Race Report: 2023 University Road Race Women’s P123
Date: August 20, 2023
AVRT racers: Louise Thomas, Niky Taylor, Steph Hart
Top Results: Louise 2/4, Niky 3/4
Course: 14 laps of a circuit through UC Santa Cruz featuring a 1.2-mile climb followed by a 1.4-mile descent. There were no flat sections. The climb averaged 5.5% with a short 8% kicker at the top.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/9688685335
Nutrition: A fig bar before the race, a couple of bottles of malto and some strawberry gummies during the race
Recap: I was the only AV woman pre-registered for this one, so was pretty happy when both Niky and Steph decided to join me on the day. For some reason not that many people were excited about a course made entirely of hill repeats. Before the race, we chatted a little bit about strategy. Both Niky and Steph wanted to treat this as a hard workout; Niky was coming back from Covid and Steph hadn’t been racing much recently, so we decided I would be the protected rider.
Illan from Terun was the only other rider in our category, so the start was combined with the 3/4/5 women. For the first few laps, Niky stayed on the front to control the pace. Steph then took over, and on the next climb at the kicker at the top Niky attacked and got a good amount of separation. I stayed on Ilan’s wheel to let her do the work to catch up to Niky. At one point she moved to the side as if she was trying to get me to take the lead but, though I might not have the best tactics, I know not to chase teammates.
We caught Niky halfway up the next climb but unfortunately dropped Steph in the process, so then it was just the three of us. For the rest of the race, Niky had to keep reminding me to get off the front and let her and Ilan do the work. It’s hard when there are only three people, but I tried the trick of eating and drinking whenever I found myself getting antsy and that seemed to help. I also successfully took a feed bottle for the first time ever in a race (thanks for the hand up Cam!). When I finally got the hang of eating, drinking, and not doing work, the pace was stagnating so Niky told me to pull for a bit but not too hard, and then attacked on kicker again but didn’t manage to get any separation this time.
The rest of the race played out with Niky and Ilan trading places on the front, until the final climb when Niky shot off the front right at the start of it. I managed to stay on Ilan’s wheel as she chased it down, but was at my limit just trying to hold on. We caught Niky with about 0.3 miles to the finish before she dropped off and yelled words of encouragement to me. I then had the option to push to the front and try and outclimb Ilan or tuck in behind her and try to outsprint her at the end. I chose the latter since I know Ilan is a good climber but didn’t manage to make up the extra bike length in the final sprint, coming in second. I did manage to push my heart rate up to 197 bpm in the attempt though - a new record for me. Ultimately I’m not sure if I made the right decision to try for the sprint rather than the climb, but regardless I felt like the race was a good learning experience. The course also seemed pretty well suited to me so would be interested in trying it again next year.
- Louise