Race Report: 2023 Berkeley Hills Road Race Men P123
Race: Berkeley Hills Road Race - Men's Cat P/1/2/3 District Champs
Date: April 29th, 2023
AVRT racers: Austin King, Cameron O'Reilly, Conor Austin, Grant Miller, Jack Liu, Jonathan Wells, Matthew Koenig, Nathan Martin, Nico Sandi
Top Result: Nathan Martin 3rd, Nico Sandi 5th, Cameron O'Reilly 10th
Course: Roughly 5 laps of an 18.7 mi loop with 1,650 ft of elevation gain, totaled 93 miles and about 8000 feet with the roll-out. The course starts on San Pablo Dam, a rolling but slightly uphill few miles before a wicked fast descent turns us onto Castro Ranch Road, where our first small climb awaits. After this hill, there’s another fast descent which leads to a turn onto Alhambra Valley, which is a few miles of 1-2% gradient before the main feature of the course, “The Bears”. “The Bears” is a series of 1-3 minute climbs which make up most of the elevation gain and most of the action. “Mama bear” is the first, being about 1-2 minutes long, followed by two rollers, before descending to the start of “Papa bear”. Papa is a bit longer than Mama, being closer to 2-3 minutes long, with the finish line at the top, and is followed by another roller before the longest and steepest descent of the course. After that descent comes “Baby bear”, the shortest but also steepest climb, lasting only about 30-45 seconds.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/8980128092
Nutrition: I had about 650 calories of endurance mix in a single bottle, 400 cal of lara bars, 3 gels, and some electrolyte mix from the team feedzone bottles. I think I ended up eating about 1000 calories of what I brought and drinking 3 bottles. I was worried it was going to be warmer so brought a bit more than was needed.
Recap: In our prep for the race, we identified a collection of riders as being the biggest threats: Tyler Williams, Sam Boardman, and Sean Bennett. The first two are current Legion riders (and had just gone 1-3 at Sea Otter the week before), and the third is a recently-retired World Tour rider. Other strong local talents like James Kinney, Ryan Gorman, Eric Colindres, Miles Hubbard, Travis McCuen, and Bradley Wiggs were also in the mix. Dolce Vita had the biggest squad other than us, but Terun, Team Mikes Bikes, and Voler also had squads out.
Our aim was to use me, Grant, and Cam to try and put pressure on the teams throughout the early to mid-race and commit to a break if we could, and Nico would be our man for the final sprint since he’d done very well from the field in the 3s last year.
Lap 1 started off fairly uneventful, the group sorta surveying the roads with not too many moves or anything before the climbs, but when it started heating up Conor Austin did lots of valuable work this lap covering moves before his saddle broke and tires blew up (he got a nice shoutout from Sam after the race for keeping it upright)! When we hit Mama Bear the first time, I was feeling good and very close to the front, so I started to up the pace. Nobody followed me, so I kept at it up and over the climb, settling into a nice tempo pace on the climbs and descents. I was joined by Max Korus from TMB on Papa Bear, and we started to work together a bit. Both of us knew this break wasn’t really going anywhere, just to try and cause a bit of work from the other teams behind us.
We were caught on Mama bear on Lap 2 by a small break. Tyler Williams, Sean Bennet, Miles Hubbard, and Nico Sandi were among them, so I figured I would just jump on the back and see how long I could stay with them. There were some surges, but nothing materialized and we were soon caught by the group before Papa.
Just after the feed zone on Papa, Tyler Williams put in a pretty big dig, soon to be followed by a lot of the other riders we identified pre-race. Nico and I had just done a bunch of work, so we looked to someone else to close it and Cam jumped and put himself in the group. He was heavily outnumbered though, and Nico told us it wasn’t what we wanted, so I started to work to pull them back, catching them just before the big descent, and bringing the group back together.
Nothing major got away on baby bear or the stretch on San Pablo Dam, now on Lap 3, some surges here and there, which AV did well not to jump on immediately and let others do some work. Once we got onto the false flat backside of the course, Cam went off the front and gained nearly a minute and a half on the group by the top of mama bear. Austin also did a lot of work during this time to make sure Nico and I were pulled up to the front after Cam attacked, to make sure we could respond if anyone dangerous tried to bridge. Matthew was doing a lot of work at the front covering moves before Austin pulled Nico and me up to help. For now though, we could take a breather as we had someone off the front and there weren’t many attempts at bridging.
A full lap later again at Mama Bear, now on lap 4, the penultimate lap, Cam still had about a minute on the group, but the gap would start shrinking as Tyler and Sean again went full gas up Mama Bear and didn’t let up over the following rollers, causing some shelling of people. Cam finally came into view when we started Papa, and a group with the big threats in the race started hauling right out of the feed zone, catching us a bit off guard, so we had to do a bunch of work to make it up to them over the top of Papa.
Then on the little roller right after the papa summit, a TMB rider (didn’t catch who it was) split up the group a bit more, and I ended up with the TMB rider, Sean Bennett, and Tyler Williams. I did no work in this group, Tyler trying to egg me on and get me to work, but I wouldn’t budge and the break ended up fizzling out, with the whole group coming back together on Alhambra Road.
As our last time up Mama Bear got closer, in my head I was thinking Nico was our best shot during the final sprint, as we planned. I moved in front of him, then Jon moved in front of me and ate a ton of wind to take us like 10 wheels up and put us right behind Legion and Sean Bennett. This was a super crucial move, we all knew that it was going to pop off on Mama this last time, so our positioning was critical.
When the climb started, I was yelling at Nico to get on Tyler’s wheel. He wasn’t quite holding it so I jumped in front of Nico and told him to get on my wheel to help him bridge, but he was pretty gassed so I just tried my best to stay behind Tyler. It was absolutely clear this was the winning move, as he was soon joined by Sean Bennett and Miles Hubbard, and they started gaining time on us.
They stayed away from me by just a few seconds, even as we crested the top of Mama and started the rollers. I started cramping a bit so I knew I was right at the limit, just had to hold my power and hope they’d slow up. Luckily, they eased off just a bit and I was able to catch them on the first roller after Mama.
When we hit bottom of Papa, there was a lot of looking around, but nothing much until about 500m to go when Sean put in a big attack. He quickly burned out and Tyler, Miles and I passed him. From there it was just whoever had the most gas in the tank, hardly sprint or anything, and we all finished 2-3 seconds apart from each other. Tyler 1st, Miles 2nd, Me 3rd, Sean 4th.
Personally, it was exhilarating for me to ride in a last minute break with some of the strongest riders in NorCal and finish on a podium with a continental pro. Usually I find little things in a race where I go “dang, I wish I could have done x better or wish I could have given it 10% more at this part of the race”, but this race I feel like I gave it everything and have no regrets.
I really owe the success to our awesome teamwork though. We had solid breakaway efforts putting pressure on other teams and letting our other guys rest, didn’t chase every little move and burn ourselves out, covered the moves that mattered, and communicated well. It felt like a really well-done race from a tactical POV, which was 100% needed when so many strong riders came out. So grateful for all the work the team put in, was a full effort from everyone.
