Are you sure social rides are used to calculate punch %age and that it is not just calculated from races. ( @S_ticky_KRT does use the word races in his post from April 2019 [link in post 2] but I appreciate ZP has changed somewhat since 2019)
From a ridiculously small sample of ZP riders, those with no races [within last 60/90 days] but do have other group/event/social rides appear to have no punch.
Yes, everything in ZwiftPower was changed to use all “events” instead of just races sometime in 2020.
Most people won’t have social rides impact because of the 80% of max 20min requirement for an event to be included in punch calculation.
Thank you.
Do you know what max 20min is being used?
Is it forever, last year, etc?
Is it using best 20min watts or best w/kg?
Is your punch over last 60 or 90 days?
Is your punch the best single result you have over last 60 or 90 days?
Is your punch the average of all your results over last 60 or 90 days.
Difficult to find too much information outside of link in post 2.
“Events are ignored if your average power is not 80% of your best 20m mins effort.”
This might imply (but I’m probably wrong) that if I only have 9 events and they are all below 80% they are ignored but if I then have one very good event, >80%, that this could be used to give me a punch score.
If I then had an even better second event with a much higher punch score do I get credited with this higher punch score or the average of the two qualifying events?
The time frame is 90 days for everything.
It’s average of all events with 20min power within 80% of your best 20min power.
You MUST have a punch calculation of some kind if you’ve done an event on Zwift in the past 90 days, as the max 20min power is within the last 90 days as well.
No punch shown - unless the words ‘ Punch: 0.00%’ are hidden on a 0% part of the bar!!
Quite a few of those on ZP who haven’t raced in last 90 days have similar punch information?
Joking aside, I actually do think 0% Punch is hidden. Here is example of a 20+% punch where you can’t see all the information.
I’m also not sure that events count for punch as everyone I have just quickly checked( about 10 so still a small sample size) who have not raced in past 90 days but have done other ZP events have the same 0% punch.
No, you race in zone 2. Have you ever thought about the consequences of some others racing in zone 4 with you, as if they were in a RL crit, CX or XC race? (Click around in the post-race and see if you find any.) Who wins?
And have you ever thought about what would happen if you raced in zone 4? Where would you be?
It’s not your fault. It’s Zwift’s fault, and they have to fix it. But think!
Also, it’s simply not true that most of racing is spent in Z2 and Z3. And to be able to draft at 1.9 W/kg behind someone pulling at 2.7 W/kg, you’d have to be very heavy, and he would have to be very light and still be willing to pull (there are no light riders like that).
“To have to draft 1.9 behind someone…”
Dude I am doing 1.3-1.4w/kg up to this point in the race. If the guy doing 2.5-2.6 w/kg needed to slow down, he can simply stop pulling.
And if I raced in zone 4, I probably get drop like how he did when we hit the first effort.
And there is absolutely no reason in a race you should be doing more watts than required to get to a point with your group. Yeah I probably could have rode 2.2-2.3 w/kg to that point. But why when I got there doing 1.3 w/kg?
It does seem strange but there are many racers who seem happy to sit on the front when it makes no sense at all. Maybe they are just enjoying a workout and not really racing, or maybe they are just clueless, or bored.
I wonder, has a race ever just ground to a complete standstill because no-one was prepared to ride on the front?
Of course in reality rolling along at something like 50% of FTP (maybe even 70%) is essentially costless, I’d just get cold if I wasn’t doing a few watts given how frigid my zwifting room is.
Zwift racing doesn’t really make much sense anyway, I’m sure most people think of it as a workout.
Not completely in my somewhat limited experience. It can slow down a lot but someone always blinks first. Don’t be that guy. I’m usually waiting for the proper moment to try to hurt people, not just hurting myself for no reason. I wouldn’t try to do that mid-race unless there are some climbs.
I won’t allow that to happen, if anyone is happy following me while I pull at 1.3 w/kg we can chill and do a social ride till the next hard effort.
I’m sure you did. I’ll be frank, very frank (this could be an IBTL situation, so be quick). If you’re the guy I remember, then you were one of the names I used to avoid back when I cruised on purpose for a while and told everyone about it, in order to show it could be done (people were in doubt) and as a campaign or critique against our performance-based cat system, as opposed to a results-based system that would instantly obliterate this and many other race-related problems.
