CE by watts per KG was a meritocracy, Racing score is about equity, I am wondering if Zwift has been took over by Marxists…
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Yes. I want to race others that are my equal. I don’t want to drop anyone from the start. I don’t want to know that I will drop half of the field on the first climb. I want it to open from the start. Anything can happen. The group should be equal in many ways, but there are always some with special abilities in a group in a 5-category system. I want to have these smaller differences in the group, not these huge differences in abilities we see now.
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I’m disadvantaged by both but still find a way to win races. Watts are obviously useful but you also need to know routes, drafting, and when to worry about a gap.
That, together with tactics and smaller differences are abilities that should be the decisive factors in races. Not the category/grouping system.
I wonder what is fun with winning when you know you are the best in the group. It is just sandbagging put into a system.
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Just find the race that last 500m and put your 30s power to the max potential.
I raced some of the ZRS test races and really quite enjoyed them since I was a D who got promoted to C earlier this year and found it real hard to be competitive in Cat C. The scores would vary and depending on race times and there were a lot of different options to race. For reference my ZRS is 378, so I’m locked into the 350-520 races.
Logging into the app to see if I want to do a race later and all the races have 4 categories, so functionally it’s the same as Cat D, C, whatever. There’s Cat B riders in my category when I see the sign up list. How is this going to be any different than the categorized races?
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I raced in my new category for the first time today; I’m a Category C rider, and there were a few Category B riders in the group. Lately, I’ve been hitting the podium pretty consistently in Category C, but today I only managed 25th place. No chance of being anywhere near the front. On the same route, the podium times were 2.5 minutes faster today. It’s just the first race, but it feels like things have gotten a lot tougher. Oh well, I’ll work my way back up.
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I don’t think it will be different at all unless race organizers rotate through category break-points, so different people occasionally have a chance to be at the top of their category. (I’m not taking a position on whether that would be good or bad—I’ll keep doing the occasional race, wherever I place.)
I would like to see categories change or at the very least offer more races and race categories during peak hours. I was in a race of 132 and was less competitive in this race than I was in any Cat C race, despite putting up similar numbers to my Cat c races.
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Can clubs still host CE base races? I would like to race more CE base races.
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PHD’s are overrated…
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I presume they can, wording was public events need to move to Racing Score 7th Oct, not private events.
agree with this. The cats mean that a lot of riders are always going to have a bad race experience. That’s true in IRL too. But in IRL when you end up at the bottom of the pack you stop racing and that’s not what Zwift wants.
I find it hilarious that people are even trying to compare Zwift races to IRL races.
In the Zwift Tiny races this morning -Zone 2-D category, Under 23 rider ,supposedly weighing 35 kg ,took two wins and two top five places. How is that even remotely comparable to what would happen IRL? A 35 kg (or five stone)rider wouldn’t last two minutes in any competitive road race.Come on Zwift,get a grip!
And for what it’s worth,no,I was not competing in the races myself. But these glaring anomalies are happening all the time and nothing is being done about it.
where’s the anomaly? even in the two races he won there was about a tenth between him and p2 in one and 5 thousandths between him and p2 in the other. another rider in that race, D cat, weighing 84kg, took one win and two second places. is he an anomaly?
are you suggesting those other D cats would be competitive in road racing? or that zwift has anything to do with competitive road racing to begin with? or did you just see something you didnt like and decided to assume something immediately?
vibe check
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I did see something I didn’t like ,yes. You clearly didn’t spot it or,even more bizarrely, you didn’t think it was significant.
This rider dropped 40 kg from his/her racing weight overnight after his first two races on Zwift two years ago .And he/she has remained at 35 kg or under ever since.
But you see that as entirely normal? Even if he/she WAS 35 kg ,(In this case, extremely dubious)do you seriously think that type of rider would win any competitive road race IRL? pretty sure you already know the answer to that question.
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I’ll leave it to you to report this rider, since you’re the one seemingly so desperate to defend the purity and sanctity of the Zwift racing platform.
Thanks for acknowledging your rather hysterical initial reply by the way.
i dont care if the kid broke a rule or not or how you feel about it. you’re breaking a far more fundamental one regarding personal conduct right now and these forums are cursed enough to read as it is. glass houses and all that
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And nor do I care that you care to challenge the unassailable truth of what I’m saying.
You’re defending the indefensible, But interestingly ,you have no further useful comment to make on the facts of the matter under discussion. Which speaks volumes.