4/5 racing may be the lowest category at most road races, but that by no means makes it easy. Going into the Circuit of Sauk, I’d been racing collegiate for 2 months and seen my form develop as I ascended from Cat C (4) to B (3/4) and finally the last four race weekends where I raced in the A category (1/2/3). I was one of only 2 Cat 4 riders in the A field, but managed to finish 18th-40th in fields of about 60. During the races I was able to mark attacks and get in breakaways and never felt in danger of being dropped. Naturally, mixing it up with the caliber of riders in the A fields gave me a tremendous amount of confidence going into my first USAC race of the season today.
xXx had a good contingent on the start line with Matt, Patrick and William, but we didn’t really talk about a team strategy for the day (it’s hard when you’re not sure how strong everyone is). Ultimately, the Circuit of Sauk is fairly straightforward. Don’t get dropped on the climb and protect yourself well in the crosswinds. You have to stay as far to the front as possible not to get caught behind fading riders. Just my luck, I see a neon jersey roll up right before the start. It’s Tony Damhoff, the other Cat 4 in collegiate A, and he’s stronger than I am on the hills (F!). We banter a bit before the neutral roll out and I introduce the field to his collegiate nickname, the swamp monster (he crashed into a mud pit and rode the remainder of the race covered in mud).
The race official explained that we’d be neutral until the first corner before the climb, but Tony apparently didn’t hear that and attacked the roll out. There was a lot of head scratching in the field and for some reason the pace car driver sped up to 35. I tried to yell at Tony, but he was too far away by that point, so I let the field know that I’d bridge and tell him to come back. I got within shouting distance a few hundred meters from the corner, so that was a nice waste of energy before the climb.
With the field together, I hit the first ascent second wheel but was quickly swarmed by Tony and a few remarkably strong riders. I battled to maintain contact over the top and thought to myself, “what is going on?!?”. Climbing isn’t really my thing, but I figured that I had most of the field out-gunned. At this point, I had to adjust my plan and opt for a more conservative race of marking wheels and staying out of the wind instead of attacking the second, smaller climb as I had planned (boring). As it turns out, there were some really good descenders in that field as well, so I bet on a bunch sprint at the end regardless.
True to form, about 1/3 of the original field came to the line together. I got boxed in for the start of the sprint by some questionable yellow line riding, but at 200m to go the road opened up and I started picking off riders. Damhoff led a train of people up the right side, but neither of his two followers could come around his sprint. I was closing hard on them, but ran out of space before I could throw the 3rd place guy on the line. If the swamp monster had stayed home, I think I might have taken the sprint, but that’s bike racing.
4th place netted me my entry fee and it came with a big helping of knowledge. 4/5 racing is not much slower than 3 racing, which is not much slower than 1/2 racing. I’d been racing with 1’s and 2’s for a month, but still could not control the race. It’s never a good idea to roll up to a start thinking that you’re a sure thing because there will always be other sandbaggers out to eat your lunch. It’s unfortunate that it works like this because it creates a sizable barrier to overcome for newcomers to the sport. I’d imagine that almost every person in that field was seriously training 4-5 days/week. It might be worth making a cat 6 with races that are prize-less and cheaper to enter so that people don’t get discouraged by being destroyed in races like the one yesterday (you could also have a one-and-done, win=upgrade to 5 policy to ensure that everyone has a shot). I’m moving up to 3 after Snake Alley later this month, but hopefully I’ll be able to get a win before that happens.
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