After a series of personal time consuming issues and "hopefully" moving past them I finally joined a bike club and signed up for my first races of the season. The club www.nohobikeclub.org is well organized and the members are really a tight group. I also like their kit.

I know the beginning of the season will be rough because I was unable to properly prepare, (due to the aforementioned issues), but I am looking forward to getting out there and hammering away.

What races did you sign up for?

Forrest Park Criterium Training Series on the 18 and 25th. Figured it was good place to learn and ride in a Criterium.

Nice....I'm doing a crit in Charlestown, RI on April 14th....and will be signing up for the Palmer Road Race in Palmer, MA...I think that one is April 29th.

If that is the Palmer Library Race run out of Warren, MA I will probably see you there.

get yourself signed up for fitchburg. if it's anything like it used to be, then it's one of the top events in the northeast.

Yep, it's still a big deal. Lots of guys from here, and further south make the drive to Mass for F-L.

https://www.longsjo.com/

Is that the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic Stage Race? That may be over my head.

Yep. 4th of July weekend, IIRC. Plenty of time to train for it.

Back when I was still racing in the US I used it as preparation for the Lou Maltese Classic (which was in late July) and a bit for the Killington Stage Race, which came 2 months later, but had more or less the same field (i.e. guys to watch out for).

Fitchburg is only 40 minutes from where I live maybe I'll rent out my house to BF memebers that want to travel to the F-L. I promise the fee won't be steep.

There's no Cat 5 field for Fitchburg

From the website...

The Longsjo has become so large and competitive that we are unable to accommodate more riders on the race courses. This means we can no longer accommodate the citizen’s races of the past, nor can we even accommodate Category 5 riders.

Looks like I will be there as a spectator.

There's plenty of time to win some races and upgrade to the 4s.

Yeah...only way that'll happen for me is if the field happens to forget about the race and doesn't show up

You could easily do 10 races between now and Memorial Day...let alone July.

+1 The northeast s not quite as race deprived as the midwest seems to be (according to other BFers). Go for it!

True. The midwest is pretty much dead until Memorial Day, which is when the Memorial Day Bike Races events take place. Including the love of my life, Snake Alley. Only race I can think of before then, aside from collegiate races, is Hillsboro-Roubaix.

After Memorial Day, though, I can't think of any place BETTER than the Midwest. You have Memorial Day, the Chicago/Wisco area races (elgin, wheel & sprocket, grayslake, vernon hills, muskego, monsters, etc), Superweek (two weeks of straight racing with a race literally every day), Elk Grove, Downers Grove, Winfield, Illinois and Wisco state crit and RR championships, Wisconsin-WW RR and Crit, Grafton Crit (big money), etc. All HUGE races in rapid succession.

Doing fitchburg would be a great chance, even if it's way over your head.

On a closer time scale, you should try the sturbridge road race. It pretty close to you, incredibly well run, quite popular, and a good moderate intro to road racing.

Forest Park is a good starter. It's fast, but very safe - except maybe the first corner since it bottlenecks a little. There is also Wells Ave. if you want to go near Boston, and the Bethel and Plainville series in CT for other training races. There's also a couple of bigger crits in RI, and the Sturbridge and Palmer road races in April - they have 5 or 4/5 races that you can do. There's also a 4/5 circuit race in Marblehead, MA in a few weeks. You should have plenty of races to choose from for your 5->4.

Fitchburg and Green Mountain are the big ones in NE. These fill up fast for Cat 4's, so cat up fast and reg fast.

Best of luck!

I've heard that the Palmer road race (same weekend as Sturbridge) is a better course....

Sturbridge and Palmer are two of the more boring and dangerous road races in the NE IMO, no real selection points tons of downhill, including a mile or two long downhill finish for Sturbridge (last year I think something like 3/4s of the fields had crashes in the finishing mile), Palmer's a bit better thanks to its uphill finish, but still...yawn...

How much vertical gain you think is there per lap for Palmer?

I wasn't too keen on the whole downhill finish thing for Sturbridge, which is why I don't want to do that one.

Dude

5 words:

STOP. WHINING. JUST. DO. IT.

Got it?

Dunno bout Palmer, probably the most climbing of any early season race but still nothing too serious, and much much more downhill to recover on. Basically it ends up being one big uphill sprint.

Botto, Sturbridge had more crashes in the last mile than the entire Tufts crit including the collegiate racers. Blood on the streets in the lower cats.