Ouch! Touché! You just exposed my weak spot. I’m a disgruntled cat D, former cat C racer who sucks so much due to post-covid that I can’t win. And now I want to blame it on something else… I dunno… the System! Yes! It’s Zwift’s fault that I don’t win. I want to win and win and win again! Why don’t I? It’s not fair! Boohoo!
Wouldn’t that have been neat? No, I’ll tell you my real weak spot. It’s allergies. I have several. Gives me a bit of asthma too, as if the post-covid wasn’t enough. Let me see, there’s the hazel pollen, birch pollen, grass too. And then there’s injustice pollen, inequality pollen… oh, and stupidity pollen too. Well, I normally don’t have a problem with stupidity pollen. Only at certain times when the wind blows in a certain direction as to give stupidity free reign over reason or, even worse, over facts and science. Then I always get really sneezy.
Already long ago I got so sick and tired of seeing the same forum messages over and over from new zwifters and new racers. People who couldn’t understand why someone not in their cat was still racing in their cat. It didn’t make sense. People who asked for help to understand why they were never near a podium even though they had worked on their fitness so hard to rise to the assumed top of their category, only to be told off by wannabe cycling coach know-it-alls that their results weren’t surprising and that they needed to work more on their 2 min or their 5 min or their whatever, as if that was ever the problem.
And just because you are unable to empathize with all these people doesn’t mean others can’t.
My profile never was a secret. (The deliberate UPG’s are from when I practiced cruising while waiting for the downgrade so I could start for real for a bit.)
What exactly do you mean? That if I would run the same test on cat A as above, then I would get same result as I did in the past, right? That there is no weight advantage in cat A since it lacks this artificial performance ceiling? (Which is why I never bothered to as I simply assumed that’s what would happen.)
So the point then with the test above would be to show that even after they introduced the new model NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL HAS HAPPENED. It’s the same crap as before.
Jeez, I really didn’t have time for this but… just in case anyone is in doubt…
THE SAME TEST AS IN THE ORIGINAL POST BUT ON CAT A INSTEAD OF CAT C
INTRODUCTION
So what would be the assumption here. Well, we’re testing the same null hypothesis of course. There should be no statistically significant difference in results based on weight. Weight shouldn’t matter as much as to predict race results. And I showed that in cat C that’s not true. Weight does matter.
But what about cat A then? If cat A shows a similar weight advantage, then we can argue all day long whether this is right or not but we can’t blame it on these performance ceilings that I complain about. Because that is the most important difference between cat A and the other categories, the lack of this performance ceiling. And theory/simple maths says it should matter. So does it?
METHOD
Same method. A slightly smaller sample due to lack of cat A entrants in cat enforced races. But there’s a fair few, more than enough to get significant results from, in either direction. It’s 597 cat A racers.
RESULTS
Weight - Podiums vs All Losers
Avg: 71.2 kg vs 70.8 kg
Median: 70.6 kg vs 71.0 kg
Skewness: Potentially symmetrical/bell shaped (the cat C test was severely skewed)
Significance: p = 0.7574 (NOT statistically significant, null hypothesis NOT rejected)
Takeaway: SURPRISE SURPRISE! There is no significant difference in weight between winners and losers in cat A. And this is because there is no artifical performance ceiling that thwarts some racers and can be exploited by other racers. Just like two years ago. NOTHING HAS CHANGED WITH THE NEW MODEL.
20 min W/kg - Podiums vs Losers
Avg: 4.1 W/kg vs 4.1 W/kg
Median: 4.1 vs 4.1
Significance: p = 0.6956 (not significant)
Takeway: 20 min W/kg is apparently not what decides a winner in cat A. Still this measure is arguably the most important one even in the new model. To what effect? Nothing!
Watt - Podiums vs All Losers
Avg: 325W vs 303W
Median: 318W vs 304W
Significance: p = 0.00001 (significant, null hypothesis rejected)
Takeaway: So raw Watts, that they downplayed in the final model, would apparently matter somewhat in predicting results. But how can that be when neither weight nor W/kg does? Well, it’s because of the next result…
1 min W/kg - Podiums vs All Losers
Avg: 7.5 W/kg vs 6.6 W/kg
Median: 7.4 W/kg vs 6.4 W/kg
Significance: p = 3.405e-12 (highly significant, null hypothesis rejected)
Takeaway: No one is surprised. To win at Zwift in cat A you need to have the burst. It has nothing to do with weight or with your 1 hr or 20 min functional threshold.
Avg-to-Max HR - Podiums vs All Losers
Avg: 0.84 vs 0.87
Median: 0.85 vs 0.87
Significance: p = 0.0000056 (highly significant, null hypothesis rejected)
Takeaway: The difference is smaller than in cat C but it’s there and it’s highly significant. But here we need to understand the difference in a different way. The strongest rider in the cat A field in a race doesn’t have to work as hard to stay with the front group as someone “further down” the starting field. So it’s only natural that we see this difference.
But doesn’t the same argument hold for cat C with regards to avg-to-max HR? No, and you need to understand why. When you race right under an artificial ceiling, the top dogs in the cat, there is the assumption that only those who can barely reach that ceiling should be in that cat. If they could go any harder they would be pushed to the next cat and that’s where they rightfully belong.
So when we see podiums in cat C where they didn’t work quite as hard as the rest of the field and if the race ran right beneath the ceiling (it usually does in the lower cats because it’s how you win when there’s a ceiling and you’re not best in show because those are in the next cat - you push and drop people), then those guys on the podium could theoretically have worked themselves a little harder. But then they would no longer be qualified for cat C. They would get moved to cat B. And that makes their effort at least border territory of cruising. If they could go harder than the ceiling, then why aren’t they in cat B? Something isn’t working here.
And it never will. So give up on these stupid power measures, people…
But it really doesn’t matter what evidence gets thrown in your face, does it? Facts will never convince you anyway. Only authority would. Someone to look up to and take all their views from. No need for thinking for yourselves, just agree with them. Someone like Flint or Eric Schlange maybe?