Race Report: 2023 Winchester Circuit Race - Women’s 2/3/4/5
Race: Winchester Circuit Race - Women’s Cat 2/3, 4/5, and 50+
Date: Saturday May 13, 2023
AVRT racers: Kristin Hepworth, Robin Kutner, Lora Maes, Lindsey Raven
Top Results:
Cat 3: Lora 2nd, Lindsey 3rd
Cat 4: Robin 1st, Kristin 2nd
Course: The course is a ~4.5 mile road loop and we did 4 laps (17.8mi/3000ft climbing). The pavement was incredibly smooth (a few little metal utility cover thingies but not a single real obstacle), there were only two 90° turns, and it’s a series of rolling hills. No hill is longer than a couple minutes, and they are all followed by fast, safe descents. There was almost no flat moment on the course. The biggest descent (segment title “Tuck and Lol”) is a bit over 1 minute and fast (I hit 46mph, which is a big deal for me). The finishing climb undulates, is a little over 3 minutes, and ends fairly steep.
Nutrition: Not much nutrition needed for a short race which started at 8:06am. I ate breakfast at 6am (coffee + steel-cut oats with maple syrup and peanut butter) and drank one bottle of Skratch with 40g of carbs (which I started sipping 30min pre-race and finished during the race).
Recap (written by Robin Kutner):
This was my third bike race ever and my first with the team! I slept a lot better the night before this compared to the previous two, I think because I’d be wearing the spiffy blue and orange jersey. The race only had six pre-registered, four of whom were AV. We decided that if the other two were non-factors, we’d turn the event into team practice and race each other (Lora+Robin vs Lindsey+Kristin). But a couple more registered day-of, so we agreed to figure out after one lap if we had any real threats.
After the neutral promenade up the steep hill from the parking lot, the whistle blew. Lindsey immediately popped off the front and I did not see her for another hour! After a moderate-effort first loop of the course, our pack (me, Lora, Kristin) had shaken off all but one non-AV racer and a second was dangling maybe 10 seconds back. The one in our pack had a grey braid coming out of her helmet, but age wouldn’t slow her at all. (Turns out she is a two-time national champion!). At the start of lap 2, I wanted to try harder to shake Grey Braid and totally lose the dangler, so – imagining that Lora and I were silently communicating by bat signal and that she would have endorsed my idea – I picked up the effort on the kicker after the loop’s one right turn. We strung out into a line after a few rollers, having dropped the dangler, but Grey Braid was still with us.
At the end of lap 2, Lora and Grey Braid (both Cat 3s) surged on the finish line hill. As Lora passed by me and Kristin, she advised us to work together and practice trading pulls, since we had top 2 for Cat 4s in hand. A moment went by and I – still figuring out bike racing, its split-second decision-making, and how hard I can push for how long – wondered if I should have challenged myself to hang with them, categories be damned. But, as Strava data confirmed, they kept pushing very hard and, no, I probably couldn’t have hung. (Yet.)
Kristin and I rode lap 3 together, trading pulls as much as two people can on a rolling course, and it was fun! I enjoyed the punchy climbs and lost Kristin on one of them near the end of lap 3. Throughout the final lap I challenged myself to continue pushing the descents (my weakness) even though I was now solo. As I “Tuck and Lol”-ed for the last time and spotted the “1k to go” sign at the end of lap 4, I noticed Lindsey up ahead. She was about to finish as well and was somehow screaming encouragement while climbing the 12% finishing grade – amazing. Lora cheered as I rolled through the line, followed shortly thereafter by Lindsey and Kristin. We got to convene with some teammates who were out supporting us while warming up for their own races.
Good times were had! I love having teammates. It’s incredibly inspirational to watch people train so hard and earn their deserved victories, podiums, and upgrades. I hope future events I race have higher turnout for more action and learning experiences, but I’m glad five Cat 4s ended up racing so I could earn my first few upgrade points.
