Race Report: Copperopolis Road Race - Women
Race: Copperopolis Road Race - Women’s 50+ (raced with cat 3 & 60+)
Date: April 8th, 2023
AVRT racers: Lora Maes
Top Result: Lora Maes 1st Female
Course: 2 counter-clockwise laps of a 21 mile, 1800 ft elevation circuit featuring iconically bad pave and potholes at times spanning the entire width of the road. The elevation is frontloaded into the first 6 miles of the course, with rollers leading up to a 2 mile climb at 5%. After the hill is a 9 mile plateau cutting through now flush, green pastures (courtesy of all the rain this year) and then a bone-jarring, bike-mangling 5 mile descent before a 0.6 mile drag at 3% up to the finish. Beautiful weather in the low 70’s by race time with some wind up to 10 mph.
Race Recap:
There is not much of a race to report for this one. We only had 3 women in the women’s field (one cat 3, one 60+, and me). At the start we asked the officials to start us all together. The cat 3 from Eclipse (Evelyn) stated she was not going hard because she was racing Santa Cruz the next day and the 60+ from Splunk said she was out of shape. Ok, this isn’t going to be interesting unless someone is lying. They started the three of us with two junior boys (that’s always interesting). Off we went on the nice pavement of the lead that was only about 200 meters then we made the turn to the 2 mile lead into the climb. Wow, it’s bumpy! They were not kidding. I had wrapped duct tape around my cages so my bottles fit tighter, I was terrified of losing them on the rough pavement (thanks Sue Lin for the warning). Evelyn stayed with me until about halfway up the climb on the first lap then I never saw her again. The 60+ dropped even before that. Alright, solo effort all the way now. I saw the two junior boys not too far ahead, they were making some strange moves so I let them go for now. Once I made it up to the top, it’s not exactly flat and there’s some rollers. It’s really beautiful country and I was just enjoying the scenery and putting in a TT effort. I caught the junior boys on one of the flat sections but they weren’t much use for drafting as they would pull through way too hard. Everyone was pretty spread out at this point from all races. I was happy on the flats to then see an AV kit, it was Shane. I asked him if he was on his 2nd lap, he said no it’s my 4th. I was only on my first lap and our race was only 2 laps. So he rested and drafted for a bit until we came to the pitch before the descent and he took off. That descent was soooo bumpy! My eyes were vibrating so hard, I was getting dizzy! Just tried to catch smooth patches where I could. It actually went by pretty quickly. I was feeling pretty fresh as I came through to start the 2nd lap. The next lap was fairly uneventful and I focused on going harder on the second time up the climb. Once I got up top, there was some wind but not bad, I was wishing I had someone to work with but was still enjoying the scenery and the sunshine. I then started passing some of the masters men which was fun, it gave me a target to look at and kept my mind focused. Then back down the bumpy descent again and made the short climb to the finish.
I had heard the road was awful, and it was. But I really enjoyed this course. There are a lot of features that make it an interesting one - the climb, rollers, really bumpy pavement, and technical skills on the descent. Hopefully more women come out to this race next year!
Nutrition:
Pre-race - two banana pancakes, PB&J sandwich, during - two gels, two bottles of fluid. Plan was to take a gel every 30 minutes which would have been four gels but I lost track on the 2nd lap.