Some glaring anomalies in score adjustments that I’ve seen myself without really looking very hard. Are they ever going to get fixed? Call me cynical but I very much doubt it. I stand by my earlier comment about this weeks Tiny races from this morning.No re-adjustments 11 hours later. I won’t hold my breath
Hey guys,
Basically, what I’m hearing is that 5-minute power will affect the racing score to a certain degree. But it’s super unclear, and it seems the whole community and Reddit are confused about whether this applies to workouts, casual rides, or just Zwift races.
I just did a workout where I hit a near-best 5-minute PR, about 20% more than what I managed in B races. It was exhausting, and I was going full out to get my best possible watts. Certainly, my 5-minute power was much higher within a 90-day duration. After the workout, I expected to see my racing score increase, or at least show some kind of trend, but nothing changed, not even a downtrend.
Based on this, my conclusion is that workouts are excluded from the racing score. Can Zwift please give us a clear message on how this advanced method actually works? Something detailed enough that my computer science and quantum physics professors could understand. Please, Zwift lords, share your complex algorithm with us!
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There are no C riders riding in D cat.
That was situation that occurred before Pen Enforcement.
After pen enforcement , you still had powerful sandbaggers managing their efforts and consistently winning but there was no rule against that.
Now, if you win, you move up.
When you don’t win you move down.
You have found your home.
You will bounce back and forth between those 2 cats.
Most riders will eventually “straddle a boundary”.
I expect, in Jan, Zwift will create more boundaries and the cats will get narrower.
You can also look for mass start races and then you will still see the other cats.
But, everyone in the cat is there by the rules.
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Now that’s optimism! I hope you are right about that. I was expecting that the existing 5 pens get a massage.
Exactly so Tim. Well said. Since Pen Enforcement, there are much fewer sandbaggers to the point discussion about them is pointless. If you guys think we have a sandbagging problem, you should’ve been around three years ago when it was the wild wild west. A riders in C races completely blowing up the pack from the gun. A riders sitting in and then blowing up the pack with 2km left to go. These guys literally thought is was funny to beat up the little kids and wouldn’t stop even when called on it.
No, we don’t have a real problem with baggers. The problem is putting riders in the right cats. When they finally figure out ZRS, we’ll have something. Until then, we have what we have and we need to make the most of it, while giving CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Any thing less is just whining. ZHQ is paying attention to this. The competitors in this app space: Woosh, Rouvy, etc are doing the same and Zwift cannot afford to lose this one.
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This is why mass start events is not the solution…
That was the old system.
Riders used the draft to be pulled along to avoid exceeding wpk limit
That doesn’t exist anymore.
But, the problem with mass start is the lower cats can be pulled along faster.
It would be interesting if they could implement a reverse TT bike affect.
The higher cat rider can draft the lower cat but not offer a draft to the lower cat.
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The guy that won my points cat based race tonight, which was D, was a C with a ZP 20 of 3.45 W/kg/301 W. I’m a C with 2.84 W/kg/178 W. We’re not the only C cat racers in there. We were there because we have a low enough race score to enable us to enter the D cat but not the E cat and recommends the D cat to us when we join on Zwift. The trouble for me is that I am really a D who got bumped up to C after 3 good performances in D, but I haven’t gone over 2.6 W/kg or 175 W 20 minute ave for months. So I’m now up against people like him and he has been pushing over 3 W/kg for months. So when I was in the E cat in points races I was enable to be competitive, but I’m getting shot out the back in the D cat. I may as well just enter the C cat, as I wouldn’t be any worse off.
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This is partly explained in the FAQ, but it certainly could be clearer.
Your 5 minute power changes your seed score. Once you have done a race your seed score isn’t used any more.
If you go and set a new 5 minute PR after you have done a race - and this could be in a race, a free ride, a workout, any activity on zwift - the only thing that changes immediately is your floor score, which is 15% lower than your seed score.
If your new floor score is higher than your previous racing score, your score will be moved up to the new floor. Otherwise there is no visible change.
The FAQ is getting better but it still includes some statements that are false. It’s hard to say whether that’s because the system isn’t working as intended, or because whoever wrote the FAQ doesn’t understand the system.
