Originally Posted by
himespau
Which makes it sort of funny to me that zwift uses a straight up 95% of the best 20 minutes in any ride as your FTP (and zwiftpower uses the average of your best 3 95% efforts) to determine your race classification. Now that Zwift owns zwiftpower, I'd love to see them go to using their race rankings to place people. Maybe use their made up FTP calculation to find a general starting cat for the first 10 races (not everyone needs to start out as a D if pack safety isn't an issue) and then switch over to race rankings after that.
This times a bazillion.
The appeal of Zwift racing is that you can do it over and over at will without the time investment of driving, prepping, doing real races. But still get the fitness stimulus.
I say that to mean folks wouldn't on purpose only do two Zwift races a year to game a points system. In USAC you get Kona Ironman triathletes who never get mass start points who stay "novice" forever, but have 350w+ ftps winning TT's someitmes. But in Zwift, you're going to get those points and you're going to move up.
Points system in Zwift solves all the ills.
I think if they go points system they could program in auto "relegation" also so you don't lose fitness then suffer forever. Maybe have the points system do "relegations" once per quarter of the year.
So, if you're constantly suffering the bottom 10 to 20% of a race class, the quarterly relegation moves you from Cat 3 down to Cat 4.
Do Cats novice thru "pro" just like USAC. Then let race organizers choose the mix. Choose 4/5, 3/4/5, 2/3/4, P/1/2, P/1, 1/2/3, etc.......
If they did something with points.......I'd race again on Zwift. But the hit to my TSB to wreck myself simply sprinting, holding threshold for 40min, isn't any kind of stimulus I desire for fun.