Race Report: 2024 Pine Flat Road Race - Men’s Cat 3
Race: Pine Flat Road Race - Men’s Cat 3
Date: February 18th, 2024
AVRT racers: Drew Mathews, George Wehner
Top Result: Both DNP (George finished but wasn’t placed)
Course: 62 miles, beginning on 25 miles of out-and-back with rolling hills, followed by a 2-mile descent, a 20-mile flat section, a 5-mile climb which gets steeper towards the end, a 6-mile rolling descent, and a 2-km climb at the finish. Cattle grates were frequent on the rolling parts of the course.
Strava: Before flat: https://www.strava.com/activities/10789277878, after flat: https://www.strava.com/activities/10790296714
Nutrition: Two bottles with 90g maltodextrin/Gatorade powder mix and one bottle with 50g of the same mix. This ended up not quite being enough, as I bonked about a mile before getting back to the parking lot.
Recap: (written by George) I was pretty tired after Cantua Creek, but I was looking forward to this race. I was supposed to be the protected rider as I was reasonably confident in my climbing abilities. Drew also was unsure he would be able to finish the entire race as his tire was still having issues that started at Cantua Creek the day before.
After the neutral start, the race still felt neutral for another 10 minutes or so, as people initially did not want to get going. However, people eventually decided they wanted to race and started making it hard. We would surge up the rollers and sometimes even down the rollers, only to sit up for a minute and then surge again. Drew also got a flat somewhere on this section.
At the end of the rollers, there was a short climb before the descent. I made the mistake of not fully familiarizing myself with the elevation profile of the course – I knew the general details, but I forgot the exact distance markers for each feature – so I did not position myself here and ended up at the back of the group leading into the descent. On the descent, the rider in front of me let a small gap open, which blew up into probably 20 seconds by the end of the descent.
Once I was able to pedal without spinning out, I began working with the other dropped rider to try to chase back on. I was hoping the group would eventually chill out and we would catch them in a few minutes. Unfortunately, the group decided to really push the pace after the descent, so we were losing time quickly despite our hard work. The other rider gave up after 5 or 10 minutes, leaving me on my own.
For the next hour or so, during the flat section, I kept pushing through the flat section at tempo, still clinging onto the idea that the group would sit up. Multiple times, I saw something up the road, thought “that’s the group,” and then realized 20 seconds later it was just a post on the side of the road. I passed a couple people with flats, but I didn’t have any supplies to help them.
At the start of the climb, I noticed my front tire was losing pressure rather quickly. After stopping, I noticed the sidewall was leaking sealant. I’m still not totally sure what happened to cause this, but I assume I must’ve hit a cattle guard which somehow slightly unseated my tire. A couple of the people I had passed earlier stopped to try to help, but they didn’t have any CO2 or a tube with a long-enough valve stem, so I thought I was out of luck and had resigned myself to waiting for 2 or 3 hours for a teammate to pick me up after the race. However, after a few minutes, Abraham from Mike’s Bikes Dev, another cat 3 whom I had also passed earlier, graciously let me borrow his saddle bag. Inside this saddle bag was a tube, which still had a valve stem that was too short, and a CO2 cartridge. I thought I wouldn’t be able to fix my tire without a tube, but out of desperation, I put the CO2 into the tire without a tube, and it somehow was able to hold air again. This was enough to get me over the hill, eventually cross the finish line, and then ride back from the finish to the cars. I ended up getting DNPed because I think the organizers had stopped looking for cat 3 numbers by the time I crossed the line, but I didn’t protest this, since I didn’t really care about DNP vs. DFL.
This definitely wasn’t my day, but I can learn from the mistakes I made. Next time, I need to make sure I know exactly where the key descents begin so I can make sure I am in position for them. I also should probably carry a CO2 cartridge with me for road races in the future. Despite the shortcomings today, I still felt good after this weekend, as I had achieved a top 5 the day before and got to have fun racing.