The best thing would be to have dynamic pens calculated when the race is starting, based on the people that join the pen and their stats that are “relevant” for the route (based on the time needed to finish a race given a wpk pace and a “standard” equipment). Indievelo (now TPV) does it, the overall pen closes 1 minute before the race start so the single pens can be computed. So this is feasible.
Then you could use the ZRS to set a ranking between the riders, but would probably be useless.
If I look at the top 10 from my last ZRL race, all high performing cat C racers, the ZRS ranges from 359 to 624.
There’s no good reason why they should have scores so far apart, these riders all have similar capabilities and there’s nothing about how well they can perform that correlates with their scores.
The differences are that some have obviously tanked their score to the floor, some started racing this season after the reset and came in at their floor, others started at their seed and have stayed near there or moved up.
Small races are giving bigger movements, so the people who are racing more in smaller events are getting much higher scores, as long as they’re finishing top half.
People who are only racing in big races have lower scores even if they are consistently performing very well in them, and if that good performance is offset by a low result in a small race then their score is going down.
I think the most likely cause of the issues are:
Both type of terrain and distance are affecting the time of the effort a rider has to express to finish the race. So the only thing that would make sense to measure is the time needed to finish a race at a specific average power and then cluster the pens looking at each rider performance on the closer time frame (5 mins clusters should fit). It’s so easy, and this would solve most of the nonsense pens we’ve seen with CE and now ZRS (not the weight cheaters or the power meter cheaters, but no way to prevent such stuff).
These are my last 4 races, which were Tiny Races,… started at 347 zrs
Race 1 up to 356
Race 2 up to 362
Race 3 up to 368
Race 4 up to 374
Zwift racing app had me for
Race 1 started gold, race 2 platinum, race 3 gold, race 4 platinum,. I just noticed now all the upgrades have changed.
This was original
Zwiftracing.app previously had an issue with races being processed in the wrong order, it was particularly bad with Tiny Races.
They’ve added in a reprocessing step to fix this.
Zwiftracingapp also doesn’t predict Tiny Races finish order very well at all, unless things have changed, presumably because most Tiny Races are less than one lap.
I’m very disillusioned with how Racing Score is affecting pen E Tiny Races. 0-260 is allowing far too many Category Enforcement Cs to join the weakest pen.
With a proper effort, it’s no surprise at all that most Category Enforcement Cs finish higher than Category Enforcement Ds.
On zwiftracingapp, I’ve dropped from 799 to ~505 over the last ~90 days, mainly because of the racers I have to compete against in the weakest pen Tiny Races and how this awful Racing Score system works.
I’ll start the race trying to keep with the lead group, on a very rare occasion I managed it and sprint with them, but usually they drop me… I’m then usually out of matches, so I just focus on finishing in time to join the next race.
Even if I did have some energy after being dropped by the lead ~30, why would I be foolish enough to go full tilt, to finish in the top ~55% and get a Racing Score increase? Instead of conserving energy for the next race, or by race 4 I’m dead anyway.
Tiny races needs to be treated as 1 race.
Racers who don’t complete all 4 stages need to be treated as a DNF.
And racers who didnt do race 1 should not be allowed to join race 2, 3 or 4.
There’s a big wide world beyond the Tiny Races.
They are fun, but they have made so many non sprinters think they are sprinters its actually been in hinderance to zwift in the long run.
And yes they should be treated as a single event - One sign up, one result, one impact to ZRS.you dont race 1, you cant race number 2 etc
Agree that entry to “Race n” of a Tiny series should be dependent on all the “Race n-1” having been completed. Dropping in to Race 4 on fresh legs to race those who’ve done the previous 3 races etc. is somewhat farcical.
The “problem” with the Tiny races (if it actually is a problem) is that the physiological requirements in order to do well aren’t necessarily the same as those required to do well in longer races. Likewise, the tactical requirements (primarily judging distribution of effort over the whole series) are somewhat specialised.
All of which adds up to a few quirks in the various ranking / rating systems.
I think if you do a series properly i.e. aiming to maximise your average overall finishing position across 4 races then “fun” doesn’t really come into it. Doing is this is seriously hard; much harder than chasing a few early breaks then settling down to wait for the finish in a “typical” Zwift race in my experience.
Caveat: I’m slightly biased as I appear to be naturally suited to Tiny races (good 5 minute power, good recovery over 5 or so minutes and good judge of effort over a “VO2 Max” type session) whereas I’m pretty poor at sprinting at the end of a longer race!
