Originally Posted by
Scummer
...I've raced 6 times last year and every race was pretty darn fast for a cat5 race. It's pretty much balls to the walls.
Thomas
+1
The lower categories (4s & 5s) are like: super fast between corners, slow down going into the corners, and accelerate out of the corners. So, on a 4-corner crit, you can get easily a couple dozen intervals in a race. The constant slow-fast can be a killer. First-time racers are almost always advised:
"Be ready to mercilessly be dropped in your first race. But don't give up. It gets easier to hang with the pack."
The master's and the elite cats (1, 2, & 3) are much smoother. There's usually not as much deceleration/acceleration in and out of the corners. So even though you're going faster (avg speeds 1+ mph more than 4/5's), it sometimes isn't as hard. Of course, when they do accelerate/attack, it's much, much faster, longer, and subsequently harder at that point.