ZwiftPower Update [September 2020]

Yes I see your point but if you are serious about racing this is at least a band-aid.

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So any advantage is a Band Aid for serious racers? Hrm, I should get my Vortex back! :smiley:

Removing transparency by moving everything to email is not great. Especially if the turnaround is the same as support@, which seems to be about 3 weeks.

I second the notion that having a couple knowledgeable folks arbitrating discussions out in the open would be ideal. Sticky has been doing a great job.

Other than that, racing improvement suggestions should be well-known at this point…

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One other thing to add to this list, based on recent experience. I’ve been disqualified (or at least, appear to have been disqualified) from a race on ZP because “UPG” - apparently that might mean I entered at the wrong category. Difficult one to police I guess, as I definitely see the point mentioned about A graders cruising in the lower cats and then dominating the end. For me, I ride Cat C as it’s right for my capability. That said, I guess I’ve been improving (marginally) and on the ride in question, evidently put out enough to be a lower Cat B, hence the DQ. Sooo, is this a hard and fast rule where UPG = permanent DQ, or can it be appealed? What happens if subsequent rides / races are at Cat B, will that lift the UPG and reinstate the results?

ZwiftPower determines your ‘minimum category’ using the average of your three best performances (based on 95% of 20 min power) over the last 90 days. You could receive an UPG tag in a race and still be eligible to race in that category, especially if it was something like a time trial, a race very close to 20 mins in length or with a long climb where your power could be close to your absolute max 20 min output.

Your DQ for that race will be permanent, however, as you exceeded the limits. This isn’t something to stress about, if anything it’s a positive if you out-performed what you thought you were capable of, but should be taken as a suggestion to race in B if you think there’s a chance you’ll exceed C Cat numbers.

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So what, you going to F this up the same way you do zwift? Hey great idea, remove the GUI so that it matches the crap user experience you deliver on zwift!

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It’s an easy one to police. If you’re capable of entering category B, you should enter category B and not seek to dominate a category where you are more able or capable than those in it.

People entering lower categories are ruining the experience for people that are rightfully in those categories. I’m D but an improvement of 0.1w/kg would make me a cat C - I will step up as soon as that is confirmed on Zwiftpower.

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UPG is applied automatically when you race in a category below your ‘Minimum’; your subsequent performance is irrelevant.

WKG is the tag used when you enter an appropriate category but exceed the category limits.

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Yes it’s a hard and fast rule if you are cat b you should be entering cat b or you will rightly be disqualified for sandbagging and entering a cat c race.

You need to average category requirements over 3 races. what would your grounds be for appeal being seeing that you can average cat b pace for 3 rides?

I’d really like to see zwift step up and start enforcing category at sign up but they don’t seem interested in eracing even though this is by far the biggest problem to effect racing on zwift.

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Good idea to use all available data.
I get disqualified as I enter what I consider my correct category. Fit for 62, it’s pointless forcing me into a high category as the start is way too fast and the finish even faster. So I just bin the session and have removed myself from ZwiftPower as a result.
There seems to be no use made of any other parameters than those of weight per kilo - which just doesn’t work as it doesn’t take age, HR, (possibly weight/height), into consideration.

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i agree with mostly all comments below. if i had to boil it down to one reason why I, and i think most others, use zwiftpower is because the racing community considers it the “legitimate” results. that also means that the results on zwift are “illegitimate.” I think most would agree that there are a huge number of questionable racers, from bad setups, to glitches, to outright cheaters. zwiftpower lets us filter them out. Since these folks are paying subscribers, now i fear zwift won’t be as willing to “filter” their own customers, but if they don’t then there will be backlash. So maybe adjusting categories may be the answer. make Category E the open/starting category. zpower riders can only do this category. once you’ve done 5-10 E races and your results are not suspect, then you progress through Cat D-A as usual, whether it be a point rank system (best option) or w/kg as it is now.

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the other things that i really like about zwiftpower are:
1: ability to track my power efforts over time.
2: view (stalk) other racers history and power
3: events page much easier to navigate
4: rankings system
5: transparency (weights are visible, dual power recording visible)
6: the forum
7: Sticky will bench you if you are out of line!

