I dunno, just did another cat C race top end supposed to be 3.1w/kg, the winners were 4.9, 4.8 and 4.1w/kg for 42-43mins. Top 15 were 3.6+ for 50mins.
I may as well drop to Cat D, at least there’s some fun in being nearer the front, still no chance of winning though.
If it does, then I’m not 30th.
I entered a “C” ride yesterday while planning on doing Geiger +2…when the workout ended I then switched on the “Controllable Trainer” for the remainder of the ~100K ride. Needless to say, I finished well down in the C’s (even though I well exceeded my rest interval wattage so I could stay close to a group of alrgely D riders)…just looked on ZwiftPower and they bumped me up to the A ride for my result, even though my finishing time was slower than the C’s. My W/KG for the ride was 3.0.
The whole thing is kind of a joke now…like @mcneese.chad says, use it for training, to push yourself and to chase rabbits. “results” are largely meaningless.
I’m probably gonna just delete my ZP account now before I start getting labeled as a sandbagger.
That was a good idea. Their math is amusing: it’s your placing in your category, divided by the total number of finishers in all categories. If they’d done the math correctly, I’m 113th over 204 finishers, but they did 29 over 204.
No wonder they can’t calculate the remaining distance in a race.
It’s completely unclear to me why zwift, which ostensibly knows everyone’s thresholds and weights, doesn’t just stick put you in whatever category your riding on the program would have you in. Wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better.
I also don’t really get what the places mean on the screen.
Zwift does not want to play bad cop isolating their paying customers, better leave this to a 3rd party. Disgruntling a paying customer means less $$$, stoking their ego keeps them on-board. Then you could argue, “what about disgruntling the non-sanbaggers”, well they’ll go to Zwiftpower because they’re committed to see their actual results and/or how they stack up overall.
It seems like most people complaining have a problem with the w/kg guides for each category & people outperforming them.
Zwift could adopt a more traditional points based upgrade system for placing in races over a given period or ‘season’. That way it will be expected that lower cat races will have a mix of abilities (just like real racing).
I think most dont realize how Zwiftpower categorizes people clearly. It is based on the average of you 3 best races in 90 days calculated from 95% of your best 20 minute power in a race. If you interval workout was such that at some point in time you had a 20 minute avg that put you over 4.0 w/kg then you are an A. It has nothing to do with your finishing time and where you finished relative to others in the C or B Cat. Some race organizers upgrade you and some just DQ you.
Not saying it is a perfect system by any means but it is a way to enforce Cat limits and at the end of the day everyone plays by the same rules so it is fair. I just consider it my job to figure out how to win within the rules.
I would love to see this put into place.
I thought ZwiftPower only used events categorized as races for making UPG decisions. If that’s not the case then I think it’s a bit flawed to use workout data for a race category.
They could even have two types of racing, one which count towards the upgrades and another where you self select your category. That way people who don’t want to race all the time can just jump in on occasion.
It does (to best of my knowledge) only use races…but you said you were doing a TR workout during a C race…Therefore in a race. Zwift doesn’t know you were doing TR.
OK… thanks, I thought that was the case. And for the record, that wasn’t me doing the workout. 
The race itself is enough of a workout, not sure how doing a workout during a race would go down.
My goal for this year is to get to 4.0 w/kg FTP…I’ve never once had a 20’ interval average that put me OVER 4.0., let alone 3 “best races” with such a power output.
Even on the race in question, my max avg power for any given period of time was probably ~3.5. I’ll double check my data and confirm.
You should not have been bumped to the A Cat then if you are a 3.0-3.5 max 20’ power. Something is not right.
You get passed a lot… that’s how it goes.
I call it “a TT with a little help at the start”. You get a few minutes of pull, then they all vanish in the dust and you work all by yourself, with a few stragglers if you’re lucky.
I’m probably going to do Richardson +3 today as stage 7 TdZ. That’ll be interesting. Noodling at the back of the field, then a 9W/kg attack followed by 15/15s between 5.5W/kg and 3.2W/kg, then back to 1.5w/kg for 5 min… confuse the 
out of people.
Thats how I won my first zwift race ahha, well I did one of those 3x20SS workouts where I just went 1hr straight and did a 15 sec sprint at the end.
I like it because you don’t have the little workout icon and that screen in front of you. sometimes I am drafting someone and then hit some massive VO2max effort and they counter, while I’m looking at the blue bar thinking “bro, I’ve got 3 more minutes of this…”