Originally Posted by grolby

Don't knock it till you try it. Not the same thing exactly, but my experience with being able to enter 1/2/3 races and similarly find myself up against much faster guys was that it was WAY more fun than I expected. Racing at that level is more frenetic, aggressive and exciting. It helped that I was pretty fit my first year as a 3, so on a good day I could at least hang in there. In a hilly road race, yeah, I would get my doors blown off, but for crits and less-challenging road races, it was the most fun I've had in races where I didn't end up on the podium. That's a pretty short list.