What is Cat 5?

I looked over my posts and realized I've never explained what "Cat 5" actually means.  It's obviously a reference to cycling but that won't help most folks.  Cat 5 is a bike racing category with the US Cycling Federation.  It also happens to be the lowest level they have.  Everyone is required to start at Cat 5 to gain experience.  Historically, as in about 30 years ago, the USCF only had 5 categories; Pro and Categories 1-4.  Everyone use to start at Cat 4.  They noticed that some of the novices in the Cat 4 ranks were the cause of most of the wrecks that were taking place.  Most of these were due to a lack of racing experience so they added one more category, Cat 5.  It's basically the training wheels version of bike racing, hence the tongue-in-cheek title of my blog. 

The primary purpose of bike racing is to have fun but eventually folks become more competative and try to win.  If you do well enough you are allowed to "Cat up" or move up from one category to another category.  There is a very low bar to cat up from Cat 5 to Cat 4.  All I need to do is finish 10 sanctioned races.  In the meantime however, they expect you've gained valuable experience.  Hopefully I finish more than half of my first 10 upright. 

That's the only real easy promotion.  From then on your promotions are merit based.  At each race you accumulate points for your place in the field and for winning "Prime" laps (pronounced "preem").  These are typically every 5 laps or so which escalates fan interest and keeps the race pace up.  In higher category racing there are actually cash and other prizes provided by sponsors.  Winning obviously gives you the most points.  Once you accumulate enough points you can move from Cat 4 to Cat 3.  Once you get to Cat 3 the only real way to promote is to get results, meaning winning races or at least placing.  Cat 3 is also when cyclists form teams, train together and begin to strategize before and during races.  Cat 1 cyclists have team sponsors and get alot of their gear for free.  They put most all of their waking hours into two things, cycling and their job which is usually cycling friendly like working at a bike shop.  I would love to work in a bike shop but I would be worthless.  My job isn't built around my cycling, my cycling fills in the nooks and cranny's of my week and is about fourth or fifth down my life priority list.  Every once in a while I'll see online training schedules for "the time crunched cyclist" that list "only" 8-10 hours of training per week.  If I had 8-10 hours of training time I think that would be great but then I'd probably want 15-20.  I currently get about 4-6. 

I just need to get enough training to hang with the pack for 40 minutes and finish upright.