Hi Tom,
Does a rider need to be a member of a team to race in an NRC/NCC race?

A:Not always. Most NCC events are individual entry, and some NRC events are that way as well. That being said several of the NRC stage races are team entry only.

Tom Mahoney
USA Cycling
Technical Programs Manager

You might be best to choose which race/races you would be interested and contact the RD for that event. There's sometimes an option to guest ride for a team. For example, a friend posted her bio on the Redlands stage race website this year and got picked up to guest ride for a team. I'm not sure if it's the same for crits but the organizer can probably fill you in on whether you can enter as an individual or not. It would e very cool to race one of those events on a team!

^_^ Thanks!

Lots. Racing in Europe. Flanders. Giro d'Italia. Training. Power. Utah. etc..

Back when I was doing P/1 a few years ago if you were a 1 you could enter as an individual as long as there were slots. There may be races that are invite only, and when you get to the TOC level your team needs an invite, but lower ranked stuff like Gila and NRC stuff you just paid your money and got your head kicked in.

Yeah as far as I can tell, just being a cat 1 or Pro is all you need to do a NCC race.

NRC can be different, at least for some races; Redlands requires a team/invite, but the NCC crits just seem to be a first-come-first-serve thing.

Btw I never got the nerve to actually do an NCC crit this year, the first year I'm allowed to.

I always wanted to, but now that I finally can I'm skeert!

haha matt, me too! Maybe next season?

I sort of did one? It was the day before an NCC event so a lot of the big guns except for UHC showed up.

My limited understanding of it is, if you want to know what a world war 2 aerial dog fight was like, you should do an NCC crit.

The real NCC race is Pro/1 only (Pro/1/2 for women). The ones that have $15-$20k up for grabs, just for that event.

But what you did definitely sounded like a hard Pro/1/2 crit!

It was on the east coast though, so don't forget to factor that in!

Is true, and I think there was only (ha!) 5k up for grabs.

edit: gsteinb's right, east coast 1/2 crit = p/1 west coast.

Of course, for the NCC crits it's the same guys in the race no matter which coast...

But the humidity on the east coast allows the riders that hail from here to intake more oxygen which leads to increases in power or something?

Picking designs for next season's kit. The board can't even come to an agreement and one joker suggests throwing it out to a team-wide vote. Last time we did that it lasted for months. Nope.

It's that time of year I guess... ugh kit design exercises are bad enough, but kit designs by committee/the whole team are the worst.

While I hate aspects of our kit (safety orange for one), I hope we just do the same damn thing this year to avoid any and all drama, and time wasted, etc.

just for fun: I've been trying to find data on just where cycling ranks in terms of popularity in the US.

I have yet to find a list where the sport is even included.

I just find it annoying every year our club does a massive kit redesign every year, and probably won't opt in this year. No one ever looks the same, since you'll have 2 guys with the 15' kits, another guy with a 14' kit, then others with past years.

My racing team gives a free kit every year and I'll stick with that. As is I have a surplus of kits.

Some races do have qualifiers, like Iron Hill (NCC), but I've only seen them for the amateur races. How many move up depends on the race. It's all explained in the race flyer. The P/1 men's and P/1/(2) women's are typically not qualifier races. Some races have street sprints which are open races with qualifiers.

This.

I just finished going through that. I nearly quit the team. We finally settled on the design last night. I still have to make a few tweaks to it, but it will be way better looking than our current kit, which is an abomination.

days of our lives - am up early to go ride before work. have been having hearing/wax issues. Last night hearing went away completely. Got out the old irrigation kit and spent 15 minutes this morning. Can now hear again; flushed out a chunk of wax the size of the last bit of my pinky finger. IIRC it's been about 8 years since the last time I had to do this.

Good morning everyone.

have a good ride.

not sure what the big deal is. It handles just like my crit bike

Cool. Now you have to come up with another excuse not to ride outside in the winter.