Is Zwift aware that 5w/kg wins you TdF stages?

How does this prove OP’s point? If anything it disproves it…

Rohan Dennis has a power output of 5,18w/kg over ~an hour for that event. With a heart rate of 157… In other words Dennis is not even going into the red for this effort (obviously, these “races” are little more then training rides for these pro’s)

Compare that to these efforts: ZwiftPower - Login . Those are some impressive numbers. With one massive sidenote: it’s a 30m vs a 60m effort and while Dennis rides those 5,18wkg below FTP, for almost all the guys in these results this is a half hour effort deep into the dark red zone…

What did you expect? Top pro’s are only human as well… even the very best riders on the planet aren’t 100% better then the very best amateurs. If the bandwith between the very best pro’s and the “worst” pro’s is 10% margain (it’s not, it’s less) even then the very best amateurs will preform only 11% worse then the world top riders. Hence if a top pro can do 6,4kwg for half an hour, it’s not unrealistic for some of the best amateurs to be doing 5,5wkg. Far from it. And the further down the wider the pyramid becomes (for every 1 rider that can do 5,5wkg, there’s 10 that can do 5,4wkg, there’s 500 that can do 5wkg…)

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I’m not doubting that there are great amateurs out there, with amazing numbers

What I do have a problem with is that these supposed greats seem to be populating my Tuesday night D race such that I can’t even be in the pack.

Yes there are probably lots of people out there who, with lots and lots of training, can do 5.18 w/kg for 30 min, if not an hour (Rohan Denis). But wtf are you seriously suggesting they’re haunting my cat D race?

(For all of those who’ve responded: thank you! It’s been a fun discussion!) I do this because I think Zwift is awesome but could be even better! Not because I want to hate on people. But I do see my KOMs around Seattle (the PNW is no slouch for producing great cyclists!) and I KNOW where I stand.

Perhaps we need more categories: down to EFGH, so that those of us who want to show up at Wednesday night worlds and spin fast in the group for a while, can, without all out max efforts all the time.

Haven’t some of you racers just shown up at your weekly hometown cat 1/2, cat 3/4 combined crit and just rolled it without desiring to breakaway or win, but still wanted that race feel? I miss it. Maybe I’m asking too much from a worldwide tech platform.

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It does beg the question, with the zwift pro contract thing, why isn’t he offered a pro contract? Or maybe he has had an offer but his day job just pays better?

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Do you use TTBIKE?
TTBIKE is not use draft.
It becomes disadvantageous in a race.

Is it the story of the race to start at the all cat’s same time?
The category A racer is displayed by the neighbor, too.
The category of each rider is displayed by a list of riders on the screen right side.
The red point of the map is Cat A rider.
The green point of the map is Cat B rider.
The rest is omitted

No, regular old bike. Haha.

I just did a D social (!!!) group ride. 2.8 w/kg for the whole hour. Finished all alone, by myself, because I was dropped by a group. I rode in solo to 26th (!!!)

zwiftpower analysis shows:

There were only 2 other people in those top 26 who were 2.8 W/kg, everyone else was less…no one was higher…

And the actual watts? Most people were rolling 140-180W. I pushed 220!

See?!? So both in w/kg, and raw W, I should be fastest. Not that I want to be fastest as it was a social ride!! But I don’t want to be dropped!

So, what do you all think now? Is this some sort of technical interface question?

I use a wahoo kickr to control resistance. I also have a Quarq DZero that is pretty close power-wise. (Within 5w, it seems).

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That was a timed event so Zwift power results is all random.

Were you dropped or did your group drop the leader?

The leader weight only 52kg and did 2.3w/kg and 119w there’s no way that she was faster than you.

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This is insightful and helpful about zwiftpower on timed events! Thank you!

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Where did you go for the cat d race?

Dan
It looks like you mostly do social rides and you are ranked as a C rider right now, but by the numbers you told us about in the first post I would suggest you are an B rider. But do try and do a proper race in the C group. The races on Zwift a verry different from outside riding since the start often in brutaly hard but if you survive these first 3-4 minutes of the race the pace often then settles down a bit. So before you enter a race make sure you are warmed up and got your legs awake :slight_smile:

I would suggest you go to Zwiftpower, clicks on “Filter” and clicks in “Race” to just see upcoming races, when you find one that fits you, you go into the companion app and signs up for that race.

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I may be missing or misunderstanding something in my translation on this.
As I understand OP he is tired of seing unbelievable numbers around him even in D, I agree with him.

The picture I posted show some world class cyclist battling it out up the Alpe. Seeing the same numbers and above from a large number of riders just ridicules Zwift as a platform

Yes, Zwiftpower filters out a lot of those afterwords, but that does not prevent the supermen from destroying races.

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You’re right… Zwift doesn’t do enough to prevent people from joining races below their cat. The fact that Zwift shows leaderbord in game and in app doesn’t help one bit to prevent this, quite te contrary. So far Zwift is refusing to enforce category’s or ban people from racing who deliberately join the wrong cat, and I’m pretty sure there won’t be any changes to this in the near (or not so near) future.

But again: understand that the numbers you posted are far away from all-out efforts by those pro’s. If they were going full out for a single 60m effort they’d probably all post 6wkg+ numbers.

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Yes this is my main point! You distilled it perfectly :slight_smile:

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I don’t understand why Zwift doesn’t either make riders do an FTP test before racing or use the estimated FTP it generates to place riders in the appropriate division rather than letting you chose. I suppose you could allow people to class up, but classes C and D should be locked out to a Cat B rider. Period. I know it’s just a game but the game is not fun if people don’t play by the rules.

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