First I want to say that I love Category Enforcement. I will only participate in races that utilize it. That said, I’m confused with regard to how Zwift determines when a person needs to be locked out of a category.
I really enjoyed the Team Electric Spirt Co. daily Preprandial Crit series. I race in D category and have done well in these races. During the month of April a certain participant began winning every single D race. He races most all days so the race is basically for 2nd place for the rest of us. He very frequently has a w/kg well above the D class max of 2.5. His last race was 2.9 w/kg. He also finishes at least 2 minutes faster than everyone else. Keep in mind that these races are mostly 8 km or less. You can confirm my comments by just checking the Team Electric Spirits daily Preprandial Crit series results during the month of April.
My reason for posting this is really based on how well the Category Enforcement is working in all the other races I participate in. I am really hopeful that this system for fair racing continues and is developed further. How this one person has slipped under the radar confuses me.
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Well, they show as D from a ZP perspective because they average 2.48w/kg across their best 3 races for 95% of their 20m power. They weigh well over 100kgs, so can put out a ton of watts on flat courses without blowing out their wkg numbers so that might be why their MAP/CP numbers haven’t gotten them upgraded form a cat enforcement perspective yet. It is a bit surprising they can be so close to upgrading based on ZP criteria, but not have bumped up from a cat enforcement perspective given all their podium placements.
From the post on how ‘Category Enforcement’ is calculated in Futureworks, I pasted the limits below.
2.5 w/kg CP is going to be within the same neighbourhood of the 95% of 20min traditional ZwiftPower - higher for some people, lower for others, but usually within 10%. This is based on a curve-fit using 15-50min power.
The MAP/VO2 boundary is based on 5-8min power.
Dude you’re talking about is probably still under the CP for D, but is really close - he doesn’t actually look that close for MAP
CP Category Boundaries
A: 4w/kg and 250w CP
B: 3.2w/kg and 200w CP
C: 2.5w/kg and 150w CP
MAP/VO2 Category Boundaries
A: 5.4w/kg MAP (60 VO2 Max)
B: 4.1w/kg MAP (50 VO2 Max)
C: 3.9 w/kg MAP (45 VO2 Max)
I don’t think he’ll be able to enter D again for another 60 days.
He is still winning.
These are very short races and they have not used the new cat system yet.