You’re not “naturally suited to Tiny Races”. What happens to you is due to the fact that, to keep the pace of people more trained than you (or with better aerobic skills from a genetic standpoint, that is something usually underestimated) you have to exhaust your anaerobic reservoir, so when you come to a sprint after 30mins/1hr of race with your heart pumping Z4 you’re already exhausted. It doesn’t make sense that you compete into a 1hr race with your HR constantly over threshold. By the way, this is something that will harm your health, in the long run. If you look at the PROs, during a full race the time they spent at threshold or over is usually less than 10%. If you’re not able to keep the pace of the group within your Z2/Z3 heart rate, you’re not fit enough to do such races or your body is not genetically set to support that kind of efforts.
To understand what is your phenotype, I suggest you to take a complete threshold test with gas exchange and hematic lactate measurement, where the sport physician will tell you what you’re suited for. This is something we should all do before starting DIY training and DIY races (and by the way in my opinion Zwift is one of the worst place to approach competitive sport, because you’re pushed to your limits and easily over with zero support from medical people, so at full your own risk).
There’s some very big assumptions in there.
One is that I’m approaching competitive sport via Zwift. I started rowing in 1987 and it took 37 years of working through that, MTB, cyclocross, road racing, road running, sportives and triathlon before I got to Zwift racing!
Man, never wrote you started anything on Zwift. If you already do sport competitions, then what I wrote previously is something you should already know and have assessed in the past.
But if so, the way you perform in different races should be something not surprising you and you should know why it’s happening and be able to cope with it and just play the game you’re fit for without feeling frustrated.
I’m fine tbh. Wish I was faster, with a better sprint and was better at climbing, but who doesn’t this apply to?
At 56, I am well used to how things are likely to play out!
I just observed earlier that I am better suited to Tiny series than longer races that come down to a sprint. I don’t see how this can be controversial. You wouldn’t expect Mark Cavendish to out-climb Jonas Vingegaard any more than you’d expect Jonas to beat Cav in a sprint. We all have our own physical (and mental) characteristics and we just have to make the best use of them.
Fully aligned.
However, I think we could have more fun on Zwift if we were always paired to a field where we can be competitive, was it for our anaerobic skills or the aerobic ones. Now what happens is that if you’re polarized towards specific efforts (aerobic/anaerobic), if you tune your ZRS to your anaerobic skills, you’ll unlikely be matched consistently on the aerobic side, and viceversa. So you’ll be “natively” encouraged in dropping the competitions where you have to struggle the most (without any chance to achieve good results, by the way…so this can be used to deflate the ZRS if someone wants to…). This makes sense but I’d like to be able to compete in long races the same way I’m able to compete within short races (same phenotype as you, probably), and with the current ZRS setup it’ll be unlikely to happen (e.g. I’m D pace group, I’m currently 352 ZRS, this puts me in the C/B pens: if a race is short I can compete, but I’ll be dropped in 5 mins if I get to a long race). Too bad, I’ll not join anymore long races.
Having separate “short” and “long” race rankings would be good, I think. As would terrain-adjusted rankings a la ZR.app.
Does say 60min Watts power line up well relative to 20mins and 5mins for most people?
Problem is, it’s easy to end up in a scenario where racer’s longer duration ability is not representative, as per the old Zwiftpower 95% 20min system pre Feb '22.
I’m almost certainly an outlier because long covid massively affects my stamina above ~40mins, but for me in January…
60mins 149W (~1.57W/Kg)
20mins 226W (~2.25W/Kg)
5mins 262W (~2.72W/kg)
2mins 325W (~3.37W/Kg)
30secs 475W (~4.93W/Kg)
you need to work on that 30 Sec power.
As a crude generalisation, if you’ve got a particular place in the performance distribution at 20 minutes then you’ll likely be somewhere close to the same relative position for both 5 and 60 minutes though it won’t be an exact match. Eg The natural “stayers” will be relatively better at 60 mins as 5 mins requires a reasonable amount of basic speed which some gifted endurance athletes don’t have.
Caveat - This assumes one is equally committed across the distance range. Full-on efforts at any distance are unpleasant, but some types of unpleasantness are easier to cope with than others, depending on the rider concerned. Eg I quite like 5 min and 60 min full on efforts but the 20 min efforts are truly awful and I try to avoid them!
If you only train via 60 min TTs or you only train via 5 min (ie VO2 max) intervals then you’ll go reasonably well at most endurance events up to 75-90 mins and down to 2-3 mins. Longer requires more development of energy systems as 75-90 mins likely depletes glycogen stores. Shorter requires specific speed work.
Obviously, a structured, varied programme is better than just doing one type of session!
I think your 60 mins power is not real. A good test could be to go on the Alpe trying to keep 80-85% of your maximum HR. Then you should find out that your 60 mins power should be something about 80-90% the power you express at 20 mins. This is the basic assumption for 20’ FTP tests (in fact they say it’s 95% but I found out it’s a bit optimistic).
