Race Report: 2023 Pescadero Coastal Classic - Women’s Long Course (P123 + Masters)
Race: 2023 Pescadero Coastal Classic - Women’s Long Course (P123 + masters)
Posted by: Louise Thomas
Date: July 23, 2023
AVRT racers: Lora Maes, Louise Thomas
Top Results: P/1/2/3: Louise 6/10 (6/12 combined) 50+: Lora 1/2
Course: 2.7 laps of the Pescadero loop starting at the high school, out to Hwy 1, up to San Gregorio, back along Hwy 84, then Pescadero Creek road to the top of Haskins where the finish line was. (total 74 miles, 5200 ft elevation)
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/9503382410
Nutrition: Some yogurt and granola for breakfast before the race, a couple of bottles of malto and a couple of packets of Juicy Burst gummies during the race
Recap: On arrival, it was great to see so many friendly AV faces (thanks to everyone that volunteered!!!), and helped a little to alleviate my nerves. This was my first race since upgrading to Cat 3 and the P123 field was stacked so I was feeling out of my depth. I think I need to work on my game face though; when I bumped into Steph on her way to course marshal she commented on how terrified I looked.
The field was dominated by Terún and Monarch, with 3 and 4 riders respectively in a 10-person field (12 in the combined field). The race started with a rollout from the high school to Highway 1 and then we headed north toward San Gregorio. There are a couple of short hills along that stretch, but nothing big enough to create separation in the field. Monarch attacked on the corner from Hwy 1 to 84, but they were quickly brought back in.
The stretch along 84 was pretty chill - there were no good places to attack so everyone took it easy and stayed together with Alex doing most of the work on the front. We then took a right turn onto Pescadero Creek Rd, past the feed zone, and started our first ascent up Haskins. The pace started brisk but manageable, but about halfway up the inevitable happened and Terún and Monarch attacked. My position wasn’t great, but I saw a gap in-between the two riders in front of me so tried to squeeze through to chase. The gap wasn’t quite wide enough though, so I ended up bumping Ilan as I went past her and got yelled at to watch where I was going. No hard feelings though - I should have been more careful with my positioning and she apologized later in the race when it had calmed down a bit.
By the top of the climb, the group had splintered. Jamie Chapman (Monarch) and Jen Tave (Terún) had formed a breakaway, I was in the chase group with most of the riders, and Lora and a couple of others had dropped off the back. After a fun, twisty descent, Leslie was leading the charge and continued on the front almost the entire way to Pescadero. At that point, she pulled off and said that I needed to take a pull since Monarch and Terún weren’t going to do any work to bring their own riders back. Chloe helpfully confirmed this.
I knew theoretically it was my responsibility to chase, but I also knew that I didn’t have the speed or endurance to catch up to Jamie and Jen. In previous races I hadn’t even been able to hold Jamie’s wheel, so didn’t want to waste all my energy on a lost cause. Luckily Hannah, the only other non-Terún/Monarch rider in the group, took over pulling at that point, sparing me from seeming uncooperative. As we turned the corner onto Hwy 1 I took my turn on the front for appearance's sake; the breakaway was nowhere in sight so I assumed they were long gone.
After turning onto 84, I noticed that my front brake was rubbing. I think that hitting a crack on the bridge before the turn had knocked something out of alignment but, being the optimist that I am, decided it probably wasn’t dangerous so just opened my rim brake calipers a bit wider to avoid the rubbing and continued on. Try doing that with disk brakes.
A bit further up the road, Will yelled out that the gap was 4 mins something. Given that, any semblance of chasing fell apart and we settled back into a more relaxed pace. By the time we got to the feed zone, the gap had increased to 6 mins something. This time on Haskins Chloe shot off the front by herself but stayed more-or-less within eyesight. One of the men’s fields was also climbing at the same time as us and we ended up trading places for a bit. It made the descent a bit tricky because of all the extra riders, but I feel like that played to my advantage since I know the roads fairly well. At the end of the twisty section me, Ilan and Alex had a gap on the others and started pacelining to catch up to Chloe. Once we caught her, the four of us then started working together to maintain our gap. Given that we were all working together I thought we had dropped the others for sure, but they caught up to us in Pescadero. I was pretty impressed with that actually.
The pace then relaxed again, which lasted all the way until the feed zone when Monarch decided to attack. I was thinking everyone would go hard on Haskins so the early attack caught me off guard and a gap formed in front of me. I was almost ready to give up at that point, but then Alex pulled off to the side and I noticed the gap to the others wasn’t getting any bigger, so decided to try and chase them down on the climb. Helen, who had initiated the attack in the feed zone, then dropped off from the group leaving just three in front of me (if you don’t count Jamie and Jen way off the front). I was slowly making ground on them but didn’t quite manage to catch them before the finish line at the top of the hill and ended up coming in 6th.
Overall I’m pretty happy with how it went. To be honest I didn’t have very high expectations considering how strong the other ladies were, but proved to myself that I can hang in with them and still be competitive. It was also interesting comparing a P123 race to what I’m used to in Cat 4; I feel like the lower division races are more just a test of who has the best fitness to push hard for the entire race, whereas in this race people were a lot more deliberate about when and where to use their energy.
Thanks for reading!
Photo credit: Dirk Bergstrom