Hey Everyone, I have a question that’s going to make me sound like I’m a poor sport or like I’m whining, but I’m too curious not to ask the question.
What’s the point of organizing a “C” category race/ride/pursuit if 75-100% of the top 25 finishers are either A or B category? Are these guys sand-bagging? How am I ever going get some decent results under these terms? Thanks.
What event are you referring to, link to zwiftpower?
Hey Mike,
I’m relatively new to Zwift, and I’m not sure how to provide you with the info you’re requesting. However, the ride I signed up for and completed this afternoon was the “C” category for “BMTR Faster Masters A/B/C team pursuit;” a 43 mile ride. Although some of the riders’ profiles were private, roughly 75% of the top 27 riders were A or B category. I’ve been checking the results for about two months now and a vast majority of the top ten (10) finishers in C category races/rides are A/B riders.
I guess I’m just more curious than anything else. This scenario creates a great challenge for me, but it would be nice to, every once in a while, race against only folks who consider themselves a C rider.
Anyway, thanks for your reply.
TE
Yes, not only did I read the description (thanks for reposting it lmao), but I’ve completed this ride several times. My question (I’ll resist the temptation of being passive aggressive by reposting my question) related to why so many A/B riders race a classification or two below their chosen/earned category. This is especially relevant in this particular race because it’s supposed to be a pursuit event, the As chasing the Bs, and the Bs chasing the Cs. To be a genuine pursuit race, shouldn’t the categories be enforced with each respective group? Otherwise, the As are potentially chasing As/Bs and the As/Bs are chasing other As/Bs, which was the situation in the event today. Follow me?
The advertised wattage range was important and entirely acceptable to me for this particular workout, so that’s not the issue.
Anyway, maybe sandbagging is part of the Zwift experience. I’ll just keeping entering C events knowing that most of the top finishers have chosen to sandbag. It’s not real racing, so I suppose I should abandon my attachment and belief in generally accepted racing decorum of the real world!
TE
BMTR should use the available category enforcement rules to help prevent this from happening, not sure why they don’t? I suggest finding other races and clubs where they use the available tools to make things more fair.
They don’t because they don’t intend it as a race. It is set up as three groups, you choose which group you wish to ride in based on advertised power range for that group and the power you wish to be putting out for your training ride. Three groups start various minutes apart with aim, I assume, that groups all come together near the end of the 1.5-2 hour ride.
No race results and, IMO, not a race.
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Yes - that’s why I asked “did you read the description”. The groups A, B, C are NOT the CE categories.
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The description says that the A and B teams are meant to be the “faster teams”. It seems obvious that the whole premise of this event would be broken if a bunch of A cat riders join Team “C” and ride to ability, while C-cat riders join Team A. This event supposedly is Fenced with Zapping, so not sure what happened with the OPs experience.
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As mentioned, this was a Ride, not a race. The goal in these is to stick with the ride’s Leader (yellow beacon floats above his head), and per snapshot below, he averaged within the advertised C range:
Anyone who wants to know more about how this event is designed and operated can drop in to the BMTR group on Facebook and ask…
For racing the Category (based on average w/kg) is largely irrelevant as everything is geared around race score which looks at a riders racing ability. Unfortunately the term Category lives on when describing the bands for races. Might be better to have a new term to avoid this type of confusion. So for example on raw average w/kg (zftp/weight) I’m classified as B, yet my race score is 385 and so for racing I tend to find myself in the C bands of Range 1 or 2. So may well find yourself in race with a few higher ‘Category riders’ but they may have a good diesel engine but with no ‘punch’.