Damn, now I feel bad. It's only $35 a year for a family membership in my club
But I agree with cyclotoine, apples to apples, a modern bike gives a huge advantage. I'll grant you though, Lance Armstrong, even retired, could probably kick my butt riding a 1900 shaft-drive Columbia
I've always been a recreational cyclist but I decided to try racing a couple of years ago. I figured if my running freinds could go out and run in 5K and 10K races and even marathons then I could do it on a bike. So I joined a racing club (not the club I'm in now) and trained and started out with a time trial series. The young CAT P-1-2 guys were finishing the course close to 21:00. The middle aged CAT 45 leaders were finishing around 21:30. I think the CAT 55 leaders were still well under 22:00. I figured the CAT 4 35+ guys would be slow pokes like me but nyoooo...the leaders were still under 22:00 ('cause they were all sorry ***** sand bagging expert mountain bikers or tri racers who didn't have a road rating
). My freind and I decided that the only way we could be competative was to enter as 10-12yo girls or over 65 women (and no, we aren't female
) so we gave up. The point being, any of those guys (or gals) could kick our butts on vintage bikes even if we were riding the latest and greatest (actually my freind was riding a full on modern aero time trial bike) but the difference between winning and loosing was a matter of seconds even across a wide variety of catagories so a modern bike would make all the difference if you were in that position.
Now even after I said all that, I still take my vintage bike on club rides - sometimes I keep up, sometimes I get dropped but it ain't the bike's fault either way so you're right in so far as for normal riders riding at a sub-racing pace, the technology hasn't changed so much as to prevent you from riding a vintage bike with a group on modern bikes.