Race Report: 2023 Giro di San Francisco - Men’s P12
Race Report: 2023 Giro di San Francisco Men’s P12
Date: 9/4/2023
AVRT racers: Andrea Cloarec, Nico Sandi, Greg McCullough, J Evans, Jack Liu
Top Result: Jack 7/53
Written by: Jack Liu
Course: L-shaped 6-corner course with a small bump. Pavement is bad on the backside stretch, and the second corner has tracks on the road.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/9785102680/
Nutrition: one bottle of scratch (didn’t even drink it before it jumped out of the cage due to the bad pavement) + one sip of water from Nico’s bottle (Thank you Nico!)
Race Recap:
The course kinda reminds me of San Rafael with its small bump and downhill backstretch followed by fast technical corners before the finish. We didn’t really have a team plan for today’s race, as most of our forms are quite uncertain (Andrea said he doesn’t know how to corner on the road bike cause he has only been riding his TT bike recently). Team Mike’s Bikes (TMB) showed up with 9 people, seemed pretty determined to take the win after an unfortunate last-lap puncture last year.
A couple laps into the race, my water bottle flew off the cage because the pavement was too terrible on the backside. We were cornering at 30 mph on shitty pavement and no one crashed -- I think that’s the biggest win for everyone today. On the next lap, I saw Nico re-joining the group from the side. He said he dropped his chain and didn’t get a free lap so basically out of the race. He happily gave me his bottle after learning that I lost my only bottle, which truly saved me for the rest of the race! (Even though the mix in his bottle tasted very weird… I still appreciated it!)
About 20-min into the race, a break of 3 went away. TMB was pleased to let the break dangle out the front with a gap never exceeding 20 sec. Everyone was fighting for the positions right behind the TMB train. People were happy to let TMB do the work, and “chilling” behind the train. The newly crowned master national champion Greg told me he will give me a leadout at the end, and I felt honored to be on his wheel.
With about 8-lap to go, the break was caught and TMB started to ramp up the pace to not-so-chill mode to prevent any attack. Again, everyone wants the spots behind the TMB train, so the cycle of washing machines began -- you fought hard to a good spot, got swamped, fought back, got swamped…repeat. Fortunately, Nico did a great job staying in top 15 and I was able to follow his wheel to conserve energy. It really makes a difference that people are more likely to give you space if you’re following your teammate’s wheel.
With 2-lap to go, TMB still got the whole team at the front and I figured the pace was about to go to hell mode very soon. I passed Nico to get a better position behind the TMB train, and sure enough the pace picked up and it got very difficult to move up any further. In the final lap, it got so fast that there was a small gap opening up to the front 5 riders. I was the 7th wheel, and the 6th wheel just couldn’t close it. I made a huge effort to try to jump across on the backside, coming around the final corner as 6th and got passed by 1 rider at the line to finish 7th.
Overall, I’m happy with the result and appreciate all the help from my teammates during the race! TMB played it very well and conserved all their bullets in the final laps to podium 1-2. It’s not the first time that the lead-out in the final lap goes so fast that gaps start to open up, and I think I need to be further up to avoid getting caught behind gapped riders. Looking forward to the season finale in 2 weeks!
TMB controlling the front (photo credit: Gina Yuan)