Caad08

Which includes four 1st place finishes, w/ average pack size of 40. Then upgrades to Cat 4 and gets 3rd and 4th... all within a span of four months.

Are these people just freaks of nature? Training for years before doing their first races? Are we looking at the next 7 time TDF winner???

Bob Dopolina 

No.

If they go from 5 to 1 in a season then you have something.

What you describe can be explained by nothing more than fitness and some pack skills, especially if most of the podiums were crits.

merlinextraligh

That's really not that unusual. People with talent rise through the lower categories quickly. There's always going to be guys in Cat 5 races that are soon to be 2's.

And the 4's are not much that faster than the 5's. Main difference is that there are fewer really slow people in the 4's because the one time give it a try people don't get past Cat 5.

Honestly if this guy was a true freak he'd be winning the 4 races also.

Go from 5 to 2 in a season and you may have real potential. 5 to 1 in a season and a contract may be in your future.

gregf83 

Take a look at the results from a decent sized 10k run in your city. There's no shortage of guys running under 36min. Anyone who's fit and fast and decides to start riding a bike can progress through Cat 4/5 in short order.

merlinextraligh

There's a little more to it than that. Unless you're just off the charts fast, you've got to have some race craft. And you need to have the ability to go very fast in short bursts, recover, and repeat.

Some very fast runners don't succeed as bike racers, even in the 4's.

Couple of examples from my experience. Used to do training rides with a guy that was extremely fit; elite level triathlete, had a world record for rowing on a Concept rower. Could easily out TT me, and many others, never got results in Cat4 because his solo breaks always got covered, and he didn't have a burst.

Another example, a friend who is a sub 3 hour marathoner, could never finish a crit because he didn't have the power to avoid geting dropped when the pace surged. Could TT at 25mph plus, but always got dropped racing.

Obviously having the fitness to be a very fast runner helps becoming a bike racer, but it's not a guarantee of success.

rms13

If he was a future tour winner I'm guessing he'd go straight to cat 1

carpediemracing 

There's a local racer who did something like this, starting as a 5 in early March (2010), started riding over the winter. In four months he was already winning Cat 3 races. In fact he won all the races I entered in the middle of the summer. I am/was a Cat 3 at the time, and I got enough points to upgrade to Cat 2 that year, and he was absolutely slaughtering us. When I say "won" it wasn't just sitting in and winning, he was making moves and stuff, mainly to cover breaks, and then he would kill it in the sprint. In August of that year he upgraded to Cat 2 and got 3rd in a big P12 race. Currently he's a pretty consistent winner in the smaller P12 crits.

He had a reasonable threshold (he jokes about how low it is, just like I do about my threshold, but crucially his is maybe 70 watts higher than mine), he has a good sprint (makes it much easier to win Cat 5-4-3 races), and he is incredibly astute on the bike (i.e. he's very smart, is a good learner, and thinks very quickly). I have no idea how he learned his bike handling skills in a group but he lives in the Boston area and apparently does group rides regularly.

Another local, he fell with 1/2 mile to go in a crit in the Cat 4s (Hartford Crit). He actually crashed, he got up, got on his bike, sprinted up to the field, sprinted through it, and got 3rd or 2nd in the field sprint. After the race I congratulated him on his place because it was a great result for a new racer, and I told him that it was great that he avoided the crash. Because, frankly, how could someone crash in the last lap and still place, right? He was really upset and I couldn't understand why. He explained that if he hadn't crashed with everyone on the backstretch he thinks he would have won. Thinks?! Heh. He peaked as either a 1 or a 2, he's still extremely competitive in the P12s, picking up top 6s all over the place. The aforementioned 5->2 guy can beat him, so that's one of my comparison benchmarks.

The guys that turn pro are much stronger than that. It's pretty scary how strong they are. One Junior at Bethel got into a break with two very strong Masters (Cat 2s). He fell in the first turn, got up, sprinted back up to the two Masters (who did sit up but still, in a 90 second lap it's still a massive effort to close a 150-200m gap), led out the sprint, dropped them, and won the race. He raced for a number of years for Jelly Belly and for United Healthcare. He was 14 or 15 at the Bethel race. Another Junior, I think he was 15 at the time, won both the Junior and Cat 3-4 races overall, slaughtering everyone in the sprint. He later raced for a number of years on the National Team as part of the Team Sprint guys (they didn't do well).

I haven't ridden with many pros when they actually go hard, but I was lucky enough to watch one show up at Bethel. He raced for a domestic team, he went to the front as soon as the P123 race started. After the first lap there were five guys on his wheel, all strong 1s and 2s. After the second there was one guy left, a Cat 1, and that one guy got 3rd in the Elite RR a couple years prior, so he was literally one of the best riders in the area. On the third lap the pro was alone - he'd ridden everyone off his wheel. He lapped the hard chasing field in 8 laps or something ridiculous like that. He sat in at the back and chatted with people for the rest of the race.

