Originally Posted by
bbbean
Capsule history: Very healthy and active in my teens and 20s - rock climber, mountain biker, worked as a guide for a few years. Then I spent 25 years as a beer swilling couch potato, and at the ripe old age of 47 weighted over 300 lbs and was on the verge of serious health issues. 2 1/2 yrs ago lost 150 lbs, bought a bike, started riding. This year, at the age of 50, I've started racing.
The question is, when I evaluate how far I've come and try to set realistic goals, what yardstick should I use? Compared to my performance a year ago, I'm flying. Compared to the younger cat 5s and cat 4s, I'm the slow old guy who's doing all he can to hold on for a 30 minute crit.
There are two aspects to mass start racing, fitness/talent and tactics.
You can get an idea of your FTP/fitness/talent by doing a time trial or by doing a race with hills in it. The storybook racers would get on a bike and do 25 mph in a time trial in a few weeks (Roy Knickman, and his first 22 mph TT was done on sneakers). With a disk wheel, aero bars, etc, my best ever TT was 23.5 mph. My teammates would do the same TT at 25 mph or more. In a short TT I did 25.5 mph; my teammates were approaching 28 mph on less equipment. In one stage race I beat two guys in the opening TT. One guy got hit by a truck and broke his leg. Another guy flatted a few miles into the 8 mile TT and rode the flat the rest of the way.
In road races I'd be one of the first guys shelled out of 100-125 racers. I never finished a road race with the main group and in stage races I never made it past the road race. I
always got eliminated in the RR. In one stage race in the RR I finished so late and incoherent that they made me lay in the first aid tent for a while and debated getting an ambulance for me. I'd wasted myself doing all of 55 miles and lost something like 40 minutes to the field.
In those situations above I was pretty fit relatively speaking so that gave me a good idea of where I fell in the "talent" curve.
Fitness is extracting the most of your biological talent. My "talent" level is the same, except for whatever happens as I get older, but when I raced at 215 lbs (max weight, late 2003 to early 2004) I didn't ride as well as when I was 135 (1992) or 155 (2010, lowest recent weight). My best TT was done in 1990-1992 somewhere around there. I was even lighter earlier - after 3 years of racing I was 103 lbs in 1986.
Your talent level, along with fitness level, gives you your world of possibilities. You can TT at 28 mph all day long? Well you have a pretty big world of possibility. You can TT at 23.5 mph all day long? No so much. Sprint? No sprint? Climb? No climb? You need to do an honest assessment of your talent/fitness level and see where you fall in that curve of possibility.
That's the depressing part. It took me years to accept that I wouldn't be a pro at anything on the road. Heck, even after I accepted that fact I still went to Belgium to get my teeth knocked in doing a few elite level kermesses.
There's one saving grace though and that's the appeal of bike racing to me - tactics (and techniques related to tactics). The big thing with mass start racing is wind - the guys in the wind are chewing through energy like you wouldn't believe. The guys sitting in are doing very, very little. I can go through a race and average in the 160-170w range, which translates to me riding along at 15-18 mph on the roads around here. Yet I'm averaging 23-25 mph in a Cat 3 or Cat 3-4 race. When I did Tour of Somerville as a Cat 2 (it was a Cat 2 only race) I averaged I think 175w for the race until I got caught in a crash in the last lap (one of three I think). We averaged 27.5 mph up to that point.
So if you use tactics well, if you can ride in a group efficiently, then you can make bike racing work for you. Maybe not at a pro level but certainly in the 5s and 4s. For me my limit seems to be in the 3s. I even earned an upgrade to Cat 2 but my (relative to me) fitness dropped and I downgraded back to a 3.
Finally don't get sucked into Masters racing just because of age. Yes, they're older, but the Masters races around here are not easy and out west they're even harder. "Masters" usually means old Cat 1s and 2s so they have incredible talent plus they have incredible tactical skills. It's great to learn from them but it won't be easy. Around here it's not super bad, just the odd guy that has 30 national titles under their belt, or the former US Pro champion (who outright won the 156 mile Philly RR, one of few American racers to do so; Lance was one but he paid off some opposing teams, Hincapie was NOT one). Their fitness may be lower than when they were pros but their talent level is insanely high and they have an incredible amount of race smarts/experience. Out west there might be 3-5 current national champs and 10-15 former national champs in a given field. It's a bit nutty.