There are some things about women's racing that are very different from men's racing. One thing I've noticed is that if I go on a group ride with a bunch of fast guys, I can hang with them at their pace, but if I am in a race with women, our average MPH for the race is much slower. This is probably because women's races tend to have so few participants (in the southeast) that there is no pack advantage. What this means: if you have 30 riders in a pack, they can swap out pulls and keep the pace strong. If you have 5 riders in a pack, it's not a pack anymore; it's a paceline, and you have to pull 1 out of every 5 times, and there's no hiding in the middle of the pack, putting out 50 watts and chewing your cud at 25 mph.

It's not possible for a woman to hide unnoticed in the pack until the end of a race, not taking a single pull, and then sprint for a top place finish. That is a good thing because it is a cheater's strategy in amateur racing. However, the flip side of this is that if a woman tries not to pull in a small group, then the other women are going to be upset with her and will most likely let her know. So, I've been hearing a lot of squabbling going on in several women's races that I've been in. I'll take my share of pulls, meaning that if other women have pulled and I have recovered, then I will take another one. However there was one race I did where no women would pull through, so we rolled around at a very slow speed, waiting for someone to volunteer. That was getting silly. I found it more entertaining than annoying, since it's good that no woman can go unnoticed for long in a small pack.

On the flip side, women's racing is better than men's at the finish line, because there is plenty of room to find a place to sprint for the line. If someone is blocking me, then I will move to the side of that person. Men's races tend to have so many guys sprinting at the finish, that one can get boxed in, just like the pros at the end of a Tour de France stage.

The reason some guys give me for being old enough to race in master's fields yet still racing in the regular fields is that the master's fields are like women's: there is a wide variance between the participants' abilities. I know firsthand that it sucks when a Cat 1 racer shows up for EVERY race and you automatically are relegated to fighting for second place. That's the nature of women's bike racing. I don't know why I don't subtract 1 from whatever place I get and pretend like I did better than the reality of it. And also, it doesn't take long for the first place female to get ahead, so the rest of the race, we're all thinking "It's the fight for second place!" It's kind of a catch-22, because the fields could be separated IF enough women show up for races, but it's too intimidating for beginners if they have to race with the region's strongest female cyclists.

I have only a few races left this season, and unfortunately, I have not had many chances to be the aggressor. I'm getting bored with racing at this point. It's like showing up for an amateur golf tournament and finding out that Tiger Woods is there to compete against you.