The whole point of cruising is to win. Although you win easily against the guys who can stay near cat limit but who race in zone 4, you don’t win against others who also race in zone 2 or, as was my case, zone 3, especially not if they are considerably heavier than you.
In the old cat model, these heavier low-effort competitors would lure you above cat limit, sometimes on purpose (we all gauge the weights of other riders in the climbs and descents, so you do know their characteristics pretty well). Also, you can’t drop a guy who is racing in zone 2, certainly not without risking a cat upgrade. If nothing else these other guys would stick around and beat you in the sprint by a mile due to their larger muscle volume that typically comes with heavier weight. So the best strategy against them was to apply a bit of race selection. If you can’t beat them, avoid them. Don’t pick the same races as those guys and you’ll be fine. You’ll slaughter the zone 4 guys like lambs. It’s easy when you’re in zone 3 and they are not. But those other guys…
The problem with you however, as I remember, was that you often signed up to several races in the same evening and then you chose to ride only one of them, so it was hard to guess exactly which race to stay away from. 
The thing about being an intentional cruiser like me, though, was that you should really be racing in a higher category, and you knew it. The way the cats are defined, the upper limit of a cat is supposed to correspond to the upper limit of the best riders in that cat. That’s what warrants a degree of fairness. But if you as an intentional cruiser went zone 4 in a race (easily done pre-cat enforcement if you latched on to the wrong front group), you’d bust out of category. If you throttled down instead and never overstepped any limits, the system wouldn’t detect you (still doesn’t) but you still had the spare capacity to drop people. Plenty of it even. As long as you did it at well-chosen moments, like after the first 20 min.
Unintentional cruising is the same except… unintentional. It’s unintentional but has the exact same effect on the race (=you win). We’re talking about the guys who don’t want to sweat it in a race, maybe for a good reason (heart, age, comfort or whatever). Ironically, though, they hence race at a huge advantage over the the zone 4 crowd. Thus Zwift’s cat system rewards not doing your best/hardest effort.
And it doesn’t stop there. Since there is no dynamics in the categories, someone with an advantage can keep winning indefinitely in a way that not even Eddy Merckx could manage (the guy who, incidentally, was quoted as having said “The race is won by the rider who can suffer the most”). You never get upgraded for winning too much.
I have said it before (in this very thread, a long time ago). The punch rating is a highly suspicious measure. I’m not sure, but it seems to me they may have reworked it a little since, possibly it is better now, but I’d still shun away from competitors with a high rating. If they are punchy in races, it means they can punch. In zone 4 not many people can still punch. Race hard and it suddenly becomes a lot harder to get a high rating.
Note that cat A behaves differently. There is no mechanics pushing up the effort levels other than the prospect of winning there, so you are likely to see higher punch ratings there. I’m just saying this before the A crowd jumps in to tell me what’s what. But they have no idea what it’s like racing in the lower cats. They also aren’t hurt by the current cat system, being at the upper end that has no ceiling.
It’s a long story (and I don’t have to tell you really, you already know).
The rule of thumb is of course NEVER PULL, EVER! Or even TRY AS HARD AS YOU CAN TO NEVER TAKE WIND IN YOUR GROUP! which can be tricky because of the current pack dynamics, especially when others reason the same as you.
However… I would say there are situations where pulling can be OK. Assume for example that you are a heavy guy who pushes high Watts naturally, you’re not in zone 4, you are in the front group, nobody else is willing to pull, group 2 is slowly approaching from behind because you’ve slowed down too much, and you don’t feel confident that you can win the final sprint with a doubled field. Now what? I might have considered pulling a little here. But I’m not that guy. Way too light, I’m naturally of the shamelessly-suck-your-wheel-and-contribute-with-nothing-til-the-end-of-time kind.
Cruising around at zone 2 isn’t the stage of the race that makes or breaks the race. If I am cruising at zone 2, it would be at an early with no chance of dropping people.
The stages that matters are kickers and sprints. All the hard or soft pedaling makes 0 difference, if you got to the kicker. And you sure when I get there I am going full blast. And at that point it doesn’t matter if you got my wheel if we are hitting a 10% grade with no draft.
