I also depends upon the race-organizer as well and what category groupings they provide. When I put on races, I never broke it up by ages, strictly by cats only. Personally I think it's safer because you're grouping people based upon ability and skill and that makes for a narrower spread between the best and worst in each group. ALL cat-3s have had to make it out of 4s, so there's a minimum ability here.
Whereas a masters 40+ race can have an ex-pro who's a cat-3 dicing it up with a brand-new rider in their very first race. It can create a very, very dangerous situation; not to mention extremely discouraging for the new rider.
Actually, the way age-groups are used is to split fields with too many riders for one cat. So you may end up with a spread like this:
cat-5: 70-riders
cat-5 40+: 65-riders
cat-4: 75-riders
cat-4 40+: 70-riders
cat-3: 80-riders (no split)
This breaks up the big groups into two, yet still maintains close abilities within that group. You select the age breakpoint so that both sets of fields are even-sized. Only 40+ racers can enter the 40+ races, but they can also chose to run in non-aged group as well. Some of them will actually do two races in the same day.
Last edited by DannoXYZ; 08-08-05 at 03:59 AM.