I think this is one of the things Zwift racing has struggled with a bit. For a lot of Zwift users, they view Zwift purely as a workout tool and a means to an end, getting faster for their "real" riding IRL. This allows them to justify all kinds of questionable behavior (like riders who basically "troll" others in a race with bogus power, hunting down all break aways, etc). But for a number of people, Zwift racing has become their "end" and for them it is the real deal. I am not 100% in that camp (yet?), but I do very much enjoy Zwift racing as a goal of its own. I still race IRL and am glad it helps prepare me for IRL racing, but that isn't the only reason I do it. I get that may not be your goal, but too many people are unwilling to recognize that it may be someone else's goal and maybe you shouldn't ruin or belittle that.

Very good points. Heh, when I re-read my post I can see where it comes across that way which wasn't my intention. It's clear what Zwift has gotten people to enjoy the indoor riding much more and for a lot of people that has proven to be beneficial come race season. I guess one thing that makes Zwift feel more "honest" is if you ride with people you know, teammates etc. and maybe not pay attention to the others out there throwing down 5 W/kg average for two hours etc.

Honest question, genuinely curious, not an accusation, etc... but if you have power on the road, then you have a PM on your bike, so even though you have a "dumb" trainer, why would you use zPower when you could just use the PM on your bike?

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Amateur recreational hobbyist cyclist
https://www.strava.com/athletes/337152
https://vimeo.com/user11846099

Best thing to do with Zwift is if you have a power meter on your bike, use it to track the power (even if you have a smart trainer providing the load). This will ensure that when you get out on the real road, you don't get a surprise one way or the other on your power levels. One thing that I'm finding, though, is that on the flat, Zwift predicts a faster speed than I typically achieve in real life for a given power output, so I guess I need to get a more aero bike... ;)

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Less is more.

I think where it gets real for some people is the fact that there are now race series that have real prizes. That'll always drive people to become a lot more intense about policing. I did just notice that Zwiftpower has implemented a tracker for each rider so that you can see their weight and height fluctuations (Ride profile --> Zwift stats). That's a huge step forward in trying to determine who's "doping".

Who knows how their algorithms work? But with w/kg a larger rider may tend to produce a higher absolute wattage on a flat road, which makes the pace very hard to hold. I’ve noticed that as a lighter rider, I drop many that I struggle to a wheel when a long climb starts. I think some of this depends if your advantage lies in the numerator or the denominator of w/kg.

I know some race series to not classify Zpower riders. It’s controversial, personally I’m riding a Tacx Neo, I don’t think that after the price increase Zwift is looking to offend all the non smart trainer users. Maybe they should add an virtual racing license and a smart trainer requirement to ride races. This stuff is in its infancy. For all the flaws, it’s still great fun, and a good workout. I’ve done some races where I’ve stayed with the lead pack and forgot I was on a trainer by the end. I was just following wheels. No risk of crashes, no driving to the start. I’m sure in the future the system will be more refined, but till then, I’m good with it all, and will race when my legs are willing.

Do you have a smart trainer?

I have similar numbers and I'm a Cat 1, but I was getting dropped in C and B races last year on my rollers or dumb trainer averaging 315w+. This year on a Tacx Flux and I have a 5th and a 6th in two different A races without really contesting the end and only averaging around 290w.

The smart trainer makes an enormous difference for me.

I don't generally know anybody who is on when I Zwift. There are always people passing me but then again there are always people to catch. I just try to focus on somebody ahead who is coming back slowly and try to catch them. Whatever make me keep my power up into the range I want.

If I catch someone I keep working and look for the next one.

An hour or two later, I've had a hell of a workout. I don't know who is legit, who is faking and who is -- well just an electronically generated rider. Hasn't mattered so far.

While riding, if you click on a riders name, you'll see what they are seeing.

A lot of people wear HRM's while riding. If I see someone doing 5+W/Kg and their HR is 110 or something like that then I know they are cheating.

More often than not, when I see a high power with someone that has a HRM on, it's accompanied with a high HR as well. Those people are only riding that hard for 5 or 10 min at a time though. I don't do races so I cannot comment on how those people ride.

jaretj

I had a 4.3w/kg FTP, and a dumb trainer. I was dropped only the 1st time when I didn't know you had to nearly sprint at the beginning. Then, when you know that and keep the wheels correctly, you can do a decent race. I did 3 or 4 races at 4.1 to 4.4 w/kg (depending the races) and I was ok, the best place being 8th, the rest still in the first half if not tiers of A racers. I stopped since I wasn't satisfied (not my top condition, i'll start when 4.8+ w/kg) and I had a dumb trainer so wasn't taked into account in all rankings.

Now with the kickr snap, the powers are consistent with what I do with dumb trainer (elite novo force ; resistance 3). There can be a diference if you can't manage the fact dumb trainer doesn't take gradient into account, so you deliver a constant power up hill and down hill, so you can be dropped up and go faster down, which is not an advantage since you loose the draft. But when you know that, you just have to push more power up hill to anticipate.

Yeah it’s 100% down to the start and making the first group, my ftp is around 250w, 4/wk and i can easily race B grade and stay with the group. I sprint like my legs are wet noodles, so i never win, but I’m not really trying too, it’s just a threshold training ride for me.

To answer the OP question - probably both.

Zwift races are fun and well worth doing. I agree about the start being a full-on VO2 effort to get in the front group but even if you miss that you get to stay with the second or 3rd group or just keep in a group of 3 or 4 riders for the next hour or 2. A rider might fade and drop after 30 miles, you might pick up another rider on route who'd been killed by the pace at the front. I'm 330W @76kg and i regularly end up doing 2hours at 290W or so and end up in the top 10 for a B race. I am faster than some, but get killed by the A guys for sure. It makes me feel old.

