Race Report: 2022 San Ardo Road Race Cat 3
Race: 2022 San Ardo Road Race Cat 3
Date: August 7th, 2022
AVRT racers: Conor Austin, Flo Costa, Grant Miller, Matt Koenig
Top Result: Grant Miller - 1/13
Course: 22 mile loop with a 4% uphill drag on the first half, a bridge filled with potholes in the middle, and a flat headwind stretch for 10 miles back to the start.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/7671409646
Nutrition: 3 bottles with 50g of carbs, 200mg caffeine
Race Report: Our team made up 1/3rd of the field for this race so our goal was to use our numbers to both win the race and dominate the podium. The whole race was around 70 miles, so we wanted to try to make the field work hard in the first two laps before making a decisive move in the 3rd lap.
The race starts with a slight climb to the finishing stretch and then makes a right hand turn where the climb continues but the wind shifts to tailwind. One the turn I immediately put in an attack and tried to stay 5-10 seconds ahead of the field to incentivize some to bridge. Luckily one rider bridged up to me and we started rolling turns through the fast tailwind section of the course. We maintained a 15-20 second gap for around 30 minutes and made some of the other solo riders put in work to bring us back. As the course shifted upwind, we could see a few riders from the field start to attack to bridge. They caught us right on the kicker but once we crested everyone sat up. Matt immediately put in a strong attack and no one from the field responded.
For the next 1.5 laps the field was extremely disorganized and we worked to cover any attacks and break up the rotation. With so many riders it was easy to get in second wheel and refuse to pull through which really slowed down the chase effort. As we got close to finishing the second lap we knew Matt was gone so we started to put in attacks. Every time one of us got caught, another counter-attacked which eventually led to Flo getting away solo through the feed zone. An SJBC rider started to bridge to him and once they were 20 seconds ahead I put in an attack to bridge. Because of all the earlier attacks, no one from the field responded to my move and I was able to bridge with a hard two minute effort.
Once I connected with Flo and SJBC we started rolling turns. In the distance we could see a solo rider which looked like Matt and after about 10 minutes we were able to catch up to him. Behind, I could see two riders trying to bridge and one of them was an AV rider. We kept a hard pace but those two riders eventually caught us. At this point we had a 4 to 2 advantage, so I immediately put in an attack knowing that the other two riders were unlikely to chase and bring my teammates back. After a hard attack I could see I was getting away, so I just put my head down and went into time trial mode. By this point the headwind was getting pretty strong which made the backside of the course take forever. Behind me I could see someone who looked like an AV rider, but I just kept my pace and tried to go as fast as I could.
After almost 40 minutes by myself I rolled across the line in first place. Matt came in a few minutes after me in second place. Matt did an amazing job in the race. He rode for almost 1.5 hours solo and after he saw my move was gone he put in another attack to ride away again for 30 minutes solo to take second. After 4-5 minutes the field came through and we saw Flo and Conor take 4th and 5th place respectively.
Overall it was a great day for AV. We dominated 4 out of the 5 podium places. We executed our plan nearly perfectly and I think the results reflected that. All of the AV riders raced for the team and put in a huge amount of work for each other.