I’ll chime in that I LIKE racing against Sam @S_A_Cestria_CC - not always fun trying to keep in his draft on climbs, but it’s good.
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You don’t have a chance…he would brake you with attacks.
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But heavyweights have an advantage 
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I’ve raced, and come second to, you Sam. It was a good race and close until the end (petit KOM summit finish in France) and it was a all cats visible race so you won the B and overall and I ‘won’ the As. It’s up to you how you race within the rules and I’d never criticise you for it.
I can be sure it wouldn’t float my boat, in fact I started in the As before ZP made me, I just prefer the challenge but we’re all different. In fact I now generally only seek out the best A races because I prefer coming 5th-10th against all the best in world than 1st in an easy A field.
You certainly didn’t ruin my race.
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Why not just race in A category then? If it’s not competitive, then you shouldn’t mind not winning every race you enter.
The image below is exactly why wattage floors are nonsense. If you are winning every race, then you should be cat’d up.
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We can put the blame at the user or the system. Sure, Sam stands out but he is not the problem. The system is. Unfortunately we are dependent on Zwift to resolve it as category enforcement is highly inflexible. @DejanPresen suggested a solution that works within the current power based metrics. However, category enforcement only works on the broken categorization as made by Zwift. Nothing else (not even old ZP categories). No flexibility so no proper solutions can be created by the community while they would be miles better than what can be cooked up by the people at Zwift. So unfortunately, system is broken and will remain fundamentally broken with only marginal improvements at the edges.
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The fix is easy, remove the wattage floors.
And honestly, if someone like Sam’ has a win/podium rate in the B category that is basically 95% +, then he should know better and just race in the A category. No rider, regardless of how dominant, in real racing is going to dominate like that.
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I think Sam and other similar riders are doing a useful service in demonstrating just how completely absurd the idiotic power-based system is. If it was just that some people tended to finish quite highly, then lots of riders would shrug their shoulders and claim to not notice the problem. But people like Sam make a mockery of the system to such an extent that no-one could possibly pretend it was tolerable.
Except for zwift, of course.
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I believe that’s what you call a backhanded compliment 
agreed. i want to be very clear about one point while helping your argument though, and that it is not me being light or there being a watt floor that makes the concept unfair and busted. here is some napkin math. bear with me because I only got a B in GCSE math:
artificially add 20-21kg to my bodyweight and keep my raw numbers. now i weigh 75 or 76kg, a completely average weight that would not trouble any wattage floor or ceiling in any way and nobody would bat an eyelid at. I am now a category enforced C rider. These are my numbers, weighing 75kg:
approx 13.5wkg 15s
approx 8.4wkg 1min
approx 4.3wkg 5min (this exceeds the MAP w/kg limit in the CE FAQ by .2wkg, but so does my current 5min in B by .4wkg, so i am pretty they are only using W’ and long duration CP to calculate your CE cat. zwift could start by fixing this. where’s my cheque eric min. where is it.)
approx 3.35wkg CP20, or 20 min power. within limits, and also heavily tanked because of my skewed W’
I would demonstrate this in action but it is against ToS and Eric hasn’t coughed up the bounty money for all of the other problems i’ve found with this CP model
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I think that’s operating under the assumption that there would be no power gained whatsoever in that additional 20kg of mass (highly unlikely).
Dealing outside of hypotheticals, your power numbers by w/kg (20 min down to 15 seconds) place you well within the A category, not even borderline. The wattage floor allows you to race in the B category where you dominate races with a win rate far beyond what even the most dominant rider could imagine. At what point does it not get boring to win against lesser competition? Do you need the ego boost that badly?
when i stop getting stronger at the kind of efforts i’m interested in getting stronger at in whatever category i am entitled to enter. i am not racing against anyone except father time. i don’t care about the trophies. people who genuinely care about that stuff are like aliens to me
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Hahaha. Sure thing.
This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that racing against, or riding with, lesser competition makes them stronger. If you didn’t care about the trophies, you wouldn’t have a problem riding with A’s.
feel free to give me unsolicited training advice, brother. i won’t read any of it but since you enjoy telling strangers about what you think is best for them, you might find it cathartic. otherwise, chill out and move on. i am not interested in being your enemy
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Not giving your training advice.
Just funny watching you try to reason why you continue to race against lower categories when you supposedly don’t care about winning.
Not my enemy as I’m nowhere near the top of the races. I’m just a fan of fair play in sport and competition.
But by all means if racing in B because of the wattage floor is what makes you happy, by all means keep it up.
Pete, he is not racing against lower categories!
And to be honest - the most Zwift races win sprinters. And in the real life there are a handful of people who can win races like these.
This power profile just screams ‘B Cat’ rider.
Outside of just his example. In real racing, if you achieve consistently high results, you are upgraded, there is no wattage floor to keep you in lower categories.
Even without the automatic upgrade, most competitors would have a tendency to want to compete against a stronger level of competition rather than continue to dominate against riders who aren’t at the same level unless you’re sandbagging. It is what it is. If racers continually raced in lower categories in their local race series (without any formal upgrading rules) they would definitely get heckled and called out on it.
Sure, the wattage floor rule as it stands in zwift technically allows people to sandbag and race in categories below their w/kg power profile, but it’s still sandbagging if you’re capable of competing at a higher level and choose not to. If people don’t like being called out on sandbagging, they shouldn’t do it.
I have voluntarily raced above my category far more often than you and every other “fan of fair sport” that has insulted me about my height or my weight over the last three years or so ever will, so spare me your dubious moral lecture. If you have a problem with zwift’s category system, take it out on zwift, not me.
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