It's Official (Well Almost)

After renewing my license with USA Cycling (USAC) for 2009 (which you all should do) I thought it appropriate to review the upgrade language related to MTB categories given the recent announcement that USAC was reworking the categories for next year. Rather than using the Beginner, Sport, Expert, Semi-Pro, and Pro categories that we've all grown to know (and love?), the new categories for next year and beyond are much like the road categories, i.e., cat. 3, cat. 2, cat. 1 and Pro. You say, "FD, there seems to be a problem here. There were five different cat.'s before and now here are only four." To which I say, touche, you are paying attention. USAC has seen it fit to combine the Semi-Pro and Pro categories into a singular Pro category to improve competition and increase the numbers signing up to race. It is my experience that the Pro and Semi-Pro cat.'s were the least popular at the races I attended, so this may make sense in the mid-Atlantic area anyway. But, I digress. I believe I started this post talking about upgrades. The upgrade rules remain the same year to year. Any racer placing in the top five in five races must upgrade or face serious consequences. That is not an exact quote from the USAC website but I think that is what they are trying to say. I find the wording to be rather nebulous. Do they mean any five races? Do they mean top five within your class, category, age group, or any of the above? USAC further muddies the waters by listing the numbers of racers needed for a race to qualify by age (which maybe answers my second question?). So, if you placed in the top five of a race in which you needed ten racers but only nine raced in your category it doesn't count? Regardless, I looked over my results from 2008 and I believe I saw five races where there were the minimum number of racers (10 for those in the 40-49 age group) in which I finished in the top five. So, I have officially submitted a request to USAC to upgrade me from a cat. 3 to a cat. 2, most likely before the ink dries on my renewed 2009 license. When is the first race?