Purposeful weight adjustments impact on CE

Ok, I’ll give you the fact that changing wt has the desired effect but a rule of the game is clearly stated that riders should enter correct wt for accuracy.

I don’t understand your goals.

1 you want to keep everyone together.
2 you want everyone to be able to push themselves and still stay together even though they have different abilities.
3. You feel it is ok to adjust wt up and down to speed up or slow down the riders.
4 you are unwilling to employ the built in mechanism (rubber band) to achieve this.

Keeping people together independent of power out put doesn’t really happen in life or in a game without some artificial mechanism.

@Tim_Camden_C that’s not quite an accurate restatement of the purpose of manipulating weight in the club context (non-public setting).

The goal is to create an experience where riders of different fitness level can “compete” on a relatively even playing field for the purpose of short “throw-down” sections. The goal is not simply to “keep everyone together”. Maybe another way to rephrase it is that it allows everyone to ride at a similar “relative effort”. This is functionally the same as grouping riders by category, all participants are similar in fitness level.

Normalizing fitness levels tends to shift the emphasis from fitness differences to tactical differences related to when/where to make efforts. Obviously, it makes it hard to get separation, but it does happen. It allows weaker riders to actively participate at the “front of the race” like the stronger riders.

In a non-weight adjusted environment, riders with FTPs ranging from 2wkg to 4wkg will struggle to ride together at almost any level of effort. Any increase in effort or uphills will immediately split the group and they’ll spread out essentially doing a solo ride.

Another way to think of it would be if you utilized an IRL mechanism that added resistance to stronger riders (check out AirHUB) to slow them down.

The “rubberband” option is a non-starter. This simply makes effort level irrelevant. There is no way to use this feature to allow “competition” among the participants.

Perhaps Zwift discourages weight manipulation, however it nonetheless represents a unique opportunity to achieve something positive that cannot be replicated in the real world. Obviously, this is limited to those private ride settings where ALL the participants agree to the manipulation.

You’re describing the simple premise of handicapping, eg. in horse racing they have weight handicapping to enable better horses to compete in the same races as lesser horses. However, the key here is that this only works one way – making faster horses slower. The inverse is of course impossible (making slower horses faster) because the lightest you can get still involves a jockey to be riding it.

Weight is also a tricky tool to manipulate, as courses aren’t all flat, and weight has different implications for uphills vs downhills etc. The better solution IMO would be a bias slider that could be set to yield your theoretical speed based on a behind-the-scenes change to the power that’s being used to calculate your speed. Eg. a 200w rider could enter a 75% bias to be able to ride equivalently to a 150w wkg rider

I appreciate what you’re wanting to do, but given that you’re trying to do something IRL impossible in a system that tries to mimic IRL riding, you’re going to have difficulties.

Weight manipulation would be fine so long as none of your riders who are manipulating ever wanted to race. If they never race, then the weight manipulation would have minimal effect (unless they’re also snagging KQOM/Sprint jerseys they didn’t really earn).

But as soon as they also want to race, now your riders would potentially be shifting the price of this benefit you want onto other users of the system. Now the fact that your club wants to get this benefit the system isn’t designed for affects my racing.

One possibility is to try something like an Australian Sprint. (full disclosure, I don’t know if that’s a real term or just something a club I know of made up :slight_smile:) Find your sprint segment/race segment, tell everyone what the finish line is (top of the hill past the tree). Have all your riders come to a stop at the start line. Then send them off in a staggered start according to handicap. Slower riders go first, faster riders go last. If you have a general idea of the time it will take everyone individually to cover the distance, you set the handicap times based on that. So a faster rider might start ten seconds, twenty seconds behind.

Then first to the line wins.

(works even better once you have actual times from those riders)

This would take some effort. You’d need a timekeeper at the finish line, you’d need to calculate the time handicaps, and everyone would have to get arranged at the start line. But I’ve done these IRL, they’re fun. And they could be done in Zwift.

Thanks for the ideas, but I already know this works. I’ve done it for a couple years and I am not looking for some other harder to implement substitute.

