My USA Cycling Downgrade

Several factors converged today and forced me to make a choice that I privately considered for a long time. That choice was to downgrade my USA Cycling cyclocross category from 3 to 4. I remember how satisfying it was to upgrade to Cat 3 at the end of 2014—I had made several podiums and accumulated the necessary points—and it all made sense at the time. So, downgrading required me to swallow some pride. But if I’m being honest, downgrading was probably necessary to keep me racing.

After upgrading to Cat 3, I never had an impressive result. I really was just pack fodder, getting clobbered by much better racers. I want to be competitive, but in Cat 3 I can’t be. It gets worse with age: every season I’m another year older than most of the guys. I’m 58 now; the youngest racers in my Masters division are only 49. And I’m probably still feeling the effects of 2 years lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, as I didn’t race at all in 2020 or 2021. I raced only once last year.

This season, then, is going to be a reset. I hope so, anyway. Pre-registration for Saturday’s race ends tonight at midnight and my USA Cycling license was set to expire tomorrow. I used the renewal process as my opportunity to downgrade. For Saturday, I am registered in the Masters 50+ Cat 4/5 race and the Open Cat 4/5 race. There’s a chance I will enter the Open Cat 3/4 race later in the afternoon, but there’s also a chance of thunderstorms.

If I had remained a Cat 3, then my only race on Saturday would have been Masters 50+ Cat 1/2/3, the last race of the day … and only if the thunderstorms stayed away. Looking at the forecast, I didn’t want to commit to a race with such uncertain conditions. It’s funny, but weather is one of the factors that prompted me to downgrade. When I upgraded before the 2015 season, a big part of my motivation was to get out of the morning timeslot and into the warmer afternoon. These days, the WCA schedule gives me more opportunities as a Cat 4. I still can race in the afternoon if the morning is too cold, or I can race in the morning to avoid afternoon rain.

Finally, there’s the camaraderie. Some of the guys I really enjoy racing against have downgraded from Cat 3 to Cat 4 in the last few years. We’re not getting any younger, and downgrading is absolutely a concession to that fact. Nobody gets to do this forever, but we’re not done yet.