And for the sprints, it’s a lot of gaming to see who is doing the towing who is in the draft. Some rider prefer to lead out and do a 1 min max effort. Others will try to hold the wheel and nip them at the sprint.
But those are effort spots. But any riders that want to spend power on the flat non effort spots are just silly.
no, my willingness to be considerate of others ends with me treating them as my equal. other than that, i try not to think about strangers at all anymore. it’s not healthy
people are obligated to respect the zwift ToS and the will of the organisers who host the events they choose to ride and anything more is either charity or ego at best and completely beyond the bounds of human decency at worst
Oh, there you are! I was waiting for you to show up (no rush, I would have given you til tomorrow). Anyway, in the same vein as you, I try not to think too much about your moral code. I have decided it’s not healthy for me. But it doesn’t really matter. In so far as you can trust Zwift communication at all, the results-based system is in development. Once it’s released we will never have to have this conversation again. I look forward to it. Do you?
Yes, exactly. When I cruised it was in the small climbs I used to do short, hard efforts too. They wouldn’t hurt the measures too much (back then there was only W/kg to worry about) but people would drop like flies. And if I couldn’t shake them there and they seemed like having a potentially better sprint than me (almost anyone did), and if I had ‘spare room’ to use in my 20 min W/kg, which I typically did late race, then I’d push hard the last km instead. All while monitoring my running W/kg average on the bike computer. No sprinter who wasn’t racing in zone 2 would last a click. It was like stealing candy from kids. I did, after all, belong in cat C.
And yet I avoided racing against you. Think about that for a second.
Did those other riders want to go zone 4 against me on the flat, the guys who could keep a 2.5 but no more? Of course not. But they had to. They had to at least try to win, or why else would they participate? But how could they know then and there that they never stood a chance? In the post-race analysis that would have been obvious had they looked. Few seem to do that, but I always look at the other riders’ HR histograms, they tell you a lot. But in the post-race it’s already too late. Now, the problem for them was I would be back the next race, and the next, and the next. They would never get rid of me.
There was only one way for a zone 4 guy to win. You had to stop being one. You had to race easy, avoid doing your best. But it wouldn’t have been enough to just increase fitness. You would have to increase fitness and hold back what you gained, or you’d get an upgrade. And because of the constant sandbagging pre-cat enforcement there were always people around pushing up the pace, so in one sense it was harder then. The races run slower now, but the low-effort guys are still around.
I’ll be even more frank. I think you have an unhealthy amount of wins. There, I said it. I have seen far worse, but still. You would easily fit into cat C. Now, with the ‘new’ cat system there is no reason to go look for an upgrade. You trust the system to tell you when it’s time (and then you have to). You have every right to wait for that day. It’s just that if you’re heavier-than-average and race easy, have a strong sprint, that day likely never comes. It does for a light rider though, it’s hard to avoid. If you get stronger you easily bust out and get to ride in the bottom of the next cat. And there the same pattern starts all over again.
These are some of the reasons why the current cat system is so unhealthy and so unlike real-life races (where not even the best can get win rates on par with what we see here and there in cat C and D). Categorization should be based on past results and only that. Like in sports. Or online games. The problems would go away instantly.
In so far as you can trust Zwift communication at all, the results-based system is in development. Once it’s released we will never have to have this conversation again. I look forward to it. Do you?
i’m not the one who feels the effect of this stuff. it’ll be nice if it works out for other people
Most riders that race regularly against me already figure out how to beat me. But the majority of Zwifters Racers are not regulars. Both knowing the course and using the draft seem foreign to these riders.
For most, just taking a look at Zwiftpower for who is who gives a load of info. If people are not attacking during the race, it comes down to a sprint. I do well in a sprint, probably somewhere in the top 50 (d).
Each rider gotta figure out what their strength is, as well as what their competitors weakness are. Look at all the races I had to hold a 2.3 w/kg and my 15s drops to 6-7w/kg.
But thanks for the kind words! I liked to know people avoid me lol!
It’ll be a new game, but you’re of the competitive type, you’ll like it regardless, I’m sure. Or are you in A now?
I don’t disagree with anything you say. Getting surprised by topography and other features in the course is bad preparation for a win. So is not knowing or not caring enough about how to avoid wind in a group.
