Ok, I get it, it’s not really a race. But is there any reason that you can pick whatever category you want to ride in?
Yeah it’s so you can select the robo pacer that you want based on your desired pace.
But these are mass start, so they’re all viewable and rideable with anyway. If you’re going to go at 2.5 w/kg but sign up for the 1.5 w/kg group, basically the question is huh? On top of that, Zwift actually provides ‘race results’ for these, which is kinda dumb given the setup on these events.
If you start behind with a slower bot you’ll never catch up to the faster ones. The guy doing 2.5 will just ride away and probably form with a small group eventually. If you want to stay with the 1.5 group then stay with them. Nothing says you have to chase him.
Careful or you’ll summon someone who doesn’t race to instruct us all about racing
2 Likes
More generally, I’m curious about this somewhat new event type “Fondo”. Could it have ZRS category enforcement? I see that you do get results (unlike a “Ride” event) in Zwift’s own event website.
There was also a 1.8 and a 2.6 category fwiw. just sayin’
It could but it shouldn’t IMO. That’s not appropriate for this type of ride.
1 Like
Though if you enter an IRL Fondo, you can go get your results when it’s done. I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with that. In fact they’ll slice and dice results anyway you want to filter and view them. Male vs Female; Age group by 10s (30s, 40s, 50s), etc. The problem is the self-selecting of what wattage category you want to enter, and then the silly system giving Gold/Silver/Bronze.
In Zwift the nearest analog to an IRL fondo is probably the Zwift Epic Race Series. zFondo is its own thing, another type of group ride. Whatever, if it’s fun then it worked.
Actually, to go off topic just a bit, is the Epic race series really mass start? I’ve heard it is, but then Zwifthacks has it showing differently. It’s missing the “See All Categories” tag but instead has “See only event category riders”. But then again, this would make the Same Time Starts setup pointless.
It’s an “all categories together” mass start. It used to be a single category event but that was causing some problems with the ZRS algorithm.
Thanks, so the tags are just wrong so Zwifthacks won’t identify these as actual mass start / see everyone.
AFAIK everything with same time starts is set so you can see all categories
I’ve done a few of the Epic races and they’ve all been mass start though not always from the same pen. That was addressed for October though.
Which is one of the biggest indictments of ZRS. If that isn’t high quality data I don’t know what is. You can directly compare all of these people to others regardless of starting category and get relative results. It should be what works the best.
2 Likes