Call me crazy, but I don’t mind this. ZP is managed by racers for racers. It’s a community and the people who compete regularly are involved and tend to do what they can to help keep things fair and moving in a positive direction. It’s not a huge subset of overall users, just like active racers are a minority of total cyclists IRL.
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Don’t think you’ve really read what I wrote. It’s not so much an “issue”, as they have to apply some kind of rule to group people, but I also dont want to look like im sandbagging a race when im genuinely in that category.
Of course its not rare to put out more power over 20 minutes than 60, everyone should put out more over 20; you’re doing something wrong if you arent! It’s when someone like me who’s power profile has a large drop off between say 20 and 60 minutes, which then crosses you over category boundaries, despite it being genuine.
Sorry if I misunderstood. My point was that 20min power is the determining factor for category, so you are in the correct category. If your 60min power is lower so you struggle in longer events in that category, it’s time to do some sweet spot work and focus on longer power durations in your training. I’m not sure how zp or zwift would go about leveling categories by race duration and power profile to suit everyone. It’s obviously a lively topic as most complaints on the zp and zwift forums around cat guidelines are C/D racers. With the new crit city courses primarily being used for very short events, there’s a lot of B’s upset that they were upgraded and now being destroyed in the A cat.
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Oh I agree, I think its a difficult thing for them to do. It would be nice if they could build some kind of performance based category system, which I assume is how real life bike categorisation works. The reason for my power curve is ive been training for 20k TT’s (sprint triathlons), but I have a 40k TT (olympic tri) this year, so im hoping to close the gap between 20 and 60 min power quite considerably, and would then be a legit Cat C.
I’m a larger rider and have a complaint if I’m allowed to moan 
I can find myself riding next to a lighter rider and we are going along just find, maybe I’m at 3.2w/kg and they are doing say 4.2w/kg.
The “complaint” for me is when we say catch up another rider say doing 2.5-3w/kg, we both approach them at the same speed but he flies by them and I get the sticky bike treatment.
I believe Zwift judges the difference in the riders w/kg and the sticky draft issue occurs because for me the difference is less and I fall foul of what ever algorithm Zwift uses.
The effect is I lose a load of forward momentum and the rider I was pacing with has gone flying ahead.
This is my experience so us heavier riders don’t always get the rub of the green and when we hit inclines, I guess you lighter riders don’t have your very own personal drag chute 
My best move, breaking off the back occurs there always!
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To the OP’s statement (it’s probably already mentioned here, but i’ve not read all the replies).
I don’t think as many are cheating as you think. It is simply that they have put out too much power than they hoped for regarding your category.
In the final results page on zwiftpower these riders going over the powers (w/kg) target should simply show as no position or disqualified etc.
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I will have to pay attention to this. I have not noticed this exact situation and you have me curious. I certainly notice the sticky draft solo passing so I bet this happens and I have just not payed enough attention.
I think some folk are maybe struggling with the use of the term FTP when deciding category on Zwift, and in particular Zwiftpower. How Zwiftpower designate category is your three best 95% of 20 minute efforts performed in races over the last 90 days. It really has nothing to do with your actual FTP.
I’ll use my own as an example:
Average of three best efforts performed during races (95% of 20 min effort) are currently 4.23, 4.23, 4.25, giving an average of 4.24w/kg. This puts me in A category. My actual TP as estimated by Xert is currently 4.67w/kg.
Racing in A category there is no penalty for going over cat limits, so racers aren’t really to bothered about the 20 min efforts. However in the lower cats, if you go over the cat limits in a race by a certain amount, you risk getting an upgrade or DQ, so folk will sometimes sandbag knowing they can go harder, but don’t as they don’t want to risk getting upgraded.
It’s not unusual for heavier B cat riders that put out more raw power to be able to stay with the A cat riders in a mass start flat race, but as soon as the road points upwards, or there’s longer efforts at 5+ w/kg, they either get dropped or back off to stay under the power cut off. I’ve been beaten lots by strong B’s with a big sprint that can hang at 3.8w/kg then blast by in the last few seconds!
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In A, B and maybe C, perhaps. In D, I’d say there are so many riders who are so far off that “struggling” is not the right term - “playing” would be better. While Zwiftpower registration rates for A and B is high (perhaps 70-80%), it’s dysmal in D (like 10-15%), and category adhesion is absurd (like the top 20% performing way into C category area, and the top 5% in B).
Zwift does not help, by pure laisser-faire, publishing race results that clearly demonstrate they don’t care. An amusing example: I ended 29th of the D cat in the current Tour de Zwift stage race I did this morning, out of approx 90 riders, a number that was visible throughout the race; passing the line, I get a wonderful announcement that “you have finished in the top 18% of 200 racers” - not sure where those 110 came from, they were not on the road, and are not in the results either. And of course, of the 90-ish, 17 are listed on Zwiftpower, the balance (of 90 or 200, pick your choice) being either non-existent, unregistered or disqualified.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.