Originally Posted by grwoolf

I don't know if this is just a central texas thing, but I've seen pretty low turnouts for Cat 5 races this year. Normally, these are the first to fill up.

My team puts on one of the big texas races every year and we normally have 2 different cat 5 groups because 1 can't handle all the demand. This year, it was at least 50% dropoff on cat 5 numbers, despite nice weather. There might be some other factors (change in venue), but I've seen the same thing in a couple other races and was wondering whether this is a trend.

I was thinking zwift might be enough to keep some people from trying the real thing. If I had tried a zwift race first, I could see being discouraged from trying a real race. I find hanging with the "C" race in zwift harder than a real Cat 3 or Masters Open race, so that is not an appropriate level to start at from a fitness perspective. If an aspiring racer is getting dropped constantly on Zwift, I could see them not wanting to pay $40 and brave the real world if they think they have no chance of hanging on. Many aspiring racers also tend to focus too much on whether they are fit enough to race before trying (and don't think about the other skills). I think Zwift is only going to compound the "fitness focus".