Hi. I manage 3x teams in the new ZRL league. We have just completed the first round of races. On completion I have reviewed a number of the top finishers and they are clearly exceeding the WPK on thier ZP account in B Cat. One guy is showing a 4.7wpk in B category! Within the last 2 months this same guy has put in a 4.7 wpk adv on 2 races but is still classed as a B cat rider.?.
Is this not what ZP was supposed to weed out. It used to be simple contact Sticky and all sorted…
I can give you the individuals ZP account on request.
I can’t see the riders in question but in order to be upgraded you need to exceed BOTH w/kg AND 20 min watts. I’m not saying that all riders do this but some riders set their weight so slow to give them huge w/kg but since they never exceed the 20 min watts metric they will stay as a B rider. I race against 60+ aged riders that are over 5’9” tall and weigh less than 130lbs in Zwift. Usually these guys are using fake names and never link to Strava.
ZwiftPower - Login if dont Yell it at Zwift. there not going to do it. case in point. June was long time ago now. 1st started to talk about roll it out. WE need the Green cone of Shame.
lots of zwifter dont read the rule book very well. have to be force into the Green cone of shame to get it the point a cross, that there doing bad.
The madness of Zwift. They can prevent men from joining women’s races/rides. They can prevent the common folk from joining their special exclusive top tier races. But they can’t stop someone with an FTP of 4.0w/kg from joining a D cat race.
Set your Zwift weight 37.5kg keep your FTP under 160 watts and you are going to be a 4.0 w/kg D racer in Zwift.
My point is you can’t just look at the w/kg of the leaderboard because the wattage ftp also matters. And remember it’s 95% of your best 3 races in the last 90 days.
To upgrade from D to C you need to exceed 2.5 w/kg AND 150 watts.
So… I’ve been doing Zwift races for a few months and am turning to the forums for advice on this category stuff. My issue is that I’m stuck in A cat when I think I should be in B. I finish last, or nearly last, in A in every race, usually by a solid margin. I generally fall in the middle of the B finishers with some C racers also ahead of me. Yet ZP says I’m an A.
It’s unclear to me how all those B racers are actually in B when they beat me solidly.
I get the math, I guess, I just think it’s not an accurate way to dictate what group I should be in. So how best to downgrade? I could ask for a profile wipe, but I’d end up in the same position. Should I slow down at the start? I can hold with A just fine for awhile, but get dropped on the first or second hill.
Regarding hills, it’s incredible how the entire peloton drops me at every incline. Does everyone in A really crank up to 350-400+ watts on the hills? I can’t hold that, which is another reason I shouldn’t be in A.
I also have a comment on the trainer difficulty setting. It’s not so much a resistance difficulty as it is a shifting difficulty, meaning it’s very challenging to hit the right gear at the right moment. I use 100% difficulty with the deciding factor being I have a Kickr Climb that was too expensive to NOT use it to the full extent. Also, I’d like to think that 100% difficulty is more like real road riding.
You can’t get a profile reset or a category downgrade just because you don’t like where you are. That is reserved for Trainer Upgrades or where there is evidence of poorly calibrated equipment.
Your 20 mins power puts you firmly in Cat A but that doesn’t always determine how competitive you will be. Your 20 mins 4.42 w/kg is better than 75.46% of others on ZwiftPower; yet your 1 min 5.64 w/kg is better than only 31.46%. There lies your problem; you need to work on your ‘punch’ and improve your ability to do short explosive efforts and recover. I’d expect the top Cat Bs to be doing 8w/kg for 1 min so you would struggle there too.
Thanks for the excellent analysis and reply; I really appreciate it. At age 47 and years of only moderate training - most of which isn’t biking - we’ll see what I can do. When my heart rate approaches 170 I start to feel not so great. Lots to consider.
My feeling is that if I’m finishing in the middle of B, then I’m a B racer. Similarly, those B racers finishing in the top half of A should be A racers. Yet that’s not the case. Superficially, it seems categories based on finish times/placement would be logical, or could at least be a factor in the calculation.
Great to put it out like this, and even though I appreciated the importance of 1min efforts for racing, I wasn’t aware that this requires 8w/kg for B. Just checked a WTRL race result of today and its indeed the number that top Bs are putting out. Substantially higher than top Cs, but I was surprised that it also seems higher than the top A’s. Is this a one-off race or is this a normal tendency? (Perhaps due to the higher overall pace)
Hey guys. I am new on Zwift so I am a bit confused. Yesterday I participated in a 3R race in Innsbruck. Race was short so I went all out and mannaged to finish in just over 12 minutes producing 4,3W/kg. On zwift power I am C so I enterd C but end up being WKG. It seems a bit unfair but it is what it is. What should I do in the future to prevent beeing DQ? In longer races I can not produce that kind of Watts. I did 3 other races of 18, 30 and 46km producing 3.0, 3.2 and 3.0 W/kg. Thanks for advice! Have fun.
Zwiftpower supposes FTP from the your 5 minutes power.
Zwiftpower does not publish a calculating formula.
But, judging from generalization of the power training, it will be such a feeling.
(5min power)/(FTP)=about 1.1～1.3
If it is the ability that can maintain 4.3PWR for 12 minutes, it will be 3.9PWR for one hour.
The english is a bit rough but I think what Blue1 might be saying is that because your race was so short ZP is extrapolating your 20 min FTP from your 5 min power. I am not sure if this is correct as I don’t know how ZP calculates 20 min FTP on races shorter than 20 min but Milan is correct that FTP is 95% of your 20 min power output.
