Hey guys and gals,
I'm heading stateside (norcal) next year for a while and had a couple of queries about road racing there. First up, does anyone know if it's possible to get a category upgrade from O/S results? I have plenty of racing experience in Australia in A and B grades, national road series, inter-varsity, and a couple of decent results in most of those categories except NRS (where a puncture with no spares car in sight and a hunger flat from poor planning combined to rob me of a finish in the top half of the field). I've read about cat's, starting as a 5 and moving up. I suppose I'd be happy to start low and work my way up - should happen quite quickly if I'm not at the level I should be at. But I'm thinking it's not going to be good racing for me and it's not fair to other low cat riders to rock up and blitz newbies. Can I apply to the USCF to give me a higher Cat licence using my results here? Judging from my w/kg and the results of guys I know from here who've raced in the US, I'm thinking I'd be decent in the 2's or good in the 3's, or maybe finishing in the 1's if I'm on good form or its a race that suits me.
Second up, what's the prize money like over there. Here club races pay all grades, A grade to 4th or 6th, B to 4th and C-E down to 3rd. Money depends on field size, except for 'opens' - bigger races which sometimes pay to 20th and have $1000 plus for 1st (but are damn near impossible to win). Club races would typically pay between $50 and $200 for first in A grade. Money split between grades something like 40-30-20-7-3. If I start off racing low grades am I gonna clean up some cash?
Thirdly, I get the impression there is a lot more teams based riding in the US than here. There's very little here, although I have some experience of it and I love working hard for a team. What's the best way to hook up a ride? What can you expect in terms of sponsorship? Here it's reasonable for a good quality A grade rider to expect a cost price bike and (if you're smart/lucky) a year to pay it off interest free (that is, sell the bike at the end of the year when you get your new one and you should get back more than you have to pay). Anyone that has space on a team in norcal for '05 feel free to let me know via PM and I will email you a race resume, some photos and references. Caveat: I would like to spend a bit of time doing inter-varsity road racing for the first half of the year, so I won't be available to race every week. Also, I tend not to race every week anyway - I prefer to peak for big events than drive myself into the ground every week, but that's negotiable depending on the deal I'm getting from the team. Anyways, I'm mainly a roadie but I can MTB a bit too, and I'd love to do some cyclo, which we don't have here. Thanks to all of you for reading, and maybe answering some of my questions.
I'm heading stateside (norcal) next year for a while and had a couple of queries about road racing there. First up, does anyone know if it's possible to get a category upgrade from O/S results? I have plenty of racing experience in Australia in A and B grades, national road series, inter-varsity, and a couple of decent results in most of those categories except NRS (where a puncture with no spares car in sight and a hunger flat from poor planning combined to rob me of a finish in the top half of the field). I've read about cat's, starting as a 5 and moving up. I suppose I'd be happy to start low and work my way up - should happen quite quickly if I'm not at the level I should be at. But I'm thinking it's not going to be good racing for me and it's not fair to other low cat riders to rock up and blitz newbies. Can I apply to the USCF to give me a higher Cat licence using my results here? Judging from my w/kg and the results of guys I know from here who've raced in the US, I'm thinking I'd be decent in the 2's or good in the 3's, or maybe finishing in the 1's if I'm on good form or its a race that suits me.
Second up, what's the prize money like over there. Here club races pay all grades, A grade to 4th or 6th, B to 4th and C-E down to 3rd. Money depends on field size, except for 'opens' - bigger races which sometimes pay to 20th and have $1000 plus for 1st (but are damn near impossible to win). Club races would typically pay between $50 and $200 for first in A grade. Money split between grades something like 40-30-20-7-3. If I start off racing low grades am I gonna clean up some cash?
Thirdly, I get the impression there is a lot more teams based riding in the US than here. There's very little here, although I have some experience of it and I love working hard for a team. What's the best way to hook up a ride? What can you expect in terms of sponsorship? Here it's reasonable for a good quality A grade rider to expect a cost price bike and (if you're smart/lucky) a year to pay it off interest free (that is, sell the bike at the end of the year when you get your new one and you should get back more than you have to pay). Anyone that has space on a team in norcal for '05 feel free to let me know via PM and I will email you a race resume, some photos and references. Caveat: I would like to spend a bit of time doing inter-varsity road racing for the first half of the year, so I won't be available to race every week. Also, I tend not to race every week anyway - I prefer to peak for big events than drive myself into the ground every week, but that's negotiable depending on the deal I'm getting from the team. Anyways, I'm mainly a roadie but I can MTB a bit too, and I'd love to do some cyclo, which we don't have here. Thanks to all of you for reading, and maybe answering some of my questions.
