Race Report: 2023 Sand City Criterium - Men’s Cat 4/5
Race: 2023 Sand City Criterium - Men’s Cat 4/5
Date: July 23, 2023
AVRT racers: Drew Mathews
Top Result: Drew (6/29)
Course: A technical, high speed 10 corner crit featuring a 10 second hill. The afternoon of the race proved to be windy, and there were two straightaways with significant headwinds.
Recap: (Written by Drew)
Sand City followed Pescadero Road Race a day later on this year’s calendar, and after doing the Cat ¾ race Sunday morning, I was carrying some fatigue going into the ⅘ race Sunday afternoon. The teams and sponsors that put on the race did an awesome job - the course was host to a really fun, inviting atmosphere, and after spending the late morning hanging on the beach five minutes down the road, I was excited to get back to the course for the afternoon race.
Attacks started not very long into the race. A Work Health Solutions rider and a strong unattached rider were pushing the pace on the front, dropping a large chunk of the field, when two young riders broke away. The Work Health and unattached rider chased the two young guns at about five seconds behind, and I tried to bridge. I was caught in no man’s land for two laps, about five seconds between both the main group and the chase group, until I realized I wasn’t making up any ground and dropped back to the main group. The main group surged after I dropped back and caught back up to the recently formed lead group of four, and the now group of 10-15 riders rode together.
The Work Health rider, unattached strong rider, and I took turns on the front pushing the pace for the middle third of the race, and the group remained mostly intact going into the final five laps. I decided to attack going into the third to last lap and hope for a couple others to join me in breakaway given the willingness of others to for breakaways earlier in the race. I put in a dig on the finishing straight away and tried to carry as much speed into the first two corners, knowing they were very fast corners I felt was taking better than others. I didn’t create much separation, and as I was stomping up the hill after the subsequent corner, I pulled out of my pedal clip and was caught as I was clipping back in.
The last lap was upon us, and I decided to put in my best effort on the front and see if I could hold it to the finish from the start of the last lap. I had seen other riders succeed in this strategy in other technical Cat 4 crits, but in this case I cooked myself before the finish. I held the front until the second headwind section after the downhill where I was passed by five riders. From there I gave it my all in the final three or four corners and sprinted to the line for 6th place. I was disappointed in the finish, but I was happy to have another learning experience in race strategy and get a couple more upgrade points.
I’ll definitely be back to Sand City next year - I really enjoyed the vibe.