The original post was about its impact on CE calculations. Previous answers were sufficient to understand how it might impact the calculations.

@Ian_Attoe

Is your reading of this that the weight set on the current day “would never be used in the calculation”? In other words, say I set a 3min peak watts today, wouldn’t it ignore my weight today and use the average weight from all the previous peaks? And since today’s peak would then be recorded with that calculated average weight, the fact that it was set with a different weight doesn’t matter?

I know you know it works. The issue isn’t whether it works, the issue you raised is the effect on CE, meaning the effect on other users when your people race. I was trying to suggest that there is a way for your people to compete that would not affect other Zwift users negatively.

No that is not the way I read it. (My reply to Paul a little lower down from my reply to you gives a worked example provided by Zwift.)

If you weigh 80kg and you have 4 peak powers at that single weight your zFTP and zMAP are calculated (in Watts) and then divided by 80kg (the average of your 4 weights used to produce 4 best peak powers) to give you 2 x W/kg values.

Today you change your weight to 40kg to assist your ride dynamics and set just one new peak power. Say you only improve your 3min PB by 1 Watt. This new peak power may or may not change your zFTP or zMAP in WATTS.

But even if your figures only change by 1 Watt Zwift will now divide the figure by 70kg ((3x80 + 1x40) / 4) to give you 2 new W/kg figures (zFTP & zMAP) and this can make a big difference to what category you are in.

In addition that 40kg weight stays on your CE record for 60 days or until you are able to beat the Peak Power value you set with that weight in place.

That is my understanding of what I have read from Zwift.

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Implied in my post was a concern for how it would affect both the user in question and as well as other users. Obviously, there is the risk of moving riders into an inappropriate category, both from their perspective as well as those they have to race against.

I appreciate the effort to provide an alternative, but there is no reason to assume there is a negative impact without discussing whether there actually is. This is the discussion I was hoping to see develop.

And if previous answers were sufficient in answering that question - - yes, it would affect CE - - then it seemed reasonable to move forward from that positive answer. Seems from the above that it does affect CE, thereby affecting other users.

From there, I tried to provide an alternative. I don’t know why that confused the issue. If you still think it’s inconclusive whether it affects CE, well, okay.

Is the solution to equalise everybody at 2wkg rather than 4wkg?

Ie add weight to those lighter faster riders rather than lose weight from the heavier / weaker riders?

As long as you are all equalised it doesn’t matter if it’s at 1, 2 or 4wkg?

But to answer the question, yes it will impact CE and will show on the users profile as changing significant weight in short space of time that will arise suspicion’s by the wider community.

Seems like it wouldn’t matter what wkg you normalized to.

It will only show on ZP if the event is on ZP, so nobody will see it as it’s a private club event.

Jeff, it possibly does make a difference in which direction you normalise to.

If you normalise to 4.0 w/kg FTP for most of your riders I assume this means taking weight off. If you take weight off some people may feel your riders are gaining an ‘in game’ benefit of KOMs & Sprint Jerseys, extra mph so extra miles so extra XP and they may feel this has an impact on their ride, enjoyment of their game etc etc

If you normalise to 2.0 w/kg FTP I assume the majority of your riders may have to add weight. This possibly produces the feeling amongst others that this will give no ‘in game’ benefits.

However in the first situation if it does affect your CE cat it will be to increase your category. (Not in your favour)

In the second situation adding weight might, under the situations discussed further up this thread, possibly reduce your CE cat. In a race situation you have now favourably improved your racing category; not something those you are then racing against will appreciate.

That was my assessment as well!

Thanks.

Maybe Zwift could add an E-bike, clearly detectable by the big power pack and the strong frame,
with a corresponding power slider in Companion for the rider to select additional power in the range from 0 to 200W.
Clearly, these bikes should not be allowed for races. But banning such vehicles from events shouldn’t be an issue.

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That’s actually a good idea.
I was thinking of a course or world where wt changes wouldn’t carry into the game but a bike frame that does the same seems brilliant.

Or make it look like a track derny:

…and sound like one.

But it’s essentially for the avatar to look like a derny rider too.