2023 Livermore Crit - Womens 4 & Novice
Date: February 12, 2023
AVRT racers: Louise Thomas, Steph Hart
Top Result: Louise (7th/11)
Course: 40 minutes of a flat .94 mile, 4 corner crit course
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/8552055171
Nutrition: half a water bottle of maltodextrin/fructose mix and a caffeinated cookie dough bar before the race, a few sips of the rest of the bottle during the race.
Race recap:
Having crushed it together at the Early Birds crit training a couple of weeks prior, I was excited to be racing with Steph for my first crit of the season. Eager to get started, I spent the first couple of laps on the front before realizing that tactically probably wasn’t a good place to be. In my attempt to get other people to pass I dropped the speed down to coffee ride pace, but no one else seemed to want to take a pull.
Eventually I got off the front, but the pace stayed pretty low. After a few laps of sitting in I launched an attack to spice things up a little but didn’t manage to get any separation. I guess everyone’s legs were still pretty fresh at that point. A few laps later Steph also launched an attack, but again didn’t manage to get any separation. In hindsight we should have been more coordinated with our attacks and then maybe would have had better luck getting one to stick.
The rest of the race was fairly unanimated. There was one other woman that attacked, but apart from that everyone seemed content to sit in. Going into the final few laps it looked like going to be a sprint finish, which historically has not been my strong suit. To try and maximize my chances I positioned myself as the second wheel, but then just before the final corner got swarmed from either side. Not seeing a way to go between the other riders, I decided to back out and go around the pack but unfortunately didn’t have enough time to make up the lost ground so ended up coming in 7th. Overall it was a bit of a frustrating result, but I’m grateful for the support from the rest of the women’s team in debugging how to avoid situations like this in the future.
- Louise