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Hola. Soy Santiago Castro de Colombia. Primero quiero felicitarlos porque gracias a zwift he disfrutado mucho la cuarentena. Estoy muy satisfecho con zwift.
Mi sugerencia para ustedes es la siguiente: sería muy bueno que en las carreras en zwift los ciclistas ZPOWER compitieran a parte de los que usan simulador smart. Puede ser que haya una categoría que se llamara ZPOWER.
Les hago la sugerencia porque los ciclistas ZPOWER tienen una gran ventaja en las carreras y suelen afectar mucho el ritmo y los resultados de las carreras.
Nuevamente gracias y espero que tengan en cuenta mi sugerencia

You’re focusing on the wrong problem.

We do not need better race data-crunching integrated natively within Zwift.

We need managing who can enter each cat, with custom rulesets, etc. This would be a great step towards eliminating post-race DQs, bringing fairer and more equitable racing to Zwift, as it’s who is entering that is the problem, not race results. Race results are, IMO, currently a fairly well solved problem. What you could do, instead, is make everyone on Zwift available in ZwiftPower.

In terms of ZwiftPower, I would like to be able to set up segments for points races pre-race, rather than post-race, as is currently required. ZwiftPower could see what the current course is, and show those segments, rather than waiting for the race to finish to populate these fields, or just show every segment, knowing which course it will eventually be on the day. Even better would be an API to update the race result settings, which is currently missing – the one thing I can’t yet automate with ZwiftPower.

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The reason that zwiftpower is popular is that it solves specific problems that are not addressed with either the zwift website, the in-game experience or the companion app.

Specifically:

  • density of information, you can view future events or past results quickly and easily in a dense table that shows a lot of relevant information quickly, with filters
  • race (event) specific results
  • category enforcement.

None of the above is perfect in zwiftpower, but those don’t exist (race-specific results and category enforcement for example) or poorly implemented.

Contrast searching for a race (or event) of a specific type in the next 1-7 days by looking on the zwift website or companion app or in game to searching in zwiftpower.

I don’t think (opinions may vary) that trying to move the functionality into the zwift website will work. That is designed as a user friendly dumbed down entry level into zwift. Throwing zwiftpower at someone trying to figure out what event to enter when the run Zwift the first time would be daunting.

Keep zwiftpower separate. Keep adding new features to it to support races (and events.) Don’t try and make it into a user friendly website that ends up being useless.

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I agree with W_ally here, the A cat is too broad and maybe one way of filtering out the Pro A Categories from the casual 9-5 full time working riders is to introduce something similar to Twitter, a badge that is verified for every Pro racer, this can then be used by race organisers to ‘exclude’ Pro Badge riders from ‘casual’ A Cat races.

Either that or reduce the bracket wkg for A to 4.00-4.9 wkg and then introduce a PRO / Zwift Level 40+ ?? category for 5.00 wkg+

It is important to stamp out sandbagging, but one reverse element of ZPs enforcement is fringe upgrade of Category.

I recently moved from B to A, based on my Races not All Rides (which incidentally I feel disadvantages Zwifters who go flat out on races but don’t generally ride casually like that in Group Rides for example) and I was quickly DROPPED shortly after leaving the pen.

A reverse element could be to slide an overlap of Categories based on A Cat race results for the first 10 rides, if you consistently appear in the bottom 3rd of places as a newly upgraded A Cat rider then you probably need to spend a little more time as a high performing B Cat to get ‘your match fitness levels up’. So drop A Cat riders back down to B Cat after they have produced 10 bottom third place results, measure for a further 20 rides in B to see whether the 20 min wkg is higher than the average of the 10 races attempted in A Cat and then re-upgrade accordingly.

There already is an icon for pros.

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Aren’t about 1/3 of riders going to be the bottom 1/3 of riders? Not everyone can be above average.

If the A- riders get to ride B races, then the B- riders (the bottom 1/3) get to ride C races, and so the C- riders get to ride D races. And so B riders don’t get to win B races, the C riders don’t get to win C races, and the D riders don’t get to win D races.

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If Zwift HQ are essentially looking to ‘maintain’ Zwift Power while looking to integrate more of its features, data, etc. into the main Zwift/Companion apps then personally, as a racer/rider, I’d love to see priority given to integration of the following existing Zwift Power items:

  1. Enforced race/ride Category based on someone’s prior results
  2. In-app display of the race points ranking for each Category, so for instance in the Companion App when you see an event on the list it could have a bar across the bottom with the 4/5 colours for the different categories and then 450/520/535/510 or whatever the race points ranking currently is based on those riders already joined up for the event.
  3. Within the event details in the App as well as showing the flat course map of the twists and turns also include the green Zwift Power elevation/distance image that allows you to see the highs/lows of any climbs/descents etc.
    Cheers :+1:t2:
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