Has Zwift become a more anti-social place recently, the mixed C/D starts are full of B racers spoiling the events, there is no point “racing” when the cat system is so roundly ignored, just call then all group rides if you’re not willing to organise “races” properly.
I came 46th according to Zwift, of the 25 riders ahead of me in zwift power, 14 were filtered out for being in the wrong cat and even then ZP failed to filter out another handful of B cat riders.
A more generous reason could be the silly decision to name the race “B” even though it’s for C/D cats, come on Zwift at least fix the naming so we can be safe in our abuse of the sandbaggers…
In the Tour For All RACES, the C/D races have different wkg breakdowns than a regular race. The A/B races are on the ‘long’ course for the stage, and the C/D races are on the short course. The A and C races are 3.2-5.0 wkg and the B and D races are 1.0-3.1 wkg. So, it makes sense that there could be a number of Bs (and even As) as categorized for a ‘normal’ Zwift race who could ride in the C category for the TFA. (Just as there could be a number of C/D rides who might pick the B category.)
Is this all confusing as heck? For sure. But until Zwift introduces multiple categorization schema (A-D wkg-based races; 1-4 for distance-based events, some combination of the two for TFA-type events) we are stuck with a system that can be confusing at times (even if the different category ‘requirements’ are listed for each event).
I suspect the events team didn’t want to have multiple events for each stage at each time slot. One event for the long race route, one for the short race route, one for women only, one for the group rides, etc…To keep the list of events a little bit cleaner they decided to come up with this new category system, but it really isn’t working out too well.
Yes it’s confusing. I think Stephen’s original point is that what he refers to as the “mixed C/D starts” is the B category race on TfA. It should be for people who are normally C and D cat so 1.0 to 3.1 w/kg but because it is named B category people who do 3.1 to 4.0 w/kg are signing up without reading the fine print.
Of all the weird crazy decisions that Zwift makes the way they have organized TfA has to be one of the weirdest as anyone with even the slightest bit of sense could have foreseen the mess it would be.
From the outside looking in it looks like a company run by a single authoritarian who discourages any dissent. I’m sure there are people in Zwift who looked at this and realised how stupid of an idea it was but they must have feared speaking up. It’s not good for any company to be run like that. It leads to expensive mistakes.
I do agree with @Mike_Rowe_PBR. It is not working that well.
But on the other hand people should start reading race descriptions.
Race orginizers spend a lot of time writing these and plan the type or races.
The Herd has beginner races where A cat is 2w/k and every week people enter and shatter the race.
Then there are ZHR that use ABCD for age groups and again people enter thinking this is a normal A race because they did not read.
Not to talk about TTT races, they had to introduce a 1 minuite wait before the first group go so that those that don’t read can get out of the pen.
I can’t weight for the day that Zwift has a ranking system and put us in the the correct pen per Race organizer rules.
a bit of sandbagging as per but very stupid race naming certainly doesn’t help matters.
anyone who just wants to log in and smash out a ride without reading a wall of text is going to sign up for the wrong category by mistake.
it also doesn’t help that group ride categories don’t match race event catergories /facepalm
Gave up with the TfA. I’m an average B cat rider and the in races the format actively encourages b cat riders to go slower. If I wanted To do a steady ride I would do the group ride not the race. But if I try hard in the race I get dq’d. Pointless.
Think he’s referring to Zwiftpower which has had to implement hard caps on the w/kg limits for this event. So racers don’t have the leeway usually allowed, leading to more DQs than usual.
I have entered 2 TfA races as a cat b but the wkg limit for cat b in TfA is 3.2 w/kg. Last race I averaged 3.4 so was dq’d. I suppose I should have entered as cat A and got owned as there is no way I can keep up with most cat A riders. The rules for TfA aren’t clearly published. TfA isn’t split into normal cat A -D groups. So I’m stuck in the middle as a middling B rider in most races, in TfA I either go slower to avoid getting dq’d or race in a higher cat and finish way down because I can’t compete.
So what you are saying you are a B cat rider according to Zwift Power (ZP)? Then you need to enter the A race for the long route or you need to enter C for the short route.
A group is for A and B cat Long
B group is for C and D cat Long
