Nothing to do with ego. If I’m gonna take 2 days off of my work to do a race, I want to enjoy it. In my mind, cat 5 will be a lot of unfit dad bod new people dabbling into cycling sprinkled in with a few more fit people and your occasional sandbagger. I don’t want to be in a field where I am in a glorified group ride.
I’ve been riding a bike all my life and too not concerned with handling. Did a bunch of bmx stuff as a kid, I can hold lines and take sharp corners, and stay on wheels, and micro adjustments and such.
As far as speed goes, I have not done any racing on my road bike but plenty of triathlons. FTP 280, and depending on my weight 3.6-3.7 w/kg at 44 years old. On easy rides on my road bike, it’s usually 19-20 mph. The bike leg of my last half Ironman was 23.5 mph avg for 56 miles on 200W AP and I’m usually in top 1/3 of the bike legs in my AG.
I am not sure what you define as failure. The stage race is actually road race, TT, crit and the crit has my concern flag raised a little. Was thinking of doing the 3/4 road, the TT is TT, and 4/5 crit. I have no illusions that I’ll win. Don’t want to be bored in 4/5 road race. Regardless, even if I win anything, I’ll abdicate it since my TT bike and position are not UCI legal.
Your perception of a cat 5 field is way off from reality. The level of competitiveness is much higher than you are expecting and it is not like a ‘glorified group ride.’ As @trpnhntr said, he’s a cat 1 and wouldn’t expect to ride off the front of a cat 5 race and that is his specialty. If you look at some race times for crits, it not uncommon for the cat 5 race to have the same or higher average speed than higher category races.
In my experience in Cat 5 it will be 15-20% unfit looking people (unfit compared to top level racers) who will end up being pretty fit. 50% fit riders with experience in hard group rides and such but are still learning about the closeness of racing. 10% some small juniors who will just attack all the time without the raw watts to back it up but they keep things spicy. And the rest are being smart, sitting in, and following moves until the end.
Most races I’ve done finished in a group that was 50% or less as big as the group that started. So even if there are unfit people at the start they would pretty quickly be dropped and then you are just racing with the fast guys. And if you think the racing might be boring then be the one to get things going!
First off, half a cat 4/5 field will be 4’s. Most of those are doing 4/5 instead of 3/4 because they think the can win or at least get upgrade points so it will be spicy. Very spicy at the front. As for cat 5’s, 1% or less are “dad bod” out of shape guys in over their heads. The rest are local group ride regulars who are pretty fast and have some skills. They’ve been “racing” informally for a couple years and know some basic tricks. And, the first race of the year, there is usually one young newbie stud doing his first race who will make it up to cat 2 by the end of the season.
This has been a trend that I’ve noticed as things like TR, Zwift, and Sufferfest have become more and more popular. The level of fitness that new racers bring the the sport has gotten higher and higher in the past few years.
I honestly see it as a good thing as it pushes the level of racing forward and makes it more challenging, but especially once racing returns, I think we’re going to see a lot of riders with a ton of fitness and no clue how to manage it.
We are both roughly the same age, same weight, same ftp. I’ve got multiple seasons of racing cross under my belt, and have gotten dropped in each of the small number of 4/5 crits I’ve done.
No offense…but your perception of what a 4/5 field is going to look like is the best evidence that you need to be in the 4/5 field. Nothing wrong with being ignorant - everybody has a first race. But you need to acknowledge that there is a whole lot you dont know about racing.
Oh and my comment about failure…in the context I was using it in the other post…I would define it as having a bad experience or causing a bad experience for others.
That is something I like about racing also. There were like 3 races in a row last year I got staged and lined up directly next a couple other people. We ended up joking in the corral together every sunday. I was a bit bigger than them…they’d pass me every uphill, I’d pass them every downhill or flat section lol.
You’re probably right. Though I’m not necessarily convinced the overall level of fitness is goijg to rise. For every person that becomes a lockdown zwift addict in their basement…there is probably a racer that threw in the towel on the year and will be trying to recover from a 100 watt ftp loss come spring/summer.
Yeah, I can see that. I do also anticipate that the number of riders who have the ability to outride much of the pack will go up too. Like you said, lockdown zwift addicts and all.
I’d imagine if a newer racer took advantage of the time off racing like myself and a few of my peers have, putting in 15-20/week over the summer and keeping 10+ avg over the off-season, their fitness would be through the roof once racing is back.
