The difficulty here is how easy or hard it is to get licence categories. When and where i raced there were virtually no evening or winter crit leagues, it was pretty much just road races with the odd crit thrown in. So getting even a second cat required a degree of luck and a good amount of racing (full, 80 rider fields, in most events). Somewhere with access to closed circuits and a full winter league (Hillingdon, Eastway etc) it is (relatively) easy to end up with a second cat licence just from plugging away.Machinenoise wrote:But realistically I'd expect any UK 2nd cat or above to be able to do a 60 min 25 on road racing equipment.
So my experience is that any halfway useful 3rd cat *should* be able to crack the hour.
To add to that, as a 3rd cat I did three "proper" 25s, all on a road bike, none with clip ons. 53, 55 and 57 mins. All on moderately quick courses, one within 3 mins of the fastest rider, the others within 5. (fastest rider being on a full on TT bike of course!)