yeah... i get the numbers are low and i was actually fine with a women's breakdown of juniors, 19-39 and 40+... not as many breakdowns as the men's fields but, hey, women's numbers are low... and i want to race against my peers...
BUT A YOUNG LADY WHO IS STILL IN MIDDLE SCHOOL IS NOT MY PEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and i think this new breakdown is COMPLETE FUCKING BULLSHIT.
and, of course, i just bought a fucking race license.
If it makes you feel any better, the data basically says you won't be racing many (if any) young ladies in middle school. I took a quick look at the results for the 2017 series, specifically at Cat 2 Women. One of the races no longer has viewable results up, but of the six that do the numbers are kind of interesting in terms of (1) who is (or more to the point, who is not) racing and (2) who really are your "peers". Granted this is a very rough breakdown (I would't call it an "analysis") but the table below shows the top and bottom finishing times for each race for each Cat 2 Women's Age Group in 2017:
Only one 12-18 year old Cat 2 has finished a race, that being the first one. Overall in the series, 2 actually competed, but the other finished only one lap of the Bulldog race.
The other thing of note here from a racing perspective is the significant overlap between the range for 19-39 and 40+. Overall, the 19-39 class is generally faster, but not on a one-to-one basis -- in every case except the last one, where there were only 2 women in the 19-39 class, the 40+ winner would have finished ahead of at least some of the 19-39 women. Moreover, in more than one instance, the 40+ winner would have been on the 19-39 podium. There are any number of ways to interpret that, obviously, but one way might be that age groups really aren't all that important to begin with.
Like I said, this isn't any kind of formal "analysis", but it should at least confirm for you that chances are you won't be racing many (if any) middle school kids if you choose that class, and the promoters probably considered this when determining the new cutoffs. And - just as important! - the 40+ women can still kick the crap out of the younger women if they ever have to share a class!