Cat 4 Split Confusion- More Inside

[Andrea]

Andrea's Blog (http://blog.myspace.com/andreaandthephoenix)

Click the link above to visit my blog to read the race report- I want to find out if any of you have delt with a category split confusion like I did over the weekend.

I also have a photo album on my profile with some photos from the crit, but you can only see it if you are logged in to myspace. If you are a my-spacer, feel free to add me!

[Eden]

Nope - in Washington we're only occasionally combined with the 1,2,3's and if that is true we are NOT scored separately - you place where you place, everyone together regardless of category and everyone does the same race. I've done some racing in Oregon where we race with the 1,2's, but the 3,4's are placed separately, but in that case we all do the same race and the results are truely split.

oh and hmmmm no matter how small our fields get they would never combine us with the men..... the 1/2/3 women yes, but not the men. How many women were racing?
(in some of the casual weekday races women are allowed to jump in with the men if they want to, but not for any of the WSBA ones...)

[Andrea]

We didn't get combined with the men, we were split into a cat 1/2/3 group and a cat 4 group for the road race and did different distances, then re-combined for the time trial, criterium, and omnium results. For omnium points, our placings started at 4th for the road race because there were only 3 in the cat 1/2/3 group. Yeah, it's pretty weird.
I complained to the race official, but he prettymuch told me to quit *****ing and get over it.

[Eden]

Yeah - that sounds completely weird... they should pick one way or the other. I guess I got the impression that you were with men, since in your race report you mentioned sticking near and being helped/helping David?

[Andrea]

Sorry for the confusion...
They grouped us with the Masters 50/60 men and the juniors for the road race & crit. We weren't placed with them, just grouped with them.

[aliceanne]

That's not fair at all, and I'm also pretty sure that's not in line with usacycling rules. Running your race separately for the road race would indeed imply to the conscientious racer that the omnium would be scored separately! But I can't say as I'm surprised, as I did this particular race last year, and it had some timing/scoring issues then (nothing as major as what happened to you, though). Officiating a bike race is tough, especially a stage race, but some officiating crews do a better job than others.