i can’t wait to get out of it. nothing but stress and empty pens
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Best of luck Flint for the future certainly one of the most engaging from ZHQ on the forums I feel we may be on a slippery slope 
.
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I do wonder if someone in HQ looks at the split across the categories and thinks - Hmm perhaps, we might have got that one wrong.
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Can anyone remember the reasoning behind making the zFTP boundaries 5% higher than the old categories? Was it just about making the potential gap between the top and bottom of A smaller?
Pretty much and to keep those who were sandbagging happy - Less chance of an upgrade = less complaints & noise to deal with.
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It was supposedly to reflect the fact that before 95% of 20 min power was used. Now it’s using 100% of zFTP and for some reason they took that to mean they needed to increase the previous w/kg values.
Category Enforcement is still better than nothing…and that is what we had, cause you all forget that we had Cat A sandbaggers joining Pen D races.
With CE you need to think outside the box…many of you think CE is only zFTP but there is more behind it.
This is the latest version of Split Categories we are using at VirtuSlo Wacky Wednesdays Series
PEN → ( zFTP W/kg and VO2 ) OR zMAP Wkg OR Compound Score (5min Wkg * 5min Watts)
Pen E - ( > 4.5 W/kg and > 66 ) OR > 5.4 W/kg OR > 2300
Pen A - ( < 4.5 W/kg and < 66 ) OR < 5.4 W/kg OR < 2300
Pen B - ( < 4.0 W/kg and < 60 ) OR < 4.8 W/kg OR < 1900
Pen C - ( < 3.5 W/kg and < 52 ) OR < 4.2 W/kg OR < 1500
Pen D - ( < 3.0 W/kg and < 44 ) OR < 3.6 W/kg OR < 1100
And before you comment Wkg is bad or what ever…yes i agree it’s not the best and i hope we get Results based zoon.
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- All category boundaries have been increased by 5%, to make the difference between Zwiftpower and CE less apparent and confusing (because Zwiftpower uses 95% of your best effort over 20 minutes).
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We also get complaints that category A is already too broad. With some users at 4w/kg racing some with FTP > 5.5…
As per @DavidP
Sanitising A to the detriment of everything else was part of the reasoning - that has now resulted in A racing being a non-entity with many community races having zero A racers and the broad range across the other categories providing a worse platform than had they just implemented pen entry against the old values.
Pen enforcement = Good
Cat enforcement calculation = Bad
We would been better off having pen enforcement and keep zp cats to avoid the daily discussions on ce boundaries.
Although with the newer updates to CE allow CS i would say if zwift moved to your current split category configuration it would be better for all.
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that is all that was asked for but we got CE instead (several months later) where it would have literally been a few lines of code to sort pen enforcement with ZP categories
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yeah pretty much, the 2wkg range from 4-6wkg was considered too broad and some were moaning about it but D having a range of upto 2.5wkg or slightly higher now with CE isn’t too broad
2.5 more like 2.7 with CE Now.
The power curve for CP and MAP ( which I think then became zFTP and zMAP) was there for a reason.
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To try and catch those cutting their 20 minute effort at around 18/19 minutes.
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To catch those with high 5 minute power who were generally making no long time power efforts but had power to burn for short hills and a massive sprint.
I think the theory was good but somehow the execution not so good.
We were later told that it was never CP only ever FTP.
So in hindsight but slightly more complicated it should probably have been.
zMAP
and
Highest of either 95% of best 20 minute effort or the calculated zFTP
Main complaints now are that zFTP often has little resemblance to the 95% of 20 minute power which are visible on racers ZwiftPower accounts.
Of course the complaints about others are always when the zFTP is far far lower than the visible best 20 min power.
And the complaints about our own zFTP when it is far higher than our 20 minute power !
Can I just clarify how this works. In CE I am firmly in mid B, whereas I would be at the top end of pen B for this series. When I clicked on the link I can enter Cat A or B. Are the results of the pens calculated after the event or is it clear who is in each of the pens during the race?
I enjoy racing in Cat B as it gives me a hard workout, but I know winning is almost impossible. Being over 60 I can quite often scrape onto a podium in age group racing, but there seem to be a lot of over 60s in Cat A+ who will blow me away. It would be nice to occasionally enter a race that might help boost my ego (or possibly bring me back down to earth).
Thanks for putting this series together. Split categories make so much sense. I understand that the max number of pens that Zwift allows is the limiter, but I wish that there was a series that solved the problem for Zwift Cat low Cs and all Zwift Cat Ds in the same way that you have for higher ranges. Right now the Pen D range in this series is very broad and I wonder if these events get many sign ups of those under 2.5. w/kg. It would be great if you could share any anecdotal data you have on that!
Edit:
P.S. Are the pen E numbers correct? They seem the same as Pen A.
they are different, Pen E is basically the very top end A pen is just below that
Pen E - ( > 4.5 W/kg and > 66 ) OR > 5.4 W/kg OR > 2300
Pen A - ( < 4.5 W/kg and < 66 ) OR < 5.4 W/kg OR < 2300
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makes you wonder who was complaining that they might have to race A cat so the numbers were changed to keep them in B…
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At this point I’m starting to think we won’t see it until Fall in the northern hemisphere, maybe we will get to play with it through our summer while everyone else rides outdoors.
Meanwhile it still seems some heads and upper tiers of ZHQ have been playing with things that were supposed to come out before the end of Summer 2023 such as player highlight, which has been visible many of times now via Eric’s Strava posts, along with Instagram posts from Zwift themselves, and has yet to go public for whatever reason.
ZHQ doesn’t seem to like to fiddle with things through the heavier winter northern hemisphere months; so I wouldn’t expect this to come even with the latest news; other than potentially some soft release LATE spring at best.
A year or so ago I was really looking to finally being proud to soon be a Cat A. Now that I’m almost Cat A, all I can do is sit here and realize any race that isn’t ZRL… means I’m forced into events with 4 whole people… which is genuinely ridiculous the more I think about it.