Zwift power: my ranking points remain unchanged, why?

In spite of 4 or 5 races that I am completing each week my racing points have remained unchanged in the past 2 weeks, why is it so? I am thus constantly falling down in the general ranking. For each completed race I understand that I should get some points, even if not many.

In addition, I was last year a C rider but suddenly was classified in December as a B rider by Zwift. Why? B races are much too hard for me: I cannot ride more than 5 kmwith the other riders and has to continue riding alone or with 2 or 3 lonely riders. I am 66 years old and donā€˜t see the logic and reason why I should race as a B rider!

Thanks for any explanations which are very welcome.

Peter

Your race ranking is based on the average of your 5 best results in past 90 days. Your Ranking is 371 and the worst of your 5 best results is 403. If you have a race result of worse/higher than 403 the result goes on your record but it doesn’t help your Ranking score.

On 30/11/2023 you put in efforts of 20 min @ 3.6w/kg and 5 min @ 4.3w/kg. The 3.6 effort is likely to take your zFTP above 3.36 but I’m sure your 4.3 effort will also be your zMAP effort and that is certainly cat B standard.

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Yep, zMAP promotion almost certainly, just like me. It really sucks if you enjoy racing and it wasn’t as if I was winning every event I entered as a lot are flat and my sprint is quite poor, while on hilly races there were plenty of D’s who could challenge and beat me.

You could try joining events like the VTTA TT starting in a few minutes that combines all abilities together.

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Thanks for the explanations. I think I will stop riding like mad. I need 3 hours to recover and just achieve the opposite of my goals. On top of that, the fun of racing is gone….

Peter, you may want to look at masters racing. I’m aware of FZR on a Thursday and SA on a Wednesday (there may be others). These are based on standard cycling age groups, and are mass starts. Up the front they are very strong with plenty of riders in A+ & A category, however there are riders from all categories so you should find that you get a competitive workout.

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Thanks Paul. Iā€˜ll look at FZR but SA has unfortunately been discontinued…

I’m not too sure where you are based, so the time might not suit you, the Masters SA race is today at 16:15 GMT. Of the present entrants 20 minute power ranges from 5.4 to 2.6 w/kg.

As I’m based in the UK I’ve only paid attention to races that suit me, I’m not too sure about events for riders in other parts of the world, I used to enjoy the ZHR Masters series that had races scheduled throughout the day, but they sadly stopped a couple of years ago. It does seem strange when you see how many of us oldies are using Zwift that there aren’t more events based on age groups. Presently I’m competitive(ish) in cat B, but can imagine that over the coming years my performance will decline, and I’ll be dropping further back through the field.

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I am based in Munich. Thanks for the tip. I will join the Masters SA race today at 16:15 GMT (17:15 for me).

There is also FZR Masters Races on Thursdays (FZR Masters Race) and Cocorico master race League on Fridays (Cocorico MASTER race League - Bikes FRANCE šŸ”“A U23 Senior (-30 yo) 🟢B Master (30-39 yo) šŸ”µC VĆ©tĆ©ran (40-49 yo) 🟔D +50 (50 yo and +)).

If you look at the results page on zwiftpower for that masters race, click the ā€œcolumnsā€ option and then ā€œreset view,ā€ use right cursor key to scroll to the far right…

You will now see a ā€œresultā€ column (one in from ā€œgainā€ column), you scored 415.9, which is a little higher than your worst best five result in the last 90 days (403.12). If you had finished one place higher, your result would have been 399.8, consequently your ranking score would have dropped a tiny bit.