That 3rd-at-Nationals Cat 1 offered to train me, to get me more fit. He emailed me some graphs as examples of what I should do (I'd just gotten a powermeter). I had no idea what the graphs meant before, when he published them on a somewhat non-public site, but when I looked at them after getting the powermeter I was floored. He was doing five 5 minute intervals, averaging 500-550 watts for each 5 minute interval. I saved the graph somewhere but I can't find it but I couldn't believe it. At the time my best one minute power was about 425 watts, and in a massively hard race (for me) with a probably-not-properly-zeroed powermeter I hit 587w. I think my real one minute power is in the 525-550w watt range but I've never hit that training. He can hold that for 5 minutes, then repeat that four more times. And he couldn't stay with the pro!

I feel pretty lucky that I'm so untalented that I'm peaking as a 3. I don't need to train a lot to enjoy racing and I have no pressure on me to do well

popeye

I have a suspicion that is because the runners, triguy/gals rarely train anerobic. They spend too much time on aerobars when they should be doing more over/unders and out of the saddle sprints.

gregf83 

Agree with everything you wrote, however the reality is that bike racing is a very, very small sport and the pool of athlete that could do well if they chose to race is quite large. For example, I'm fairly sure there are dozens, if not hundreds, of midget (high school aged) ice hockey players who would do very well in 4/5 crits. A hockey game is a series of 30-45 second sprints with a couple minutes of recovery. Lots of big, strong and fast hockey players who just don't have time (or the inclination) to race bikes

So the fast 10k runners I mentioned would likely be better suited to road races as the requirements for fast 10k times are basically a high power/weight ratio at threshold. And the fasted guys definitely don't look like sprinters. For 4/5 crits you need a decent ratio of fast twitch muscle fibers which will make up for any lack of race craft.

Lazyass

I would think a rider would have moved from 5 to 4 before he had a chance to win four cat 5 races? or have been forced to? Can one just stay in 5 as long as they want just to get first place finishes? Just asking. I want to start racing but it would suck if there were guys in the field who should have moved up already.

DXchulo

There's a great story about Floyd Landis showing up to his first races in argyle socks and just destroying everybody. Who knows how true it is, but here's one sample: So Quoted: Two Floyd Landis stories

TrojanHorse

You feel lucky? I got your luck beat HANDS DOWN with my dedicated Cat 6 MUP-racing pack-finisher status.

It's always fun to look at those pros doing what they do and think I could sort of emulate what they're doing, until you take a hard look at what they ACTUALLY are doing. What was paris roubaix this year, an average of over 28 mph over all those cobbles? Yikes. I'm glad they keep their power data close to the chest too, that's just another potential area for huge embarassment.

merlinextraligh

I did a TT once with Landis in it. He only beat me by a minute and a half.


Of course it was a prologue TT and only 3 miles.

merlinextraligh

You have to finish 10 mass start races as a 5 to upgrade. Some District reps have been known to waive this requirement, but by rule you're supposed to finish 10.

The idea behind Cat 5 is to give new racers an opportunity to get racing experience in a low pressure environment. It's not supposed to be about getting results.

And there are always going to be people in your category that are too strong for that Category, at least until you get to P1,2. Either people on a quick rise through the category just waiting to accumulate the points to upgrade, or intentional sand baggers.

Munk69

A bit off topic.. But I love your posts! They are always informative and fun to read.

hack

Could also have been a high level mountain biker. We have a few of those guys that are Cat1/pro mountain riders that do a crit or two every year and are forced to race in the 5's and just race away from the pack.

achoo

Here's what one pro's early race history looked like:

Joe Dombrowski - The Official Website - USA Cycling

Raced as a 15-16 junior in 2007, turned pro in 2010.

dstrong 

And Joe still looks like he's 15!

Campag4life

More sage words...
I too have a friend who has marathon-ed under 3 hours and frankly, he is not a fast bike rider...I can ride straight away from him and I could never even run a marathon. Horses for courses. He is a fit guy but a very average bike rider.

jerrycan42

I have found, in the year I progressed from Senior 4 to Senior 2, the competition got MUCH better as I moved up. I was on the dole for the whole summer and did nothing but long unstructured solo rides almost everyday. I placed in my 1st 4 races and moved up. In S3, I only finished in points for 5 of 11 races I started and then moved up. I finished out the season in S2 for 6 races. I was only able to finish 2 of them. Clearly I needed more structured training.

caloso

Nate English went from 5 to 1 in a season. I was there when he rode off the front and nearly lapped the field at Cherry Pie Cat 5. The next season he went pro. But he's still a domestic pro, not a TdF favorite.