That was the original premise, and it still seems to hold true checking a recent event:
ht tps://www.zwift.com/events/view/4785891
Group C, 46 signups, down arrows in results begin at 24th place.
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You’re not wrong
Did a TT to warm up for a race, 9th of 9 and got -22 points, strange thing the race does not show up on Zwift but it does on Zwiftpower.
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itt are going to be big hit before races. Group size of the itt go UP.
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Why not just do a flat free ride to warm up?
How would I tank my score doing a free ride 
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Given how Zwift TT club TTs run the same course all week and TTs are all about non-drafting time, shouldn’t all best efforts for the week before pooled together to give a single Racing Score change?
If you set a new 90 day seed score best during the TT, by all means, activate that immediately after the effort.
Another way to beat the current system in TTs is do a valid effort, but choose an awful frame and wheels for the course, so your time will be slower.
Wouldn’t be an issue if the playing field was level and during competitive races and TTs, everyone got the same frame and wheels they deserve.
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Mountain course, Mountain Bike right?
Hand bike.
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You know, we all here discussing about ZRS but Zwift doesn’t even have the time of day to give us a road map of what they are doing with it.
As far as we know, this is an abandon side project. All that stupid talk about Mu and 3 sigma, when they can’t even create a history chart for point movements.
It makes me wonder why did we ever go from CE to ZRS if after months this botch job is the best Zwift can do? Like after months…
- You can not track anyone’s point movement.
- You do not gain more points winning against a stronger field.
- ZHQ monthly GC only has 1 E pen now and everyone is in it.
- Point races does not work with the new ZRS.
At the end of the day what did you guys do? You spent months changing from CE to ZRS and the only thing I see is a botch conversion to a 5min CS.
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That’s just how Zwift works. Come up with an idea, get it to the Minimum Viable Product stage, push it into production, and abandon it. The biggest surprise is that we got this far. It could’ve been left how it was introduced a year and a half ago, but they scrapped it and moved to openskill. They could’ve left it with the 10m/30s power metrics their PhDs came up with, but they scrapped that and moved to 5m CS. For how little ZHQ cares about racing it’s impressive that we’ve gotten to this point.
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The biggest frustration I have is that we’ve gone from a four pen Category Enforcement system to a poorly thought out five pen Racing Score system that in many cases excluding Zmonthly races, is allowing CE pen C racers to enter the weakest pen of Racing Score.
Shock horror, those CE Cs are stretching out packs very early on and they are finishing in top positions, besides when they are sandbagging to stop their score getting too high.
In a five pen system, pen E should be for the weakest 20% of the Zwift racing population when an event is covering the whole race ability range, this is definitely not the case currently!
For example, Tiny Races pen ranges need a substantial tweak by @Eric_Schlange_ZwftIn IMO, to ~200 points per pen.
Equal ish numbers per pen is no use if the weaker racers in that pen are massively below those of the strongest ~25%. Please note, this would not make me favourite to podium in many pen E races!
You can also lose points finishing in the front group of a massively strong field, and have a lower score than riders who get dropped early on in these races, but rack up points in lower ranked or less well attended races.
If ZRS was applied to real life racing, those guys on Legion who win all those crits in the US would have higher scores than riders who regularly finish World Tour races in the front group, but don’t have a sprint.
eg. My score fluctuates around 650, yet I usually finish races in what real life racing would call ‘same time’ as riders with 900+ scores.
Often guys with much higher scores than me are dropped or finish below me, but my score remains lowly, because I only race in well attended races in the 690+ category, and finish towards the rear of the front group, as I don’t have a sprint due to genetics.
Personally, I think if you have a score of 653 and you finish a ‘stacked with 900+ riders’ 690-1000 race in the front group, ahead of guys with much higher scores - you should expect to earn quite a lot of points. Especially if your w/kg is 4.4
But with ZRS you’d earn way more points getting top 3 in a sparsely attended 520-690 race, with an average w/kg of 3.4.
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If you select certain races you will end up winning against most. Full climb races like ADZ or ventop, or ITT races.
Right now ZRS is sooooo half baked compared to ZR.app vELO I don’t understand why they just don’t fully adopt zr.app.
It’s plain stupid they leave it in the current state and keep losing riders because it is barely/non functioning. The worst part is there is literally a fully well thought functioning system (ZR.app).
It accounts for phenotypes, it adjust to terrain, hilly/mountain, sprinty. It even have achievements badges and it prevent sandbagging! But we stuck with this version of ZRS.
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The conversion to a 5min CS is a big improvement over the w/kg ranges in CE. There are some arguments about whether to use 5min exactly, max power for any interval over 5 minutes to avoid people gaming that specific interval, using zMAP or some other modelled power in that range. The key thing is the (modified) compound score being much better than w/kg with a watt floor.
The other big improvement is in normalising changing the pen boundaries. Still a work in progress but having the two ranges is much better than the previous hard limit between categories.
If we just had those changes, with everyone at their seed score, we’d be in an undeniably better position than before. Unfortunately the results based changes have numerous issues, and people are seemingly free to move their score anywhere across a wide range if they choose to do so.
Hopefully alongside any improvements they’re making to the scoring they’re also looking at the tools available to event organisers so they can customise their races more easily.
The issues around tracking point movements are certainly frustrating. Hopefully something to fix that is coming zoon
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In what way is it an improvement?
You can be Cat B with a 5min power of 4.4 W/KG and have a score below 350 and race against old Cat C and Cat D riders.
Two riders with nearly identical power and ones got a score of over 500 and the other has a score of around 300.
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I’m only referring to its use as the seed score.
W/kg is, and always has been, a bad way of doing things. Simply because a heavier rider always goes faster at the same w/kg. Making it a compound score is much better.
It’s the floor being 15% below seed, and the indecipherable score movements, that give people with the same ability such a wide range of scores.
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I have better 5 min power than some guys with ZRS above 850.
But because I don’t have a sprint and only race well attended races with lots of the best racers on Zwift, my score is stuck around 650, despite the fact I rarely get dropped in these races.
There are C-cat riders with higher scores than me. They wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the ZEAl Japan 690-1000 friday lunchtime painfest.
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I’m not in the exact same situation but similar (5min WPK borderline between D and C), and I can compete vs C and B riders in very short races (where anaerobic skills matter).
As per ZRA, 30secs WPK is better than 67% of all riders, 15secs is 87%, 5secs is 93%. Raw watts it’s 85% on 30secs, 96% on 15secs, 99% on 5secs. Then I have a significant drop (down to 17%) on the 20mins. The result is I’m 348 ZRS but if I go into a 30+mins race with this ZRS, I’m dropped after the first 5 mins.
The only way to make things work for people like me is to have a different ZRS score per estimated time duration of the race (and I think this could work for all the people).
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I agree a compound score is much better and fairer but that could of been done with CE, heavier riders should be up against lighter riders with a better w/kg but we can now be racing guys 30kg lighter with higher raw watts which is an impossible task, B,C and D riders all in the same pen now.
I also cannot understand how some old Cat Bs can drop down to new Cat D but a Cat D cannot drop down to Cat E, absolute madness.
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