The two that I did had 40-60. So bigger than a crit city race but not like group rides that have a thousand.
"1-minute and 5-minute power’
Some peoples 1 min power in any Cat can differ. My 1-5min is NOT exceptional , 550w-1min and 420w for 5 I would think 1, 5 AND 20 min power would be a better average per category. There isn’t a mention of 20min being used anymore? either way Z have to start doing more about sandbagging in Cats.
Towards the pointy end of B most of the time its fairly reasonable, high end 300-350w over 40minutes (most races I enter are 30ks-35ks) and a avg HR 150s+. When I see avg 200 and a low HR that makes me question there weight/height etc.
That’s an ego decision though, and I get it. It’s much more fun to be racing for podiums in B than it is to be mid-pack in A. Right now, those who are holding back are doign it to appease Zwiftpower, they can still keep entering B events, they just will see a UPG on Zwiftpower. And since not everyone is on ZP which is the real source of truth? Zwift who filters noone including clear cheaters, or ZP, a platform in which not everyone is on. Again, it’s all about ego.
I think it is important to remember that ZwiftPower has no actual say in the results…they just do an after-the-fact shuffling of results based on who has signed up for their service and ignore everyone else.
You can have legit category racers finish above you, but because they aren’t registered in ZP, they are removed from the ZP results. Doesn’t mean that they didn’t do better than you, it just means ZP chose to ignore them.
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ZwiftPower has no influence on how the actual race is conducted.
The Zwift results and the ZwiftPower results are equally “actual results”. They have only the value that you and others give them.
That was my point…people point to their results in ZP as though they were the “real” results after the ZP “sorting” process. They really aren’t…they are a subset of the full results that some people weigh heavier.
I never said anything about ZP impacting how a race was conducted, nor was that my intention.
I’m only asking because you called it exceptional…did you typo? Because your 1 minute power seems really poor compared to your 5 minute power.
I agree about education and the TR user base being “smarter than the average bear” with respect to power, Chad. I had a lengthy facebook back and forth with a local athlete here who was posting Zwift results online, talking about racing with the As because Bs would be “shooting fish in a barrel.” He has limited power use history, and I’m pretty sure he’s on old Vectors installed improperly… but he’s convinced he’s got a 305W FTP at 4.4 W/kg… yet he’s never come close to beating me on the road when I raced tris at 3.7, he’s been dropped from every Cat 5 crit he’s entered, and has tri splits that don’t compete for his age group, let alone the elites.
But… his power meter is telling him he puts out 4W/kg at 57 rpm for 2 hours and he believes it. I’ve offered to help calibrate, install, check his power meter, but it’s a tough nut to crack when he wants to believe he’s pushing elite triathlete watts because he probably doesn’t understand where he truly stands in the “pecking order”. I admit it takes the “shine” off of Zwift racing to know that there are others out there like him, and many of them may not even want to be so educated. But as many discuss, it’s fun if you just compete with your group and yourself and don’t worry about posted results. Zwift races are good for power PRs, not so good for serious competition on the daily.
All THAT said, new season goal: “green cone of shame” in a B race. 
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Most likely because in a Zwift race you pretty much always have to be pedalling?
a typo I meant NOT exceptional…I will adjust 
True to some degree but even the draft benefit isn’t the same…its far less in zwift than in real life
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I agree that the draft benefit is less, but it’s also the dynamic at the front that pushes the pace much higher than what you’d normally see IRL. In real life, it takes a highly coordinated effort to maximize the group’s speed if 5 guys are trying to push the pace. In zwift, the washing machine effect at the front is basically an automated system where guys are constantly taking mini pulls that provides more benefit than the typical pace line in real life. 5 guys holding 3.5 w/kg doing “the suffle” are much faster than one guy sitting at the front holding 4 with everyone sitting behind him at <3 w/kg. That group with 5 guys holding 3.5 is also much harder to sit in since it’s faster. You don’t often see that dynamic in real life, particularly in amateur racing.
In a zwift group going 27-29 mph on flat terrain, I’m probably not doing many more watts than I would in a real race at that pace. The difference is that the pace never relents in zwift (not realistic) and going down hills isn’t at all realistic because they can’t have everyone constantly flying past the people in front of them.
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Have a good laugh at this from a C race I jumped on during over-unders. I averaged 3w/kg (241w NP) and finished in 29min.
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That’s brutal, and what happens is it actually impacts the race. I got blown up in a B race last year because i was in a pack that was ALL cheaters. At the time i didnt realize they were all cheating (no HR super high power) but I had the IRL race mindset of “if im hurting they are hurting this will eventually let up”. Well it never did. I exploded and as a result DNF’d because i had just gone far too deep. Super frustrating.
Looked after the race and sure enough similiar to your photo above.
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Zwift sounds horrific for the ‘racing’ aspect, they let people in with virtual power? Everyone knows how inaccurate that is surely? Get on RGT, proper drafting, proper positioning, real roads. I can’t do a fair comparison as I’ve never been on Zwift but I’m loving RGT right now.
Biggest downside to people who aren’t tech savvy or who don’t have good and stable internet and wifi is getting connected in the first place but in my experience once you have that sorted it works great.
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Riding Lutscher climbs today doing McAdie I saw two interesting thing… first, it seems the Yates brothers were out on that route at the same time. They were posting 17:00+ times on the Lutscher KOM.
But then there were two “TeamZoot” riders posting the exact same 10:04.3 split for the same KOM. I was riding an over during McAdie at 4.2W/kg and they passed me so fast I couldn’t even see their names on the user list.
I bring this up because Zwift apparently caught them as their times were quickly removed from the leaderboard though they were still out there “riding”. I assume they were running laps to get their Tron bikes, so hopefully those two get perma-banned or something.
I’ve seen so much more obvious motoring or other “cheating” on Zwift during these lockdowns, it’s silly. I used to see someone who was probably doing something nefarious once a week or so. Now it’s every day. The other day there was a guy “riding” up the Epic KOM doing 26W/kg surges down to 0, all without his avatar ever actually turning a pedal. His overall pace was probably 5W/kg, but I thought that looked particularly creative…
IMO if they want e-racing to be taken seriously, they have to really start addressing this stuff, like, now.
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Literally twice as fast as I just did it (admittedly, I was doing Bald Knob, so far from going hard, but holy jeez…)
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I get it, we are seeing more people doing some strange times, and heart rates and watts. In the end, its what YOUR doing. We all get enveloped into our watts and fitness and then when we race, its us vs them and we compare ourselves. We should learn not to though, especially at this time. its what we can do, not what others are doing. We can stress ourselves in an already stressful time on what others are doing. this also means looking at Strava times, leaderboards etc. I still look at Strava time to time when I shouldn’t, and see results from Zwift and think no-way…
Whats great about THIS community is how accepting and supporting we are of each other, in the what workout did you do today thread. And also the other threads throughout the forum.
I too, enter races and do workouts for that added motivation. Keep on training everyone.
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heh, I guess the anti sandbagging stuff they are implementing is working then, now you only need to be low 4s to keep up in a C race instead of mid 5s!
Tho one guy did start late and managed 5.5w/kg the entire race to claw his way up to 11th!
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I haven’t followed it closely, but do you know for sure that the new features were in place in this race? Some options are left to the organizers, and it could be possible that they chose not to have those features turned “on”.
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