They are a great workout, and a great mix of being an ego boost as you get to know what you can do when the pressure is on and you don't want to be the one to fade first or let the group down, but they are also humbling as you see that there are some riders out there who are way faster than you.

If you care enough about it you can check people out on Zwift Power, which links to their Strava profile. So you can see that the guy who beat you to death out there wasn't cheating - he rides 250 miles a week and can do this in real life as well.

I'm doing some real life mountain bike races and always struggle to get good results whereas in Zwift i'm racing with top guys most of the time with my 4.7w/kg ftp. Calibrated power meter and correct weight.
Seeing the gap with real life i know many of the irl racers that beat me are way above 5 and are not pros (well the best could become but i would tell they they're at least in the 6 range).
Remember world class is in the 7 range ! I'm not surprised many amateurs are in the 5 range.
I can't win most races because my sprint is bad but i'm a triathlete so...
I would not say there is that much cheating in zwift. Sure there is some cheating, some weird results here and there, some impossible zpower but on an event with 400 people i would say it's about 4 people 1%.

x2. I don't know exactly how are why since in theory it's just W/kg, but I do *much* better on a smart trainer. With pretty much the same power reported by the Power2Max I used previously.

My FTP is at 318w and I weigh 140lbs. So just at 5w/kg and I get passed all the time. Even if I ignore folks using estimated power, there are still a lot of riders who go around averaging 6w/kg like it's a breeze.

With that said, I don't really care. Actually, if there were zero riders on a course when I ride, I'd like that better :-)

I wonder if there is a way for the software to determine your race category instead of letting people simply choose. I guess it does some kind of maximal power curve profiling, since it offers me a new FTP every now and again. People will always be able to manually change their FTP for whatever reason, but Zwift could use the number based on your previous efforts to place you in the right category.

Ok, people could sandbag in Cat D for a little while and then go and whoop ass, but as soon as they did the algorithm would be suggesting a new race category so you couldn't do it more than a couple of times. I don't know what happens when you take time off and essentially de-train, haven't figured it all out yet :-).

And of course it wouldn't stop people pissing about with power meter calibration, using whacky zpower numbers, or lying about their weight... but it would stop you having to watch a guy you're racing in cat C disappear down the road at 5w/kg for 15 minutes.

not sure about him, but for me, I "sandbag" in order to get in a decent tempo group workout. Riding alone on zwift sucks, and the group dynamics makes it a bit more bearable. I'm currently recovering and barely hang on in B group races at FTP of ~270 at 70 kg; B group rides don't go nearly hard enough (and are far and few in between). C and D group races lets me average about 220-230W for a decent workout.

Also, what's with the zwift drafting system? I ended up doing 265W for 30 minutes and barely received any benefit of drafting...

I think the concern about "who's cheating on zwift?" is pointless. If real prize money events become 'a thing', there WILL be real dopers in the mix. So calibration-cheating or weight-cheating will become sort of secondary anyways.

That isn't especially problematic behavior, assuming that you don't decide at the end that you may as well compete a bit and try to win the B race. If you just use it as a workout and sit in the pack for some motivation and then don't mess with the race at the end I see no real issue.

I don't know what you mean about zwift drafting. The drafting is a bit different than IRL, but it definitely works. I've been pretty regularly doing the KISS AT Base workouts, which are designed as Z2 base training. The big front group will do 27 mph on a flat course and I can average around 210w in the draft. 210w solo on zwift is more like 21 mph on the flats (which is still pretty high!). If you are in a big group doing 27 mph and drop off the back, you will notice real fast that you were getting a benefit. I might have been sitting in at just over 3 w/kg, and will need to do 5 w/kg to make it back to the group if a gap forms.

Drafting is the big thing that disappointed me when I got the cycleops hammer and tried zwifting with it. I think there is a draft in that you can hang with a group, but I expected a big decrease in power needed. I've looked off and on to see if drafting is really supposed to feel like the real world and I read something about higher ping rates (? not sure if ping is really a rate, but I'm using it lol) result in not feeling the effect. I'm in the boston area and I think my ping to CA, where zwift servers are, is like 80ms and I think I saw the ping should be in the 50s to feel it? Not sure if I'm getting it right, just seems like that's what I saw in some zwift support board postings.

You can switch to a non-scheduled "world" you know.....damn shouldn't tell people, don't want it getting crowded!

I didn't know. But I did notice that you can start with WiFi to establish course etc. and then turn it off, and everyone is gone :-)

The drafting works fine for me.
You can certainly maintain pace at significantly lower power when you are close behind one or more others. I've seen a lot of criticisms of the drafting and keep wondering if it's because people on smart trainers are expecting to feel something more pronounced or if it's actually a connection speed issue, as you suggest, which causes difficulties with relative positions of riders as seen by you, other riders, and the drafting algorithm.

For most of the last year I've ridden in Watopia regardless of where was scheduled if I was doing any sort of structured training session. You just add a line near the end of the prefs file. I didn't like Richmond or London much. However, I tried the new hilly roads on the London world when they were introduced and I find it much better now so I do a bit of both. The city environments just don't do it for me when cycling, either in real life or on Zwift!
When I do Watopia on non-Watopia days, there's usually only a handful of other riders around. You might pass one other rider as you traverse the main start finish stretch.
When I'm doing a group ride or race, I obviously have to use the same world as everyone else.