Can anyone confirm that podium bonus points are being added to racer seed scores now?
Tiny Races have been my go-to races since they began around August '22, but I’m very disillusioned in them now under Racing Score.
Under Category Enforcement, admittedly when I was lighter and a bit fitter, I was often placing top ten and even some podiums in pen D. Had a few overall series wins too.
Sub ~2.7W/Kg and ~210W used to be good for a top ten spot on anything except a mountain route like Ven Top, iirc.
Now under Racing Score, with pen E limit being 260, it’s time to crack open the party poppers if I can keep with the lead group until the sprint finish on a very flat route!
Just taking race one today in zone 2, something like only four of the top 25 finishers on zwiftpower show as Category Enforcement Ds, with the same power numbers the others would have been in the next pen up in C before July last year.
Something like fourteen placed 26-50 show as being pen D under Category Enforcement on zwiftpower.
So many of the old familiar names from Category Enforcement pen D Tiny Races under the old system are nowhere to be seen.
I expect a number like me are sick of being dropped from the lead group during the race start surge and then watching them sail off into the sunset over the next few minutes.
I feel pens desperately need to have ranges representing ability, rather than having roughly the same number of racers per pen.
For Tiny Races pen E, that would mean changing from 0-260 to something like 0-225 at most.
Steve if you were winning some Tiny Races series last year you definitely should not stay in E pens. I’m a real D rider (very bad aerobic skills) and I’m now 352 in ZRS. This is because I’m trying to compete only in races where I’m fit (short crits, less than 30 mins). Of course if I was racing in long races my ZRS would be lower, but this is because you should have a ZRS on short races and one on long races at least, but I feel this will never happen and simply people will stop race in races where they’re unfit.
Then to me something is not working properly on Zwift right now since I see some nonsense like a guy (zwift Id 5847366) marked as cat D within CE with B performances in the last month and a ZRS of 112…not to talk about the strange results and sets of this profile (60kgs in Feb 24, 75 kgs in May 24) and performances that from a cat D avg, after XMas it started to perform as a brilliant B athlete…at least strange.
I can’t get close to performances like this from 23rd December 2023 any longer, where you placed 2nd and I was 3rd.
I’ve gained weight and lost power. There’s been odd races recently where my power numbers looked a bit higher than normal, when I’ve not calibrated my Saris H3 in the past week or so.
I’m definitely not second weakest pen material. Heck, at 85% of my seed score which is 178 (lowest I can go), I’m struggling against those with a Racing Score of ~200.
Sorry to read something like this. But this is real life and there’s nothing wrong with it, we have to cope with our performances decay. To me, you should just try to understand which type of races with your current ZRS fit best for you.
Yeah, I’m still looking for the scores to settle down.
The new system has only been in it’s present form for less than 2 months.
There was a range tweak less than 1 month ago.
I continue to gradually increase my score.
I don’t understand why we are seeing people jump their seed scores by 30 - 40 points in a single race unless they don’t race often.
I do VO2 workouts and race weekly and I noted that all my top interval times are 1-2 months old.
Does this mean my seed score is going to drop even though my ZRS continues to raise?
I think it’s good that everyone feels the racing is harder.
I don’t understand how people race multiple times per day (not Tiny Races, that’s actually 1 race of 4 parts), or how people expect to race every day.
I think if you can do that, you may not be racing hard enough when you race but your score should gradually increase and the competition should get harder.
I’ve considered this as I’ve been bounced between A and B (or whatever it’s called now). A riders push the pace and are more likely to take a turn pulling. FEELS like B riders are cruisers and will default to whatever pace is happening (regardless of speed) so they can sit in the draft in the name of tactics so they can sprint for 18th place and never improve.
Is anyone here thinking about the improvements when over40 are unlikely to happen (Except for whoever did no sport at all)? And so most of the people that was A is going to have performance decay to B or even C in the next years? Maybe who last year was competing in A/A+ is not anymore able to deliver those performances, but they’re still there in the same ZRS range and then they cruise to try to sprint when the pack is at their level. This has nothing to do with “racing hard enough”. This is about getting old and see performances decay with respect to the previous years, and this cannot be stopped or reverted.
Never thought to be someone not really ordinary? I think most of the people racing on Zwift are not really ordinary guys. Or cheaters, but the performances seem to be excellent and extraordinary with respect to ordinary people.
65yo seems about right to start talking about age-related decline. I just turned 52 and, for the most part, am still improving even if slightly. In my opinion, perceived age-related decline seems to be related to lifestyle, meaning work, family, social obligations, etc tend to dominate your life choices making it hard to maintain training/activity from 20s to 50+.
While I suspect there are plenty of cheaters (including weight doping) on Zwift, I also wonder about the seemingly endless hardware combinations. Comparing results across so many different trainers/sensors is about as unscientific as it gets.
Anyway physiology is not an opinion and you cannot go against your genetic. When you hit your glass ceiling on a skill, no way to improve It anymore unless you start doping (medical or electronic). And the fact we have so many people in Zwift hitting the top 10 rows of cycling FTP evaluation skills it means people on Zwift Is definitely polarized to Endurance-fit people (not just in terms of training but in terms of genetic skills as well), and so not really a good example for the results “regular people” can achieve.
Lifestyle definitely does hinder progress as one moves from young adult to adult status, as work and family commitments limit training time. However, there’s a reverse of this when offspring are older, and potential training time increases. Whether folk still have the motivation is another matter. Eg in age group triathlon (my “thing” before zwifting) the over 40s would generally have a smaller field than the over 30s (reflecting attrition in the competitor base) but would often be as competitive or even more so so at the sharp end (reflecting less constrained lifestyles for the older folk who are still racing).
I think it’s well documented that physical capacity declines with age. Eg most elites retire as they’re not fast enough any more rather than because they fancy retiring. For Zwifters, there are many specific skills that need to be honed to race effectively eg drafting, pacing / timing of efforts, ability to do repeated sprint efforts. All of these can be enhanced even against a backdrop of general declining “peak power potential” over the distance range.
Data that isn’t input by a user should be accessible to all; especially when it comes to stuff like this.
Sports players around the world can look each other up online and find their stats… why can’t we?
There is absolutely ZERO reason why we shouldn’t be allowed to check what Pace Category and ZRS someone is; blocked profile or not. That is NOT private data; this is calculated results data.
The community needs to push hard against ZHQ on this.
I think the reason behind that is it would show the flaws of the system. If we are able to compare stats it will be easy to pin point errors. Then we will push Zwift to address the issue which they don’t have the staffing power to correct.
Who else think ZRS is just systematically broken, it’s better to just ride and not worry about what is wrong with it. No one is really going A,B,C are bugs and these needs to be fixed. If the bugs are not fixed, then ride within the framework of it. We are literally using a 1 size fits all, you can be a 200 km time trialist vs a track sprinter. And we have 1 scoring system for both.
For the races I do, ZRS seems better than the previous systems.
I’m Group D range 1 (ZRS 269) and the sub 20 miles races I do seem good.
There is a large group of 15-20 riders contesting the finish.
I think this week will be my last in my current cat/range.
I recognize that tiny Races, TT and 700 -1000 group have significant issues.
Zwift needs to build on the success so far.
I would start by having more top tier racing, at least every 2 hours or let them jump into mass start events such as TdZ.
Weren’t ZwiftHQ supposed to be backdating power history for seed score way back to last winter?
Changes from two racers in a pen need to be much smaller than results from 100 in a pen. Right now, the opposite is true.
Really, changes shouldn’t happen if less than five racers in a pen finish.