You should race Sunapee!

Zencycle leads Armand and his cottage of wattage down Lower Notch Road in Bristol, VT.

Especially if you are a Cat 3. For the record, I planned on writing this a few days ago, before I read G-ride's latest post. But before I get started, I want to give a shout out to my man Armand, who came to do the four gaps ride with us on Saturday. Now I am not exactly a climber, but I'm a lot closer to one than Armand, who has a build more suited to bar fights or bike toss competitions than to riding up mountain passes. The other guys on the ride, zencycle and my team mates Billy and Les, weigh less than 450 pounds combined, and thus are physically advantaged for going uphill compared to the mighty A-Man. The moose we saw on the way home Saturday could probably make that claim too, now that I think about it. Yet this did not deter our over-muscled hero from throwing down on some of the most feared climbs in New England. Not that he expects to become a KOM contender anytime soon. As noted by Jonny, you don't climb hills just to get better at climbing hills, you do them to get stronger in general. Back at the ranch Saturday night, everyone in our little party was commenting on how they were sore in places they weren't usually sore in. Climbing like that, and in particular climbing when your primary movers are totally fatigued, conditions your body to learn new muscle recruitment patterns. Anything to keep the bike moving. And that's the stuff that makes you stronger.

Anyhow, enough of that lovefest, back to the point. There are only 27 riders signed up for the Cat 3 race at Mt Sunapee this weekend. WTF is up with that? I know there might be a few riders who elected to do the Pro/1/2/3, but come on. I'm afraid there are multiple problems at work here. For one, I'm told the USCF or USAC or whatever we call our beloved road cycling sanctioning body now has a membership that is 80% masters age. And sure enough, the 45+ race has over sixty riders signed up already. The 35+ not so many. Not to get all nostalgic, but back when I was a Cat 3 the situation was totally the opposite. Cat 3 races filled at 100, 125, 150 and even 175 riders sometimes, often weeks in advance, even though we had to lick stamps and mail in registrations in those days. Of course, a lot of us still race, thus the big 45+ fields in the current era. But there are other forces at work, and I think they should be dealt with.

There used to be only four categories for men, not five. In fact, slightly before my time, there were only three. Some of the masters around today who carry a Cat 3 license never had to be upgraded to get it; they started and stayed there. Then a lot of us started as Cat 4 and only upgraded once. The big difference then was that without Cat 5, there were only "citizens races" for people with no license. These events were just as dangerous as going on a group ride of non-racers (I follow the mailing list of such a local cycling club, and every "training ride" they conduct seems to involve brushes with death). Buying a license and racing Cat 4 was only slightly better, as these were like present-day Cat 5 races, except with hundred rider field limits instead of fifty. This was big motivation for most riders who stuck around to upgrade to Cat 3, where not only were races longer, but the chances of losing skin on a weekly basis due to some bonehead's lack of skills and/or good judgment were greatly reduced.

A side effect of this situation was very low entry fees for licensed racers. You see, USCF races had a regulated fee system, but the "citizen" races did not. So promoters could charge a then crazy fee, like $10 or even $15 for the citizen's race, and use the proceeds to subsidize the USCF categories, where we typically paid $5 to race for a $500-$1000 prize list in the Cat 3. You read that correctly, prize lists used to be A LOT BIGGER than they are now. Are today's promoters gouging you? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Their expenses have gone up dramatically, and their revenues have plummeted because the USCF started Cat 5, and killed the promoter's golden cash cow that was the citizens. Someone in Colorado Springs saw all the money this source was providing, and came up with the bright idea of starting a fifth category, and then requiring and selling the "one day license," thus robbing the promoter of what was rightfully theirs. Now the rest of us pay $25+ to race for $150/5 places and shit like that. But I digress...

The end result was now riders just want to get out of Cat 5, and make a forever home in Cat 4. As noted at the top of the post, even the riders just starting out are mostly over 35 for some reason. They may be largely delusional (they are wannabee bike racers after all), but most don't even dream of moving up the ladder to Cat 2, 1, or Pro, as they know they are already too old. The problem is most are content to stay as Cat 4 (probably to race in the early morning and get home before the wife and kids wake up). There is a huge glut of Cat 5 and Cat 4 racers. Now I don't really like the Cat 4s in the masters races, but that is a different topic. I think what really needs to happen is the USCF needs to do a better job at moving these guys along into Cat 3, which should be the biggest race, and should be fiercely competitive like it used to be. This will in turn graduate more better riders into the masters. The promoters can do their part here too, by not paying prizes in the Cat 4, and more importantly, like Sunapee, not caving in and combining the Cat 3 and Cat 4 fields. The idea is to make racing the Cat 3 more attractive, and the Cat 4 less attractive, even if this might bring some short-term financial pain.

Why should I even care? Because I believe it's the right thing to do, and that is what Sunapee is doing. Not only that, but they are only charging $25, including bikereg fees (don't get me started on that nickel-and-dime scheme, a huge expense that nobody seems to care about) for one of the best and longest running races in the region. Why it is not filled beyond capacity by now is a mystery. Is the race too hard for today's salon riders or something? You know, it used to be three laps of the course for all categories. In fact, the NH/ME districts used to be there and do four laps, and I think the big race might have even been five at one time. Today it seems that if there is any chance of getting dropped at a race, riders stay away. What ever happened to confronting a challenge? Is it really just because the entry is not $5 any more?

We have already lost Bow (I think anyway, don't see it on the calendar this year), which suffered from poor attendance because the racing public deemed it "too hard." As I told my boys this weekend, do you really want to tell your grandkids about how you used to ride in circles around industrial parks? Besides that, the men and women who run the Sunapee Bike Club are some of the finest people in New England racing. These guys will race you hard as all shit, but then be super nice in the parking lot. They support all of our races, routinely turning out full squads for races across New England. So don't give me the "it's too far, it's too early" shit. These guys, and lots of others from the outer limits routinely commute hundreds of miles to attend your crappy races, so quit whining and reciprocate with some support.

I am not sure if I rambled my way off course or not. I guess I forgot to suggest maybe even just going to 40+ and 50+ for masters, thus forcing the 35-39 set to race with the 3s and even out the fields. Hey, I'll be fifty next year... Later I'll probably think of a bunch more stuff that I meant to write but did not; that's the way it goes. This is just your reward for making it this far, courtesy of Burt Friggin' Hoovis. Thanks for reading.