But it’s all too common in here to blame results on e.g. bad drafting. Everybody seems to do so, but at the same time it’s a bogus argument. Drafting isn’t very hard or complicated or even difficult to figure out, and it’s rare to see racers being terrible at it, even in cat D.
Then, I agree, there are lots of people who don’t care enough about it, but the thing is, as long as a couple of such guys are in the group, it’s going to affect everyone, because that is what creates these wave motions within the group. People in the back at higher speeds than the front slip through to the front. People at front slipping back and then have to overcompensate as to not get spat out. Which, if nothing else, is what might pull them to the front again. Racing in cat C-D in a nutshell. Oh, and in the RL pro peloton when they are forced to participate in a Zwift race. Even A-B aren’t free from this.
And in the meantime the ‘wind allergic’ have to try stay somewhere in the middle of all this. They too will show a spiky power graph due to the constant inadvertent tempo changes. In a way it’s not that different from what a RL crit race power graph looks like, but it is not really efficient riding in the sense that there are no deep pockets of efficiency/energy to dip into in order to ‘race smarter’ like everyone in here talks about. To an extent, Draaaafting™ is the emperor’s new clothes.
You and @S_A_ccc are fearsome sprinters, so if people stick around with you and wait until the sprint, then they will lose for sure. And rightly so. They get beaten fair and square. The sprint is it’s own game (partly, not entirely true though, what happens before the sprint does matter). The problem, though, is that with the way the cat system and the pack physics work in Zwift, many or most of these other riders don’t have a choice but to wait and get beaten in the sprint.
They should attack earlier, but either they can’t or there is no point. Because either the group is already traveling at e.g. 2.5, and if they, as opposed to you, don’t have the capacity to last in the cat above, then they will be at limit and simply couldn’t attack even if they wanted to (I’m sure they do). Or, if they did have such hidden capacity, and decide to attack well before finish, then what is going to happen? Well, you race in zone 2-3. You’re just going to follow. Easily.
Then, on top of that, we know what happens to a single rider in Zwift who tries to break away from a group of as little as four riders. The remaining three will travel at fantasy speed and will almost always catch the breakaway. And then, upon capture, it takes a huuuuge effort for the breakaway to instantly match the speed of the captors and get into draft again, or they just zoom past him. The smaller the group, the harder it is to fall back into it. The wonky physics of Zwift…
So no, people around you don’t stand a chance. Race selection, tactics, drafting won’t matter, or it’s not enough anyway. When I cruised I was well aware of this. I looked at the signups. I looked at their score for a clue. I looked at their weights. Then I looked at their race history. If it said gold, gold, gold, silver, gold … then I had a closer look at them in Zwift Central and was rarely if ever surprised by what I would find there. There was a time when ZP linked straight into Zwift Central. You just clicked the little blue powergraph symbol at the end of their row in a previous race and it would take you straight to their HR histograms. If the histogram behind a gold medal was mostly orange leaning on red, then I was impressed. A true fighter! (But I wasn’t scared.) If, on the other hand, the histogram was mostly yellows and greens, often the case, then it was another guy like me. A problem.
Just like me, that guy really shouldn’t really be in the race. As such he might ruin the cheese win I planned for. Then I factored in his weight. If he was considerably heavier than me at 73 kg, then he wasn’t just a problem but a big problem (in more than one way). He would outsprint me at the finish but I also wouldn’t be able to drop him early. If I tried to drop him anyway, then I would risk getting an upgrade. He would be fine within cat limits whereas I would break the ceiling because I was lighter. Very dangerous. I would allow one guy like that. They were everywhere, you simply couldn’t avoid them. But two or more other guys like me and I would look for another race.
This was as smart racing as you could get. A cat C rider and still no way for me to win. Not this race. Not the next against the same guy. Not the one after either. And then I thought about the lambs. All those guys who worked their behinds off to improve fitness in order to rise within the cat, to be able to stay with the cheesy front group. But once they could hold cat limit power numbers they were still nowhere near the podium. What to do? Work even harder! They did and then got to race in the gruppetto in the cat above without ever seeing a podium. Hard work… ‘promotion’… thanks for nothing.
Zwift, the coming of AntiWout. The system is so broken. And it goes against the spirit of the sport it is trying to mimick. And that is the reason why I have been a pain in the neck here for years now.
