Then I am very disappointed. 
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We look at all activities on Zwift outside of workouts and then use your best power values under FTP (CP/W`) and VO2 max/MAP values between 5 and 8 minutes within the last 60 days.
I’ll update the information.
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I’ve ridden with both Dave and Gerrie and they are most certainly C and B riders respectively. This CETE has me in C but that’s only because I haven’t done anything hard since November 6th of last year (Ride w/Reggie). And if I hadn’t put down some emotional power in the Cancer event I’d be a D. It would interesting to see where I would be in if this wasn’t the case since Autocat had me racing some pretty heavy hitters in the Zwift Classix.
I assume from that, that we’ve all been given a value/category already then, based on 60 days going back from right now? Rather than some sort of baseline that may quickly change.
Correct. 60 days from today, not 60 days from some arbitrary date in the future or the past. 60 days rolling, essentially.
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Okay, thanks. 
As I posted in the other thread, I think this should have been step 2 or 3 of the process… but as we are here, I’m kinda ok with taking a wider approach to how riders are categorised…
I still stand by the post I made a few weeks back about these test events, how do you get the people this impacts the most to sign up and provide feedback?
If you only get feedback from people willing to take part, your missing the feedback from the people who you need it from the most. Your building an echo chamber.
And them not using it, is a) not testing it, b) providing the data you need. Unless the idea is you don’t want those people to continue racing.
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Good question. I plan to take part. I expect to be repeatedly battered by much stronger riders and then… probably stop taking part. 
This is the problem with coming up with whole new (not ZP) categories as the starting point for the test. Instead of going ‘okay the system works - what’s next?’, we’re already talking about whether it’s right or not.
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…and why would someone like me, a current C racer, want to even bother signing up for a race if the A pen is my only option?
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This isn’t what people were expecting and I think I’ll reserve judgement till I’ve tried a few races. I haven’t raced much for a long time mainly because I’m a bottom of the barrel B racer and relatively light so I’m down on power and I’m sure I could be beaten by plenty of heavier top C riders. With my actual FTP I am a B and that is what this new thing has me down as although at the moment I am C on Zwift power.
Since effectively the categories have changed I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that you were beaten in C and are now in B since you’d be comparing two different scales.
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FirstBeat seems to disagree, and their data suggests you can get a fairly accurate measurement outside of the lab.
Now, that is dependent on knowing your max HR, which I’m not sure how Zwift is going to get that unless they’re planning to just use the Max HR field in your profile.
My race FTP has been 2.8 - 2.9, 77 kg and the enforcer put me C so I’m interested in checking the races out.
It looks like the C race is 1 lap of Richmond! Nice!
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My opinion is we need more categories for this to work. A single B cat for example is too wide and doesn’t encourage people to enter and ride up a grade. I am a good C grader (3.1 avg) and been bumped up to B for these trials. I have zero chance in those racers so won’t waste my time. 1 step forward 2 steps back imo.
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The thing is, you dont know what this has done at the sharp end of the Cat B’s - I’m in the same boat as you, but from a few comments in this and the other thread, good B’s have been pushed into A so who knows!
Edit: I do agree that more Categories would help though
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Interesting.
It’s immediately obvious that many people forced to upgrade are going to be upset. Straight away there’s going to be a stream of justification as to why they should be allowed to enter the category they excel at.
Obviously, riders like Gerrie who are clearly seeded incorrectly have cause for alarm.
For myself, it put me in B. Which is a huge improvement. I am right on the edge of A. However, I’ve never done a full 5min max effort in Zwift. Based on what Flint post, I would be over 5.4w/kg for V02Max.
It’s going to need further tuning to stop riders like myself dominating B races.
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I think this would be awesome for bigger races, but for the average Zwift race there are only around 20 riders per category. I personally enjoy races more when there are more racers(20+ riders) rather than a small group of around 10.
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We sometimes have meetup races among our people, where we adjust the weight as a handicap.
Will this affect the category judging?
We know it’s a gray area, but we feel that handicap races are a great way to have a serious virtual race with people who have different leg strength…
It sorts me correctly into A, but I upgraded to A recently anyway so I can’t comment on whether the metric they’re using makes sense. sort of a shame because almost 100% of my rides on zwift were group rides so my PR numbers were never hidden at any point in the last 3 years
Bottom line is they’ve changed the cat threshold from:
FTP > 4.0 AND 250W
To something like:
FTP > 4.0 OR 270W
(I’m getting the 270 from 75% of 360 MAP).
As I wrote a while back, changing the AND to an OR will completely change the nature of the cats, rather than being the puny weaklings who don’t stand a chance, the 60-65kg B cat riders will suddenly be the hottest ticket in town. Heavier riders won’t be able to stay with them on the hills and lighter ones won’t be able to hold them on the flats. It is not immediately obvious whether this is a good or bad change, but it’s certainly a big change, which is disappointing since we were repeatedly assured there would be no changes.
Using MAP may cut out some of the cruising, but if so it would have been simpler to just use 75% of MAP as an FTP estimate.
That’s assuming that the MAP estimate is at least as good as the current 20min FTP is.
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