800m is less sprint and more “taking a flyer”
Judging aerobic capacity on anaerobic racing is tricky?
Thanks for the update. Hopefully these changes come sooner rather than later. As a mid to upper D rider (196) racing is now a no go. Looking at category breakdowns in races I’d like to enter shows a high proportion of C and B riders. Over the past 2 weeks I’ve experienced the same issues as many others……hanging on for a few k then riding solo for 75% of the race. I don’t really care where I finish in a race as long as I have a decent number of riders around my ability level to keep me interested and pushing hard (as was the case with the old CE setup). At this point, will stick with group rides and free riding. When these proposed changes get implemented will give racing another go.
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800m is Sprint to me @Matt_Wheeler
Track riders, all of you
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Not necessarily. Earlier in the spring, I got bumped up to C after doing ZRL events with my team. With C, I went from riding in the front 25% to riding in the back 25%. I enjoyed racing just the same because there was always 5 or 6 of us pushing up the rear together. Maybe the solo problem has more to do with the smaller number of riders entering races. I see a lot of races listed with 10 or less. Add the disparity for ability level and you get lots of riders going solo.
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Races will have more people after ToW.
How much power did you do? If you could hit 50mph, 800m is still going to take over 35 seconds. That’s a long, fast sprint.
And these other guys in the lowest category didn’t sprint from 800m? What’s wrong with them? 
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I think quite a few people are claiming that people who don’t like ZRS just want to finish at the front of all their races.
I don’t think that’s really what people are asking - or at least not all of them!
My take is that ZRS score should be reflected in the results or at least, you should be confident that most riders at the top of a band will be competitive in a race, while those low down won’t.
The result then is that if you’re low in a band, you know what you need to do to get more competitive and can see it in your ZRS score increasing with the hope that when you get towards the top of a band that you should be competitive.
What at least some riders are finding is that they’re not competitive and even when they get to the top of a band, they still aren’t and then they get promoted to the bottom of the next band - that is not really motivating for anyone.
Just a what-if… What if our ZRS numbers were not made available to see anywhere?
As an organizer this is the worst possible outcome
Why is that? As long as you’re provided with the distribution numbers by ZRS values, that is?
I wonder what happens if your ZRS is right at the top of a category (say 349) and you finish 16/40, with all of the riders above you starting the race with a lower ZRS.
My logic would be that your ZRS should fall, as you’re losing to people with lower ZRS and beating people with lowet ZRS but i have no idea what the reality would be…
Your thinking and basis is on an elo based system, zrs isn’t that so it doesn’t matter who you beat, it’s purely results, you get the same points if you finished 4th to several professionals or to dave, Bob and Jim from around the corner
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I havent seen that in the B group (520 - 690) . generally the riders with the high ZRS score are in the top half of the results
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I think that is the case for average weight riders but we’re finding that our bigger riders towards the top of ‘B’ are definitely finding this, exactly the same as the other cats - barely able to keep up on the flat, dropped immediately on the climbs.
Interesting. I’m a light & smaller rider, 66.5 kg and 5ft 7. ZRS seems to reflect my ability reasonably well.
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Yeah, I think that’s the positive - it does seem to work reasonably well for mid and light-weight riders.
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I’m all for improving and making the experience better. However, it is turning out to be a detriment personally. I’m a strong D weak C. I participated in both pace groups in the past to have fun. What I don’t understand now is that people with race score of 323 have an output of 3.4 w/kg. Part of the reason I pay for zwift is for the “competition” - if there is not way I can reasonnably compete in races, I’m not sure what the platform could offer me that other cheaper alternatives (or free ones) wouldn’t.
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Because they can’t or don’t sprint
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thanks for that - makes it weird that such a such a small % of a race impacts such a large %. There is no way I can even hang with these guys for 5k let alone a full race!
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