The ZRS seed represents ability much better than using w/kg regardless of weight. W/kg is not equal to speed. At the same w/kg the heavier rider will always be faster. There is no transition point, no gradient that the lighter rider becomes faster.
The biggest issue with ZRS seed is getting everyone to do a maximum effort 5 minute interval to have it set correctly.
The problem here is that everyone has got used to basing W/Kg off the weight of themselves on the scales, rather than looking also adding the weight of their bike in Zwift.
Outdoors, we should be looking at the total weight of us; the bike including extras like bottles and mudguards; the kit we’re wearing; stuiff in our pockets like mobile and repair kits etc.
But usually everyone simply divides their Watts by as little weight as possible, out of laziness and giving the rider a bigger ego boost.
Yes, pure Watts will help the heavier rider overcome other forces like rolling resistance, but it isn’t going to massively affect how far they will travel up a 5min climb, esepcially if the road is steeper.
Just because a 50Kg and a 100Kg rider can both do for example 4W/Kg for 5mins, it does not follow that their W/Kg is going to be similar up a longer climb of say 40min. It’s far more likely the lighter rider will manage to stay far closer to 200W, than the massive 400W required by the 100Kg rider.
Not that there are many routes with 40min climbs at 4W/Kg in Zwift and those routes that do aren’t used very often!
Don’t think those numbers are correct, I raced a rider today, he did 4w/kg at 68kg and his score jumped 107 points to 332.
The trouble is ZRS puts riders with 180 seed score against riders with a 400 seed score meaning its worse than old w/kg in the distance between abilities in the same Cat.
Zwift should keep the races with the two ranges as ZRS but the races with one range should go back to the old w/kg which is a lot better, maybe change the cat limits from time to time so different riders can be at the top.
I’d like to see organisers given the choice to use ZRS seed instead of the current score. The problems with ZRS are mostly due to the poorly designed score movement.
The variable ranges, and using a compound score instead of w/kg and a watt floor, are both huge improvements over CE. Let us use just those parts, and also fix the score movements.
I think the biggest issue with ZRS (or the old CE system) is simply that most race organizers try to accommodate the full 1-1000 ZRS score range in their events, as opposed to focusing to a narrower overall band to use the available 5 pens within.
Looking back, it’s a crying shame so few popular events properly tried the custom pen allocation options ~2.5 years ago for a month or so.
Aren’t used often because everyone hates routes on which they have no chance for winning. So they will just avoid those.
Isn’t everyone 130cm height? It used to seem like that, until height was hidden away from view. These metrics need to be shown in companion app, along with warnings of drastic changes of height and weight, eg, someone goes from 90kg to 50kg overnight, or someone suddenly loses 40cm of height. That way people can flag them and hopefully those riders will be questioned.
it be great for LA aka west usa, time zone 6pm to 10pm, lots of time under total 50 riders. @Peter_Twigt outside of that is hard No.
To the original question, the problem isn’t really ZRS. It’s the spiral toward shorter, flatter racing that occurred over the years. When 90% of attended races became 18km with a 2min climb and a sprint riders trained into them. So - yes probably make it shorter if the races are going to continue to be shorter and flatter. But…
The 5-minute vELO + zrapp route-specific biases work reasonably well in prediction. Maybe it’s time for people to get a Short race score and a Long race score. Or have a factor that alters ZRS down/up for longer races/climbs. The easiest solution is to remove ZRS and single pen anything over 30km. Anything to get people to step out of a comfort zone and do more interesting routes.
Dynamic pens + bots works well in other places.
if they put in bots i would 100% stop racing them , Dynamic pens yes, bots No.