I raced the 9pm Eastern Cat Enforcement race as a C last night - one lap Richmond UCI, well won by @Marko_TeamVegan. I don’t race as much as some but I do have race experience and am most definitely a mid-C racer. All in all I enjoyed it a lot and Cat Enforcement worked really well, at least for me in our race.
Small field of 25, initial start wasn’t as balls-to-the-wall as usual and calmed down much quicker than normal. Once things settled we were a group of about 18 around the Fan Flats. Whether it was double-draft or not I found it much easier to hang in than in a regular C race. As usual the race exploded up Libby Hill and I came off the hill in a loose “2nd group”.
Consistent with my YOLO race tactics I decided that I’d go full gas up 23rd Street which ended up with me blowing a gasket on the Governor St climb to the finish (because my crappy 1-2 minute power is also coupled with a distinct inability to recover) and coming in 12th.
So typical mid-pack finish. However, I never felt like I was where I was because the front of the race was either riding at Z2/3 or because they were putting out 1 W/kg more than me. And it was nice to have the ability to try something stupid mid-race rather than it be a matter of survival at that point!
Credit where credit is due for Cat Enforcement and I, for one, am looking forward to more of these races.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have cat enforcement noted in the description of these events, and not just in a hidden tag which you won’t see if you look for events on Zaift Companion?
I might be looking at the wrong events, but I can’t see anything in their descriptions. Isn’t this going to lead to confusion?
Don’t really see why I or anyone else should bother with any more of these tests. It’s rendered completely pointless by the huge gaping flaw in the game discussed elsewhere. The enforcement of an assigned category functionally works, that’s all we need to know and that was established after one race.
But who cares if everyone is now placed in the ‘right’ category, when it’s so easy to cheat anyway? Additionally why exactly should I help the company when the community I’m part of is treated with such disdain?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by community racing so I have to be careful what I am about to say for fear of upsetting a Club or League event which forum riders may wish to support.
I have seen comments from Lee and agree with his first comment that your reply seems contra to what this forum thread is trying to achieve. I also definitely agree with his later post that the vast number of posts are never directed personally at you I believe they are directed at Zwift Senior Management.
Within your post I read “we’re hurting community races”. Now I don’t know exactly what you mean by that and I may be way out of line but I read that as saying " The sandbaggers don’t have any honest racing cannon fodder to beat and they are getting fed up, please come back and let them beat you"
Now I don’t know what the recent race numbers are in these community race are but if they are dropping doesn’t that suggest two things:
Honest racers prefer the Pen Enforcement races they can enter now and see fast approaching.
Non ZwiftPower registered racers are more likely to sign up to ZwiftPower if that becomes their best way of getting good, honest, competitive, fair well attended races. Something I believe Zwift is actively encouraging.
Your current short term Lose Lose situation may eventually turn into a Win Win situation for all honest ZwiftPower racers, although not so pleasant for everyone now. ( I absolutely do not want to spoil anything right now for anyone doing their best for their Club and League events)
Zwift is big business and I assume intends to gain users not lose them. I assume Zwift has long term plans in place to reduce the likelihood of losing users. So a parting question in which I would be keen to hear an answer from Zwift Hierarchy.
Will race pen enforcement be the only option for all races in the future?
Many apologies if this question has been asked and answered
If it’s okay with you I’m going to continue supporting Flint to try and get our category enforcement events as good as they possibly can be regardless of what may/may not be spoken of elsewhere.
It’s optional. There are specific events (WTRL TTT, ZHR Masters, etc) that rely on this being turned off.
I think I went a bit OTT on that point. What I was trying to say is that Zwift sanctioned events are likely to pull attendance away from some community events and by removing (assuming we have) some Zwift Crit City races, this will free up the attendance to compete in Community events.
When I say Community Events I’m referring to ones organised by members of our community, rather than us or our marketing partners / federations.
Thanks @Adrian_Wong_HERD. I honestly don’t know if I could give good feedback. The field was small and it felt like a relatively easy win. All I got out of it is that I am going to just self-promote to B going forward even if the logic says I can still race in C.
It wasn’t clear to me if double-draft was on or not. I tried an attack at one point and it felt impossible to stay away, even though the pack behind me wasn’t pushing all that hard.
I asked a question which possibly was never going to lead to the actual answer I was really searching for, sorry.
Question: In the future will Non Registered ZwiftPower users be allowed to sign up for races through the Companion App or in any other such similar manner?
Question: If they are allowed to sign up for races where the results are shown on ZwiftPower will their results be included in the final ZwiftPower results?
Finally got to do a n enforced race since I’ve been I’ll.
The new dynamics change everything an I realized that I’m so used to playing in mass start races that my old tactics aren’t optimally suited for the new races.
Probably course selection and race design were completely different from my norm- 1 full lap of Richmond was a social ride to Libby Hill.
I’m used to mass starts where people can try to use the faster riders.
I’m looking forward to the new system in my regular race.
Yeah I saw that attack, the pack didn’t make a special effort (at least I didn’t) to catch you.
Massive kudos for voluntarily self-promoting - I self-promoted from D to C and the short term pain was worth it in the long (very long ) run. Good luck in B!
This is more tricky because we start talking about consent and whether it’s okay for things like their name, weight and heart rate information to be shared with all other registered Zwiftpower users. I don’t have a solution for that I’m afraid.
I am wondering if the end game might just have to involve at least more reliance on this especially at the less taken serious (for want of a better phrase) of the racing portfolio. It sure does remove all the endless quest for perfection here ( that in itself IMO is just counter intuitively a self fulfilment road to stagnant and boring race events) .
It starts to foster instead a re-focusing of what personal satisfaction and racing is about , not winning but just feeling you had a good one and competed with wherever you were in the field. Dare I say it a perspective on improvement and goal setting . In practical terms getting dropped in a race is no longer a long slow death to the end as there will be another group to come along in most cases to settle into.
It might also foster more risk taking breakaway attempts as a result in the front groups.
The only area where this is not going to be instantly good would be at the very top which is where ranking/points probably comes in (might might be how we make A cat racing more vibrant insead of an end game) this will counter the feeling of disappointment that being promoted to cat A is a simple entry into a racing fraternity where you will always be an also ran into an opportunity to launch into some new progression) .and the very bottom where perhaps we might have not put enough thought into how to create events specifically for that space , and not just seeing it as some group of users assigned an alpha number in a sequence . I will only plant the seed for some creative thinking on this here because it might be going off topic .
Which is the third?
) run. Good luck in B!