The 45+ 4/5 road race at Panoche is only about half full as of today (5/4). I hope more of the racers who enjoyed the seperate 45+ 4/5 field at Monterey, Copperopolis or Wente will sign-up for Panoche. Clearly promoters will be more likely to offer 45+ 4/5 races if they consistantly fill up.

Thanks,
Rick M.

I wonder how much of the 4/5 pre reg activity compared to other fields is due to the fact that if one does not pre reg, one may not get to race as opposed to other fields which rarely fill for most events so folks in those fields can procrastinate until the day of the event if they don't mind the usual accompanying late fee. May be it's possible the same sort of pre reg activity would happen if you had multiple 4 fields and multiple 5 fields since the demographics are skewed so far in that direction. The demographics show a trend where we could have a record number of 4's and 5's this year. The juniors show an encouraging upwards trend, too, but one club last year insisted on buying only one days for the whole season, so that may be biasing that particular data point.

One reason for having the multiple 4/5 fields without age restrictions is to give younger folks an opportunity to race multiple times in a day, the same way older folks do now. Juniors can do this when there is a separate junior race already but for days without a separate junior race this would give everyone the chance to double up on crit days instead of just old guys.

I say this as one of the old guys and I really can't tell much difference between the open and the age restricted fields when they have the same field limits and lap counts.

Great news! The more 45+ 4/5 fields, the better!

With our Wente RR/Crit one week away here's some numbers that
support the interest in / need for more 45+/55+ 4/5 fields:

Preregistered for the Road Race as of today:

45+ open: 29
55+ open: 8
total: 37

45+ 4/5: 64
55+ 4/5: 5
total: 69

On the other hand, the 35+ 1/2/3 field has only 12 riders!

Unf. our crit does not have a 45+/55+ 4/5 field this year --- the
crit field remains a 45+/55+ open. The primary reason for this is
that adding an additional field to the crit makes race day too long
for those of us who put on the race. However, based on the above
stats, I believe one can make a very strong case (which I will, next
year) for a single 35+/45+ 1/2/3 field, and a 45+/55+ 4/5 field.