Originally Posted by
ultraman6970
If you think you are good enough, you should be able to win cat-5 races in a steel bike with 7 gears in the back and downtube shifters. Don't want disrespect to the actual cat-5 guys but that's the cruel reality.
Even good juniors should be able to smash cat-5 guys w/o any problem.
Maybe in states other than CA, but not true here.
It's actually not uncommon around here for an unranked or registered Cat5 rider to equal or even outsplit the Cat1-4 category riders in a TT hillclimb or regular time trial. Also, if you look at the winning time for Cat5 vs Cat 1-3, it's usually pretty close.
If you were strong enough to ignore tactics and just pull away from the field on the first lap in Cat5, the avg speed of the Cat5 finishing group should be wayyy slower, which is definitely not true here in CA.
I'm not even fast enough to race against Cat2s or good Cat3s, but I've passed at least 3 guys out in the mountains here in the past 2 years who were wearing 'state champion road race' jerseys from other states, 2 of which admitted they failed to catch me despite trying on the climb. I do think these were "age-group" categories and those 2 guys may have even from sub-categories in road racing, but still, the concept of me catching any 'state champion', even if it were a pure short-track sprinter, is laughable in CA.