Short term power has the best correlation to the resuts.
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thatās pen enforcement, which everyone (i hope) agrees is a good thing, i think. CE is the actual method of categorising racers, which is based on critical power and Wā balance.
which i agree with lee is fundamentally busted. and not because iām the one getting shafted by it
pen enforcement was all that was asked for back in the day to enforce ZP categories but instead we got CE
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I need a button on these replies so yall know when Iām laughing 
All is fair; Iāve never heard anyone call it pen enforcement until this thread, so if anything seems confusing; itās because I considered them to be one in the same!
fair enough brother. itās just important to distinguish between the two because when it was introduced, CE and pen enforcement were introduced simultaneously, so even though theyāre separate things, people tend to lump them together
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Hereās a brief glimpse back in history at moment right by before pen enforcement and how to categorize racers got permanently coupled in most forum discussions.
You can be forgiven for being confused about it. Zwift conflated two completely separate concepts in one feature. Thatās on them.
https://forums.zwift.com/search?q=%22pen%20enforcement%22%20order%3Alatest
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- The correlation between 5mwkg and race position (0.85) is not all that much lower than the corr between 1mwkg and position (0.9).
- Even then, race position does not capture it all as finishing 3th in a race with 5 people would bias the correlation between short interval power and finishing position. ZP ranking would better capture the correlation between āresultsā and power, as it would adjust for other ridersā abilities in the race. As you can see, 20wkg is the king there with 0.34 corr coefficient.
In short, you need to make the selection in a large peleton to put the hammer down at the end, if you have a hammer left that is.
itās litterally the worst metric possible in the chart. being 0.34 the king of a terrible bunch does not make it good. Just shows how bad zp ranking is as a system to rank ridersā¦hence the plan for zhq to use a similar racing score is a bad idea.
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The problem at the start about cat A races needs fixing. Iām a Cat A, although my current performances are B. I donāt race for icons of trophies as I donāt have a sprint to compete anyway. (When the boundaries changed recently & us low-As became Bs Iāll admit it was fun. I even won a small race by going long.)
Iāve wanted to find races but often the A pens are lucky to have 2 signups. Even if 3 of us did show up that wouldnāt be much of a race. The only advantage is itās meant Iāve done a few workouts, which I need to do more of if Iām to be back to a realistic lowest-A. That wouldnāt help the individual race experience but at least I wouldnāt penalise my TTT team by being classified an A while riding weaker than some of our Bs
This here was one of the main reasons I raised this because there are so many in Cat B at the top flying under the radar that if the goal post was moved from the current
| Open Races | zMAP (watts/kg) | zFTP watts/kg and watts |
|---|---|---|
| Category A | ā„5.1W/kg | ā„4.2W/kg and ā„250W |
To maybe
| Open Races | zMAP (watts/kg) | zFTP watts/kg and watts |
|---|---|---|
| Category A | ā„4.9W/kg | ā„4.0W/kg and ā„250W |
This would see these top Cat Bs who are quite capable of being in Cat A move up and then hopefully boost the numbers for races
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Duh. Race fields are determined by power, not ZP ranking. So the high correlation between power and race positions is kind of a circular logic. If we divided categories with respect to ZP ranking, the relationship between power and finishing positions would be much less.
The problem in A are also racers on the equipment that is not fit for racingā¦Spinbikes, Miscalibrated Trainers, Boosted Powermeters and there is no control.
There is a Cat D rider pushing out +400W at 170kg on a spinbike winning every Flat Tiny Race on a spinbikeā¦with his Free Power 
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Definitely more difficult to weed it all out but locking races to only trainer controlled being allowed would start to help a little.
Spinbikes with power pedals for example would be excluded as they have no controllable
Miscalibrated and Boosted powermeters though is more an issue that are not easily resolved
Almost need for these races you add a Cat E for people who want to race but do not have smart trainers so that way then you are not excluding them but they are not in wrong Cats because of the equipment used
That was also my suggestion back in January
removing the watt floor would be a start and would push many bās back into A cat
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I think you are right here - If power is to remain as the dividing factor and the current zMAP\zFTP solution remains, there needs to be a another look at boundaries.
zMAP needs to take focus as this is the only static boundary in plan - Anyone & everyone can manipulate their zFTP to stay in category currently so its become a bit of a nonsense
Id go as far as probably dropping it another point - You might even get races within races at that point as the category will be stacked from top to bottom through B & C - Whilst A will get a good boost of strong riders with short term power. (I think D probably needs an entirely different solution to introduce riders to racing and bring them through.)
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@xflintx @DavidP There is very little love for CE and the users are suggesting its not working - Whats the feedback?.
So what is the logic that behind having an increased short term power (3 mins?) can send you down a category rather than up? Really canāt get my head around it.