Can someone help me decipher the results from the 8:40am UK time Crit Club Race (screenshot below). I started with a zwift racing score of 599, entered the 525-650 category and came 3rd out of 10 (about what was expected looking at ZP and Zwift Racing) and I end up with a new score of 523… which is a massive drop off, and outside the race boundary?
Given that most racers race infrequently I’m still not understanding the point of score decay.
Given that race was your only apparent Zwift Labs Racing Score race so far and you haven’t got many events showing in the last 90 days on zwiftpower, I can only presume that you had 30sec and/or 10min power bests fall outside the 90 day window from other zwift activities sometime around this morning.
Racers with numerous Zwift Labs races had their score retrospectively adjusted yesterday to allow their score to drop up to 15% below their power based seeding score, mine only dropped ~4 points but my only races from July were mostly good finishing positions in Tiny Races (when pen E was limited to 225 on a flat route quartet).
Would it perhaps help get more racers joining the Zwift Crit Club races, if their race title included “Using Racing Score” like all the other Racing Score events, like they used to? @James_Zwift
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Do the pen ranges need re-evaluating for Racing Score events, after the retrospective changes to riders’ scores yesterday?
I’m especially looking at the 300/330 limit for pen E in Zmonthly (outside of UK prime time) and Tiny Races, which some riders may be able to enter, following a score drop of up to 15% below their power based seed score.
Somewhat related query – I see that ZwiftHacks has a means of finding ZRS events in the “Experiments” tab.
I haven’t figured out though, if anyone knows(?), what the Percentile slider is doing
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Thanks for looking at it Steve. Yeah it was the first zwift labs race I had entered, but the score seemed to be changing with the 5-6 other races I have done in the last month or so. I thought 600 was probably too high for me, but wasn’t expecting a drop like that after a 3rd place! I’m not completely disappointed - looks like the downgrade puts me in a lower category!
Your baseline seed score can be changed from any zwift activity, if your power bests for the last rolling 90 days improve or decline, specifically only for 30secs and 10mins at this time.
Any additional changes to your score based on finishing position can currently only come from Zwift Labs events.
I’d be very surprised if finishing 3rd of 10 gave you a finishing position score decrease, based on the results I see from https://www.zwift.com/uk/events/view/4459920
My racing score dropped 2 points to 634.96 … i am a C at 98kg and yes a ‘sprinter’ … when are we going to get the seed changes because it is pointless turning up to a zwift Race when i can just do the Zwift ITT race and know i am on my own from the start rather than after 10 mins lol
the faq likely needs updating since it is open to more organisers to adopt and try now
The at Home Cycling & Running Virtual Training App - race series designed to fill the hole left by DRS hosted by alex eames of DIRT, using ZRS
VirtuSlo Wacky Wednesday using Racing Score - The at Home Cycling & Running Virtual Training App - new weekly thing by @DejanPresen , also using ZRS
yes, the E pens are wide. there’s probably a reason for that, but that’s there are races like the HERD beginner’s series also
i hope organisers do try it. even if they think it is still too scuffed. once zrl is underway people looking for stuff to do the rest of the week aren’t gonna be too picky regardless, trust.
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maybe race organizers should wait for:
It is really not a good experience for many in its current state.
Question is what percentage of racers have a good experience vs poor experience (and I don’t know the answer to that). The CE system picked a set of winners who are guaranteed to be unhappy in the new system. The new system is really designed to give them a worse experience. People getting regular CE podiums for a long time are supposed to have a worse experience. I’m unsure if the seeding balance is right, but this change is specifically designed to give a worse experience to some riders, and some might find that they need to train differently to perform well. If a large enough population has a better experience, then that change is worthwhile even if there is a lot of noise from people who had their expectations reset.
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Yes, if the majority have a better experience, I agree. I don’t think people think about or are willing to train differently because the categories change. They do the training they can with the limited available time. I’m afraid that the ZRS is biased in one way or the other and that turns racers away from racing.
They can train differently with the time they have. That’s an option. The incentives of the current system may be replaced with different incentives and given time people will respond to that. Think about the people who have a crap experience in CE and how they train. It’s really no different. Should people who train more or better be disadvantaged or not? If I train 10 hours a week and someone else trains 5 hours a week, should the category system put its thumb on the scale and give them an advantage?
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So it same, same. Just that now some other guys will shine. If I don’t train and have a good 30 sec but suck at 5 min+, I’m doomed to have a bad experience.
Hey James, thanks for reporting this score drop - this appears to be a bug that impacts anyone doing their first racing score race. We’re working on a fix right now and will be able to reprocess the score calculation for any impacted events when the fix is in place.
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People had a crap experience in CE because it was a crap system. It categorised people on metrics that were rarely if ever tested in a race. You didn’t need to sandbag to win consistently if you happened to have the right combination of power and weight.
And yes it does seem like ZRS, at least in the first phase of testing, was built specifically to make racing bad for the sort of rider who could consistently win CE races.
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It seems like a very naive implementation, where they just found a correlation between 30 sec and winning. Come on! You can do better than that!
Think about what you’re going to do about that problem? Train for the new regime or pick races that suit your characteristics? If route profile predicts finishing order better than before then those are the options. I understand that this is a big expectation reset and some riders won’t be happy about it, but that doesn’t tell us whether the system is good or not.
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