Cleave

Hi,

So I did two races today, Masters 50+ and Masters 40+, in Ontario, CA. I wasn't feeling it today and all I could muster was pack finishes in both races.

So here's my question: Are field sizes up considerably for Masters races in your area?

The 50+ 1/2/3/4 field this morning had 73 starters and the 45+ 1/2/3/4 field had 92 starters. Note that some SoCal Masters are in Las Vegas doing the Callville Bay stage race and I know of several regulars who were no shows or sick. Also note that Cat 5 Masters weren't eligible for these races.

I can't figure out how we are getting fields this large. Last week, the 50+ (all categories) and 40+ 1/2/3 fields were about as large.

Is this happening in other parts of the country? I guess it's a good thing for the sport.

Ston_ar

Up here in norcal the masters fields are almost always the first to fill= big fields, too lazy to go check numbers :S

Voodoo76

It would be good for the sport if the Jr's were that full.

agoodale

I'm from SoCal and have also noticed the increase. But it's not just Masters. The 3s fields also seem larger this year. One thing I liked about upgrading to 3s was that the field size went from 100-120 in the 4s down to 50-70. Now my first 2 races of the year have been 80+.

Cleave

Hi,

I agree with that. It seems like SoCal Junior fields are getting bigger but nothing like the heyday of the 1970s and 1980s. Watched the finish of a 14-16 Junior race today and the range of talent was a little startling -- a few racers way ahead of a splintered field.

umd

I dunno, there were only 25 in my race two weeks ago, just over 50 at Callville this weekend, and just shy of 98 at San Dimas last year. I don't know if you can generalize it, some races get more and some get less, doesn't really seem to be a trend over last year as far as I can tell but it's still early anyway.

El Diablo Rojo

The 40+ here in Texas have blown up. Big fields with very very strong teams. There is a team out of OK that has built a 50+ team that includes the Polish nat champion. After the team that Ex and I (WR is on the team as well but he's still just a kid at 39) dominated the 40+ last year things have gotten much more competitive this year. Several teams have put together very strong rosters and the numbers have grown along with them. This year we are seeing very large fields that are stacked with guys who were competitive cat 1's and 2's.

botto 

it's all of the old dudes, moving to the land of sun and fun for their retirement.

substructure

I'm seeing about 40-50 in our fields here in NC/SC. But it's been unusually cold at the start. Our start times are early. I believe our fields would be a lot larger if the temps were in the 50s at the start and not in the 30s and 40s.

carpediemracing 

I changed the Masters age at Bethel from 40+ to 45+ to reduce field size. I wanted to push all the Cat 1-2 40-45 year olds to the P123 race, the Cat 3s of that age to either the 3-4 or P123. We'll see how that works on Sunday.

I also have many of the Junior trophies from Bethel in the basement because we didn't have Juniors racing at all. One year the Juniors were meeting before the races, at registration, and deciding en masse if they would do the 3-4 race or the Juniors. I think they chose to do the 3-4 race every single time, even though they'd have been guaranteed place money in the Juniors (2-3 Juniors, 3 places minimum).

The problem is in finding the new young-rider base, whether under 18 or under 23, it's sparse. That and racer education in general (learning how to race).

cdr

Voodoo76

Or coming down here to find a job.

RockyMtnMerlin

First road event of the ACA season is this weekend. FrostBite time trial, just north of Fort Collins CO (established, well run race). Current registration is around 100 with 40 of those signed up in over 45 categories. If you add in the 35+ guys, it climbs to over 60 out 100. Still plenty of time for registrations and with this early race folks tend to wait till the weather forecast firms up before registering. Last year the three largest racing groups were all over the age of 45.

In our late June stage race, however, the largest categories (out of 413 racers) are SeniorMens Pro-1-2, SM 3 and SM 4. At the Steamboat Stage Race in September (about 300 racers) the largest fields were SM Pro-1-2, SM 3 and a field comprised of SM 35+_4 and SM 45+_4 (new racers in those age groups).

FYI masters racing in ACA officially begins at 35.

While I haven't done an in-depth study, the ACA membership (at just over 3000 last year) does get a bit "older" each year. In 2009 more than 1500 members were over 40 and about 2000 were 35 years old or older.

Clearly (at least among registered racers along the Front Range) the older racers constitute the majority.

merlinextraligh

The 45+ Lake Mary crit race last week had 61 starters, which is probably up 10 from last year.

The good news was the juniors field was also larger.

Voodoo76

It puzzles me that more Masters don't have kids racing. Seems like it would be a slam dunk that with the huge numbers of old dudes in our sport we would have thier kids on the way in, swelling the Jr ranks. In general it just doesn't seem to be the case though.

