Where do I stand against other "C" riders?

Today I participated as a “C” rider in one of the zwift races. As I’ve posted many times before, I only want to beat other racers in my category.

So after 8 minutes, this is what my screen looks like. Can someone tell me where I’m at against to other “C” riders?

If you look to the right, there isn’t a single “C” rider there.

What am I supposed to do in this case? Am I first, last, in the middle of the pack?

This is the main reason I haven’t done zwift in a long time. And to be honest, $14.99/month isn’t cheap.

If someone can tell me how I can figure out what place I’m in against other “C” riders, then I’ll continue paying for zwift. Otherwise, I’ll cancel.

You are 33 sec behind another C rider and you are 35 secs ahead of a group of several C riders.
It is early in the race of 102 riders.
I would say 2 things happened.

  1. the start is always crazy and you have to do a 250-320 wat effort for as long as possible then slip in with a group that you can hang with and recover.

  2. The route your on has a steep climb and that has broken the groups up. Climbs are another place that you will need to try to be 250 or so.

Try racing flat races. Different trainers respond to the climbs differently. I find the flat races to be the most enjoyable because I can focus on drafting technique and energy conservation and just hold good steady power with a few increases. Usually I hope that at about 2/3 of the wat thru, if I’m rested, I can either initiate an attack or hang on with another attacking rider or 2 and we work together at 50+ watts over the group and we pull away.

The race above, your alone and on a steep hill.
You and the rider in front of you can work together and catch all the solo riders that are within 25-30 sec in front of you. They are all alone and can be caught. That will give you a couple D’s, 1 other C and an A rider.
A group of 6-8 is a fun strong ride.

Behind you, there are a couple C’s and an A rider putting out 3.5-4 W/KG and they may catch you and you need to grab their wheel if they do.

In a group with a couple A riders, you may be able to catch more of the C riders in the race.

You are all in the race together. It is only at the end do the riders get sorted and probably 1/2 the riders are not on Zwift Power anyway.

The C riders Tim refers to are actually B (green blobs, rather than blue), but the rest it pretty much on point.

The nearby riders list is showing you + 12 nearest riders, who may or may not be in your class. Just smash along with the ones nearest you at any one time, and if you know you can hold 3w/kg don’t sit in with a group doing 2.x, push on to the next group up the road. The “C” race on Zwift will likely be won by someone entering the wrong category and doing 4 w/kg anyway :joy:

I think you can get live data from zwiftpower but I’ve never tried this.

I check zwiftpower after the race to see the “real” results, but in mass starts you’ll often find that a C rider that was able to hang with a group of B (or A) riders is a couple of minutes up the road without putting out silly w/kg, and maybe they just hammered it at the start to hang with that group, or were clever(er) with drafting etc.

Some races (Hare and Hounds for example) start different cats some minutes apart so you will by and large be surrounded by riders from your cat, aside from when you catch / are caught by others.

So nobody’s bothered by the fact that at any point during the race, you don’t know where you stand against other riders in your same category?

Well, it bothers me. If I just wanted to ride, I’d use any number of free training apps.

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How would this information change things?

I mean, speaking personally, I ride as hard as I think I can. I don’t slow down and coast because I’m way out in front.

And if I think I’m way off the back, I still work hard to try and close up; I don’t give up and pootle in.

If you can’t see any of C riders in your HUD, you’re either a long way in front of or a long way behind the next group. Either way, just keep riding. :smiley:

I am in agreement with you, this is one of my main complaints about racing in Zwift for the lower groups (B,C and D). I like the competition and I like the idea of doing a race once a week. But as you noticed you don’t know who to chase and who to let go.

One may say just go out and do the best you can do, but for that I don’t need a race I can just hop on a TT bike select a route and go hard for X distance or time. That is not racing that is a TT. Racing is like a game you try to outsmart you opponents, pick the right wheel to follow, close the correct gaps, leave gaps open, conserve energy, burn matches when needed. All of this is racing.

Here is a workaround: Open Zwiftpower.com on a second screen and go to the live tab and select to see only your cat “C”.

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the point of racing is to beat someone. Otherwise I’d do a group ride.

My goal is to win in “C” and move up to “B”, and so on.

With all due respect, I don’t pay $15/month to guess where I am.

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So you would ease up if you know you’re in the lead, right?

In doing so, you potentially artificially lower your average W/kg for the race. Maybe staying in C amongst riders you can easily beat if you put in a proper race-long effort.

See above. If you might ease up because you know you don’t need to work, you potentially won’t ever get upgraded to B. You could manually upgrade of course.

Here is my view, if you are that far in front you must have put out huge power numbers in the beginning, ZP use your best 20min, so that will determine your Cat for the next ride.

ZP is working on a points system and from what I read between the lines is if you win multiple races you will gain enough points to move to the next Cat.

Whilst ZwiftPower do an excellent job it is a bit ridiculous that Zwift have basically outsourced results. I use ZwiftPower and judge my results from there but this often means that I am downplaying my result as many people do not use it. So I may be 6 of 18 on ZwiftPower but 8/28 on zwift.

I really don’t mind going to ZwiftPower for results, that is the way we do it IRL as well there is always a 3rd party that do the timing and results, But it is up to the organizer to put the races in the correct starting blocks, this is where I see the short coming with Zwift.

Organizers need to be able to set filters on who is in witch category or starting block.

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I get where you’re coming from, even the Tour use a 3rd party but that is through necessity, Zwift doesn’t have that problem. Also in real life you don’t have to opt-in to the third party to have your results count.

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What do riders use if it’s not zwiftpower?

They just rely on zwift’s own results but they are less…verified, shall we say

No IRL you have to pay them for a timing Chip and part of your race fee go to them. you can race IRL with out a timing chip but you wont have a result. “Sound a lot like opt-in to me exept you have to pay”

I would not say it is a problem for Zwift, But I get it they don’t want to DQ paying customers that is fair let the 3rd part do it. But what they can do is help organizers put the correct riders in the correct starting Pen.

If everyone is in the correct starting pen then the results at the end will be 90% accurate not 40% like it is now.

I’m not sure you can use the ‘have to pay’ argument for real life, it’s not like Zwift is free, and realistically how many people don’t bother with the chip?

If Zwift are going to put people in the right pens they are going to need historic data from previous events which I guess would be easy enough for them to generate.

I was actuality referring to Zwiftpower vs the Chip. LOL

O yes Zwift will need past performance and that is why we have ZwiftPower, they will provide the past performance data and also the results. “Again same as IRL: the event orginizer use the data from the Timing company to set up the different pens”

It may be a bit of a learning curve for those that was not on ZwiftPower.

I would think Zwift will start with one Racing series where you can only enter if you have ZP or every one that is not on ZP will ride one cat up from there FTP w/kg calculation. It will be a few races before everyone will be on ZP. I think this will become the popular racing event.

It’s been a long day!

Yeah I think what you suggest would work. Zwift Power only events for those who take racing more seriously, so long as there are open events for everyone for those who just want to dabble.

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I agree 100% with you. There should be something for everyone.

there can even be a option for Orginizers to use your FTP/weight as a way to categorize riders.