Quote Originally Posted by velogirl View Post
ICs are beginners in CA. I've found the way to get women into the sport and retain them is to give them a lot of support. Velo Girls and Velo Bella do this very well for cross. Other teams don't seem to have the same level of commitment to the beginners.
Cat 4 is beginner here also (formerly known as C's), but some promoters have been running a special beginner category.

http://www.wicycling.org/CycloCross/...ash%202006.pdf

Beginner and Cat 4 are run at the same time, but the results must get separated.

Quote Originally Posted by velogirl View Post
Oh, the other bizarre thing in this series is that they have big bucks prizes for the winners in the lower categories. For example, the winner of the C women gets a complete felt cyclocross bike. That discourages her from upgrading to Bs even though she'd do well there. Of course, she's only ever done two cross races in her life, so she really is a beginner
Indeed very strange. WI cycling gives the most money out for the Cat1/2, gives a little less money out for the Cat 3 and only gives merchandise out to Cat 4. This is done to discourage sandbagging for money.