Hello,
in every race I recognized a few riders doing very low effort, staying in Z1 or Z2 to lower their racing score so they can ride in lower categories. And in some races there are those riders, just going mental from the start and riding way faster alone than the pack.
I had some pretty bad races myself when I wasn’t feeling good or my legs were empty and I got dropped. And I know that it’s frustrating and needs a lot of mental power to still do the best. But that’s not the situations I am referring to.
My suggestion would be to fix the ZRS. Depending on your FTP and former workouts there could be calculated a minimum effort you at least need to do to affect the ZRC. If you are below that, it won’t be affected. And maybe the loss of points needs to be lower, so if anyone was aiming for lowering their ZRC it needs more bad races to get demoted.
I know that illness or recovering from an injury can influence your abilities and effort, but I personally wouldn’t sign up for a race then. Instead I would try to do workouts which are controllable in time and effort.
I would be happy to know about your opinions on that topic and I am thankful for your thoughts and critique or maybe a better idea how to fix this problem.
). I would never do such an effort on a workout than I do in races. The competition is what motivates me, no matter what category I am in or which rank I finish. But I also find it quite motivating to win a race (or at least have the chance to), although you don’t get any reward. And for some people it is frustrating to see someone take off like a rocket and finish a couple of minutes before everyone else. It’s about fairplay and motivation!