Is this a US phenom? Are other countries seeing the same Masters/Jr's ratio? Seems like for USA Cycling this should be a major issue.

Cleave, a lot of the Masters I know were those 70's and 80's "heyday" Jr's.

gsteinb

yeah. it sucks that you did I could only do one race now.

spinwax

Lot's decided to race Ontario because they knew all the fastest guys were at Callville in Vegas and they actually had a chance of winning or placing in a race...Seriously...LOL. (ie, Thurlow, Amelburu, Michael Johnson, Mauricio Prado, John Edwards, DeMarchi, Paolinetti, etc, etc).

Cleave

substructure, which age range for Masters?

cdr, for 45+, what size field are you expecting?

merlinextraligh, that would have be a slightly larger field for 50+ last year. Most of the 50+ races last year had 45-60 entrants.

Voodoo76, it is only a little puzzling for me. For instance, my two sons won't go near their bicycles and have no interest in bicycle racing. My youngest loves sports but it's baseball and football (which is fine by me).

Also, I was one of those Juniors who started in the 1970s. We didn't have huge fields in NY back then but they were big by today's standards -- 25-40 racers as I recall.

spinwax, so a bunch of Masters generally don't race because those guys are around? Of course Strickler was in town and he won the 50+ race from a break and Ludke won the field sprint. Not sure what happened in the 45+ race as I was way too far back to figure out what was happening.

I'm assuming that there are a lot of guys in these races who got started pretty late in life. The Cat 3 fields were pretty big in the 1980s in SoCal so maybe there are a number of guys who raced back then "retired" and then "unretired" as older Masters. Regardless, I am surprised to see fields >70 racers in Masters 50+. The 55+ fields are bigger too but not bigger by almost 50%.

carpediemracing 

We were hitting mid-upper 80s. Field limit 100. Same day P123s were 50s. Lots of 2s in the Masters race.

Technically Masters starts at 30, and I tried a 30+ race. It was too hard for riders to do a 30+, too sparse. It was like a really fast Cat 5 race - totally exploded field time trialing around in dribs and drabs. Bethel started at 45+, went to 40+ due to a strong request by an influential entity, I moved it back to 45+. Meant to do it for 2 years prior but kept making typos in flyer and leaving "as is". This year I remembered to change the numbers from 40 to 45.

cdr

Racer Ex 

Norcal 45+ stuff regularly sells out the easier races. They've taken to breaking out the 4/5 45's into a separate race.

spinwax

I was kidding. Seriously though, most of the heavy hitters were in Vegas that weekend.


It is sad to see how small the Jr fields are. When I was racing as a Jr in the 80s, to early 90s, it was not uncommon to see 100+ in a SoCal or NorCal Jr race.

save10

the modesto road race and madera stage race C4/35+ sold out in in hours....logged on the next day and its over.

substructure

35+

We have a M45+ series as well. Not sure of the numbers though.

I suspect both numbers to be up drastically this weekend. Last races, better temps.

agoodale

I've been following part of the thread about the small Jr fields and it got me thinking...

I didn't do road racing back in the 70s & 80s but I did alot of BMX between the ages of 9-13. Like most kids in any type of bike racing I rode my bike everywhere. I would ride with my friends for hours with no adult supervision. On race day I would ride my BMX bike about 4 miles to the track, do a few races, play some video games, then ride back. That meant for 5-6 hours my parents had no real knowledge of where I was. This was all in the Harbor City, Carson, Wilmington area of Los Angeles (in other words gang territory). All that time alone on the bike built up a love for the sport that came back when I hit my mid 30s and had the time to ride again.

Now as parent I would have a hard time giving my kids that much freedom. Even though I trust them and we have cell phone & GPS technology and we live in a much safer area. Even though it's my opinion that the world in general is much safer I still have a hard time with it. Most of the problem is parent peer pressure. The parents in our area are much too over protective (especially the Moms). I could go on and on... The result is that all the kids activity comes from organized sports like baseball, soccer, football, etc... This way the kids can be supervised.

So my conclusion is that maybe kids these days don't have the unsupervised time on a bike required to build the fitness & love for the sport that is necessary. Thoughts?

spinwax

Good post. IMHO, video games are one of the biggest problems. Not that the video game is the problem but parents let it be the babysitter instead of the bicycle, or the skateboard, or the army gear, or ninja costume, or the slingshot, whatever it may be.

I remember my parents having to yell at me at 9pm to get me in the house to quit playing Army in the backyard.

fatallightning

“Because masters are quickly approaching 80 percent of our membership, and they were asking the question, ‘what are you guys really going to do at nationals?’” Farrell said the decision was made within USA Cycling to exclude their bikes from certain elements of the increasingly restrictive UCI technical regulations.