grolby

Don't be obtuse. Telling a Cat 5 to not worry about winning doesn't mean that anyone thinks that Cat 5 racers shouldn't be interested in winning or want to win races. It means that wins as a Cat 5 are not the measure of how well a new racer has learned and internalized the art of race craft. Not a single poster in the 33 has ever said a Cat 5 shouldn't want to win bike races, and if you're paying attention at all, that should be pretty clear. What is being said is that Cat 5 exists for a purpose other than providing another category in which someone can win a bike race. Every Cat 5 race has a winner. Duh. So what? That's the point. If you think arguing that there needs to be more structure to safely guide Cat 5 racers through the learning process is "marginalization," I don't really know what to tell you other than to go back and re-read the thread. You don't just go and teach someone to play soccer by throwing them into a game with a bunch of experienced players. You teach them relevant skills through drills and practices that may not bear much resemblance to the actual game. And if the student whines that this is "interrupting the actual game," you tell them to shut the hell up and do the drills, because the student doesn't actually have the experience to know the most effective way to learn the game, let alone what they even need to do in the first place. And then you synthesize by running a 15-minute scrimmage at the end of practice. There's room for drilling and scrimmage when you learn a new game. Why anyone thinks cycling should be taught purely through unsupervised scrimmages is unclear.