretty similar already. You would not get a virtual trophy but at least you can see how you stack up compared to other riders. And you can decide what kind of effort you look for in a race without disturbing that race for others.
But again, how and where pens are best split is a different point of feedback than how the enforcement system works IMO. Both are important, but critique on one is not necessarily critique on the other. Giving an OK to one might help put resources to the next steps on their bucket list.
What is the minimum watt floor for cat B? He is under 200 watts, don’t you need to be above that too or is it 250 watts for Cat B? I can’t find the category definitions anymore on Zwiftpower, seems like they are gone now that the forums were closed. That should be listed somewhere shouldn’t it?
For clarification’s sake when I mean forced out, I am really just meaning “not interested in signing up, knowing I will be dropped within 5 minutes because I’m too bottom barrel to compete”
Just try doing warm-up like others suggested. You showed up on a B race with no warmup and surpised you were dropped.
In fairness to @Andrew_Nuse his numbers (on ZP at least) are very similar to mine, and I was in C having been originally assigned to B before the tweaks were made. I was rather disappointed by that too, and would probably have felt the same if I’d done B last night. So there must be something fundamentally difference between our power curves etc, or I’m barely below a threshold that he is barely above.
Always going to be someone right on the borderline that hates it. I’m fortunate it’s not me at present, not sure what else to say.
I’d like to clarify myself :
I don’t mind being in A, personally…
But I think that the new calculation has to be worked on because it doesn’t really work for very light weights, but it should be worked in a way not to help us too much.
That’s why i think the system should work differently for climbing courses and flat courses.
On climbing courses the new system would be perfect, putting light weights in a upper category, so that they don’t always win (it would be harder for me for example to win). But on flat courses, the system should use the 15s wkg and 30s raw watts, which would upgrade strong sprinters (even lightweight strong sprinters like my son).
This would ensure fairness and fun.
If the criteria were easy to choose for race organisators it would be perfect I think.
