Here’s a detailed study of 2 climbers - light and heavy. Interesting read. The article shows that the heavier ride at same w/kg actually climbs faster because their bikes are of the same weight, so the lighter rider is actually working a little harder to compensate that. A 15 lb bike for a 200 lb rider is less of an impact than a 15 lb bike on a 100 lb rider. More details here…
Again though… this post isn’t about that… it’s about properly accepting the existing Zwift real-time physics/algorithms and correctly applying them through to post-ride rider categorization.
Yes as climb gets steeper, speed gets slower and aerodynamic/wind resistance lowers and lighter rider is able to much more closely match the heavier rider. The heavier rider, riding at same w/kg, always has the advantage IRL and on Zwift IF, and a big IF, they can keep it up as long as the lighter rider.
Having observed a lot of these discussions here, what I’ve found is that, if we split riders into the categories of Heavier and Lighter, each category’s disadvantages are clearly evident to the people in that category, while each category’s advantages are obvious to the people in the other category.
“Our Zwift test results don’t tell us anything an experienced cyclist hasn’t already learned outdoors.”
So back to the main point of your thread - I think everyone agrees that basing a race category system on w/kg is completely unfair to lightweight riders. There are many posts covering how it doesn’t work and hopefully Zwift have taken those comments on board and are putting together a Results based race category system Zoon.
Unfortunately the project was put on hold middle September with expectation that we would hear something more in 2 months, from that date. So middle of November is here and possibly @xflintx may have an early Christmas present for us very soon.
Last I recall, Zwift had no plans to develop or implement anything that resembles a result-based system. Maybe I’m out of touch as I don’t follow these threads a closely as I used to.
A rider’s power output is whatever it is. The resulting W/Kg category placement is function of power, but is only used to determine Cat placement, correct? For 2 years I was forced into Cat A where I would frequently finish last. During that time, I gradually developed the ability to ignore the Cats (i.e. “it is what it is”). I even floated the idea of giving users the ability to turn off the Cat letters on the HUD, which would reduce my stress level.
Then when Zwift tweaked some formulas and implemented Cat Enforcement, I was able to join B, so I’m generally happier.
All that said, I MIGHT be in favor of eliminating weight and height as variables in races, largely because they have too much potential to be dubiously manipulated. Without these variable, the challenge becomes how well a participant can move their “normalized” avatar through a given course.
I understand that with height and weight, Zwift is trying to simulate a rider’s physical characteristics and thus increase engagement, but it doesn’t seem to play out well in a virtual/online realm where there’s already a lot of random variation in equipment.
I’m a heavier rider, and I wouldn’t want to see weight eliminated as a factor–that would only serve to shoot heavier riders farther up the results. IRL I ride with plenty of much smaller riders who are much faster than me over distances and climbs but put out significantly less raw wattage. I wouldn’t want to be suddenly outclassing all of those people on Zwift.
Yeah, you’ve missed some stuff. A quick summary - Zwift said they were working on a results-based system; then a few months back they came out with a rider scoring system to use as the beginnings of such a system, however the feedback from users was overwhelmingly negative so they said thet were going back to the drawing board. Now we’re waiting for their new version.
It would require a change in mindset. There’s the current paradigm where A cat riders are better than B, and B better than C, etc. IRL and in Zwift.
Instead, it would become simply that A cat might be riders CE assigned with zFTPs greater than 275, B between 225 and 275, etc. IOW, Get away from the notion that IRL anyone in A must be IRL a faster rider than anyone in B, etc. because of course, nobody would know anyone’s else’s real weight.
It would require a change in that it would be effectively turning every race into a flat course. If my performance in Zwift didn’t include having to lift 30kgs of mass more than my competitors up hills, then we’re essentially just doing sprints. Yes, there would be hills. But my 90kgs and someone else’s 60kgs would be zeroed out.
And yeah, we could then just redo all the Cats. But I suspect that what a lot of people want is that the racing should reflect IRL racing to some degree. And we could try to say that different Cats aren’t better or worse. But it would be the case that riders from Lighter Cats wouldn’t fare well against riders from Heavier Cats. So there would absolutely be people thinking different Cats are better or worse.
So it sounds like w/kg doesn’t really matter all that much…but is used in category enforcement? That doesn’t really make sense. Being 56 kg, I can’t put out the Watts of the bigger riders and I struggle to hold the C pace. However my w/kg when I ride at my limit puts me as a Cat B rider and I have no hope at all of competing even on a race that is up the Alpe. I found myself raising my weight ABOVE my actual weight in hopes of being competitive but just ended up not even bothering with racing. I would like to give it a try if I was able to compete with riders of similar abilities but that is likely never going to happen.
Try any of our Split Cat Races…we have Category Enforcement setup in a way that Heavier Riders will get a faster upgrade than Light riders cause of Compound Score…and we have regular B and C Cats split in half.
BUT… that’s how it SHOULD be. The OP is wrong to be asserting that it shouldn’t.
At 133lb, the OP is just over the weight whereat you can start exceeding w/kg limits while staying down-cat, which massively skews lower-cat hilly races in the favour of these ultralightweights. I’m a low A who sometimes gets downgraded to B (~305W FTP at 73kg), but put me in a hilly race up against a 55kg rider doing 245W and legitimately riding in B, and I wouldn’t stand a chance.
Even including that bike weight, the heavier rider is STILL faster for equal w/kg (although there might be a reasonable case to make for a bigger rider’s frontal area being greater).