I’m not familiar with a race series that is still using the old system and how it is being integrated into the ZRS system.
I’ve seen some references to this but I don’t race any regular series so I don’t know , first hand, how they work and how the new system shakes this up.
I’m sure there are a lot of less than desirable affects of not fully implementing either system.
ZRS certainly will require tweaks and adjustments on its own.
Hopefully, you wont have to suffer long.
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Near as I can tell, Zwift has a crabgrass problem with ZRS V3 using only 5 minute power for setting seed score. My ZRS is 612 with a 5 minute of 4.49w/kg at 300w. My FTP is 4.13w/kg at 277w. I haven’t won any races but before I replaced my Kickr Bike V1 with a V2, I was generally in the mix. In this event, I didn’t stand a chance with my lack of punch at the first short climb I was off the back. And the guys and gals that beat me, had better 5 minute power as well as way more 30 second and 1 minute power with lower ZRS. Like 80-100 points less.
I believe Zwift needs to include a 1-2 minute component in the ZRS calculation. Otherwise this is not going to end well.
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That 5 minute power and weight would give you a seed score of about 485.
With your score being well above that, and others potentially being close to their floor score 15% lower than their seed, you can expect to have some challenging races. Someone the same weight as you could have a 5min of 365w and a 612 score.
Adding in a shorter interval might be a good idea if the categories were only defined by power. The whole point of results based ZRS is that you’re not only defined by your power, and the results movement should move people up if they can get better results with the same seed score.
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Zone 2 Tiny Races full results after overnight processing…
I gained a whole 5 points for winning race 2 in pen E, that had 103 finishers… And that includes the podium bonus! 
In a field that big, IMO the winner should be getting at least 10 points and there should be bonus points for the top 10, which should be temporarily added to the racers’ 100% seed score for at least four weeks.
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I race for a team in WTRL and I was in their D cat team, but when I got bumped up to C, I had to join their C team as WTRL still uses the old system. The team is generally better than me, but most of them are middle to lower end C riders and they haven’t been winning races and we ended up 11th from 12 teams. I have also been racing in the Army eRace series and they still use the old system, so I’ve ended up in the bottom end of the field each week.
Hopefully, it will all get sorted out eventually, but, to be honest, I think I’d rather keep the old system and maybe increase the number of categories, so that you could get fairer, more competitive races for all riders. I have a friend who I persuaded to ride for the WTRL team in the D cat as he was a beginner, but he packed it in after one season, as he got fed up with getting shot out the back at the start of every race. So it’s just the same in the beginners end and no doubt there are similar effects at the junctions of the higher categories.
Zwift also need to sort out the cheaters, as I’m sure that there are quite a lot of riders who are less than truthful about their weight and probably a lot of people sand bagging. Those sort of things only seem to get addressed for the winners of league races, or elite riders in championships. I am only 62/63 Kg, so I have an advantage when it comes to climbs, but my lack of fitness and my age (73) tend to make it difficult for me to hang on at the start of races which are usually pretty frantic. I normally end up trying to claw back places on the climbs to keep myself off the bottom of the result.
As I say, hopefully, they’ll get it all sorted eventually and I suppose that, in the end, it’s all good training to keep me going over the winter.
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What impact would you expect this to have? After the first race seed score is never used again.
Or are you saying that the seed score would increase and the -15% floor would increase with it? Could be some merit to that.
By temporarily adding bonus points to the 100% seed , to 10% of the field size rather than just the podium IMO, you are limitting how far sucessful riders can legitimately drop their Racing Score… Preventing some from getting demoted to a lower pen.
This will work as long as he is not artificially held up by hitting a seed floor.
Since there were some inherent issues with seed scores, all floors need to be removed.
I hope they don’t try to fix this by refining the seed scores.
the system will be capable of self correcting, if they let it, and they can focus on other issues.
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Sandbagging isnt cheating.
I dropped nearly 40 points after the Tiny Races got fully processed and my amazingly poor showing this morning in the WEDU sufferfest. Literally the hardest time I’ve had climbing The Alpe. I need to get crackin’ on the training…
I don’t suppose bagging is cheating but it is *ssh0le behavior…
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