2023 Pine Flat Road Race - Elite 3
Race: Pine Flat Road Race - Elite 3
Date: February 19, 2023
AVRT racers: Josh Worley, Conor Austin, Daniel Fonyo, Nico Sandi
Top Result: Nico - 1st/19
Course: 62 miles, 4,000ft. Rolling for the first 26 miles on an out-and-back overlooking Pine Flat Lake. 2 mile fast, non-technical descent into a 16 mile valley with minimal features, then the main 11 mile climb that starts with rollers, gradually getting steeper until the last mile averaging about 10%. 6 mile descent into a 1 mile climb to finish the race.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/8589490298
Earlier in the week this was our plan (copy/paste from Slack):
Josh - Be aggressive in the first out and back. Initiate shenanigans. Be stupid :) Hopefully a small break sticks with you and we have climbers work to chase on the flats.
Conor and Daniel - Bully others into chasing Josh. If he gets caught you counter. We want a group up the road on the flats to make climbers work. Expect to get caught on the climb but it will cost people a lot of energy to do it.
And this was Josh’s approach to the race the day before the race:
“My goal is to ride solo for as long as possible. Just relentlessly attack.”
And that is exactly what happened. Josh had an unlimited amount of oats the morning of the race and absolutely smashed it. He attacked 20 minutes into the race (20seconds at 960W) and we didn’t see him for another 2 hours.
He brought with him two other riders who we deemed as threats on the climb but were happy to let go and have them get tired working on the break.
In the main bunch Daniel and Conor were patrolling the front making sure bridge attempts were shut down and the rest of the riders were working hard to try and catch the break. It was very surgey on the rolling out and back which meant some riders could not hang with so many attacks and high pace.
By the time we came down to the valley the gap to the break was over a minute and there was only 9 riders left in our group. At this point Daniel, Conor and I started helping with the chase a little bit. Just taking turns to encourage others to keep working. We knew that the two riders with Josh in the break were stronger climbers.
As the gap got smaller we were able to see in the distance that the break was now only two people. Josh was gone. Flat? Mechanical? Crash? Wrong turn?
Nope. Legend has it he told his breakaway friends “sorry boys”, accelerate and dropped them dead. He would spend another hour solo. And with no main engine the break was way easier to catch.
Once we caught them it was no longer our responsibility to help the chase anymore. If they chased Josh we would get a free ride to the bottom of the climb. If they didn’t chase, Josh would win the race.
Once the climb came around I got close to the front and just followed attacks and didn’t pull through. Eventually the pace picked up and we found Josh near the steep part of the climb. As soon as we passed him I started to turn the pace up a little higher and got some separation. I knew that the descent was long and not that steep so I wasn’t actually that ready to commit to a 15 minute solo effort. I crested the climb solo and didn’t fully commit to the descent. I was hoping to get caught by one or two more riders to help me pace the flatter sections of the descent because I knew I could beat them on the final climb.
I was caught by one rider (one of the riders who spent all race in the break with Josh) and we traded pulls to the bottom of the final climb. I knew he was tired from being in the break all day and that all I had to do was keep the pace relatively high on the final climb and that my fresher legs had a better snap that his for a sprint finish.
I kicked away with 150m to go and crossed the line first.
This kind of racing and teamwork is what excites me the most about racing with Alto Velo. We have a great season ahead!
Nico