In wrong Cat!?

Can someone help me, I was (3.22wkg) 0.02 watts per kilo over Cat D Zmap I believe and was put in Cat C, this figure was from a race 93 days ago so 3 days ago I believe I should of been back in Cat D as my 5 minute best dropped below 3.2 wkg, could someone look at my profile on zwift power and let me know if I am right or wrong please.
Eddie Gardner (ZRSCOT)

Check your zwift.com profile page which will have your zMap & zFTP on it.

Though its kind of mute, as of Monday A-D will essentially be retired and Race Score will take over. So you will be in the pens based on that number.

Im guessing the days of podiuming every race are taking to long to come back around?

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Are your personal bests only from races? It might be your best is not on ZwiftPower if you did a personal best power outside of a race - in which case you’d need to look at your personal bests on zwift.com to confirm.

Looking at your profile it seems you podium in D almost all the time, might not be bad to race in C - with ZRS coming soon you’ll probably get bumped due to the podiums in the lower categories I would imagine.

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It’s not necessarily your zmap that is keeping you over.

You have quite an odd power curve in that it peaks in random spots rather than smooth run down like most people.

If i were to guess i suspect your 11 mins at 2.91 is having an impact.

But as Aaron says ZRS is coming and it looks like most the sort of races you are doing will be ZRS based now so i would see where you place in races from next week

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If you have refreshed your zwiftpower profile since early August, your zFTP is nothing close to ~249+ to be over the 2.625W/Kg zFTP threshold for D.

In which case it’s that 5mins30sec zMAP spike, which from my own experience of marginal zMAP promotions to C over the last two years, there is very little escape.

However… My belief is zMAP and zFTP records from the last rolling 90 days are taken from pure Watt values and then converted to W/Kg. So if you did say 295W+ average for seconds over 5mins30secs at your current weight of 94.8Kg, your zMAP should drop you back to Category Endforcement D.

Another example of nonsense pen placing formulas by ZwiftHQ, predicting zMAP rather than using actual data was a silly move.

But as already said, CE ends on 6th October and is replaced by Racing Score for public events.

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My Zmap says 301 watts but my 5 minute 90 days just dropped from 307 watts to 287 watts so have no idea how 301 watts was reached.

I only do 15 minutes warm up quite slow then a race.
ZRS is worse than Cat C for me, impossible to compete on any hilly terrain, was third last out of 89 about ten minutes ago, will be absolutely Foooorious when I look up the race on Zwiftpower and I have been chasing a load of 6 stone Cat Bs up a mountain for 30 minutes.

I place about last on ZRS :grinning:

Just got an email from Zwift support which says 301 watts zMap, where would the 301 watts come from?

“Your current zFTP is 225 Watts /93.1 KG = 2.41 and the zMAP is 301 Watts /93.1 KG = 3.23 Watts/Kg as you can see in the table below the zMAP belongs to category C.”

If you look on your profile (my.zwift.com) check the 5 min PR in the Fitness section over on the right side. It will have a date you can probably match to an activity.

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Its currently 287 watts for 90 days, It was 307 watts til 3 days ago (July 2nd race) , Am trying to explain to support that how does my 5 minute power drop 30 watts but my zMap does not move,

Google says it’s 88 days since July 2. I didn’t check their math. EDIT except I made a typo never mind that :see_no_evil:. See below though.

BTW if you want to post screenshots of the entire Fitness section with all the PRs, I have a Google sheet that will give you a pretty reliable answer about why you are in a given category.

90 days after the 2nd July was September 30th, I did do the math…

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Sorry I blew it, my mistake. See my edited response though and I would be happy to make calculations for you.

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This is what I get. Note there are some rounding issues with the averaged weight because we only have access to 2 decimal places in the W/kg numbers on your profile, but it does look like you are just over the zMAP limit. Even if we assume 93.1kg it’s still over the limit by a whisker. zMAP is not exactly the same as 5 minute power. It is typically something in the 5-6 min range. In 4 days this will all be irrelevant of course assuming CE dies on schedule.

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Thanks but I still dont understand how my 5 minute time drops a full 30 watts from 307 watts to 287 watts but my zMap does not move?

Just got an email from support, am back in Cat D, just checked…

I knew it was logically impossible to drop 30 watts for 5 minutes but your zMap stays the same, am betting the rolling 90 days is actually a rolling 3 months.

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