Race Report: Regalado Road Race – Men’s 30-34/35-39 1/2/3

Race: 2023 Regalado Road Race – Men’s 30-34/35-39 1/2/3 (Masters District Championships)

Date: June 4, 2023

AVRT racers: Andrea Cloarec

Top Results: Andrea, 1st overall

Course: 4 laps of a flat/rolling, 17-mile loop.  The course was run in the opposite direction (clockwise) of prior years.  There was a mix of good and bad pavement, with the worst roads on Tim Bell Road, a mile or so of which required dodging deep potholes.  The finish was a couple tenth of a mile before the start at the end of the lap on a mostly-flat section.  There was a decent tailwind on Warnerville Road, at the top of the loop, and a headwind coming the other way at the bottom of the loop on Claribel.  The weather was warm to start and downright hot by the end.   

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/9203550362

Nutrition: Two bottles with 80g Malto in each, 2 sleeves of Gu Block, 1 Maurten gel. Total of 90g carb/h

Recap:
Cam asked to the cat 2 guys who could join in the masters race. As I was the only 30+ who had planned to do the race, I felt that it was for me =)
So I was happy to go for that race, and would be a good training. The field was very small, only 4 riders in the 30-34, and 6 in the 35-39, for a total of 10 guys racing this.
After the first lap, not a lot happened, the guys let me at the front most of the time, quite annoying. So I started to push the pace on every roller to start getting people tired.

Beginning of the second lap I decided to get the race hard for everyone as absolutely no one wanted to go in front of me. So I kept attacking from the front at every small hill for 10-15 minutes. After that, I used the roller part to put a good tempo at the front for another 10 minutes. At some point, I saw that the 35-39 guys had stopped following, and only 2 guys from the 30-34 were behind me.
I saw that one of the guy was quite tired, so I told the other guy to follow me while I attack so we can drop the Velo King guys. We quickly dropped him, but directly after, while taking a fast turn, the guy who followed me took the turn too wide and got a flat because of bad pavement.
After quickly looking for him, I saw his race was over. And the other 30-34 guy joined me. As I saw he would not do anything, I directly pushed the pace to drop him.

From here, I knew I had around 2 hours left. So I decided to go on training mode, tempo, setting the power to 300W and just go.
Everything went well…. Until I passed a group of women just before a left turn, that I got into way too fast, specially with a bumpy road on that turn. So I realized I could not avoid the crash. I made the best to reduce the damages: Avoid the barred wires, avoid the rocks, and avoid the big pole. To just crash into the bushes.
I quickly got up. I had to straight back my front wheel, open my rim brakes (as my wheel was bent…), the left lever was upside down and totally unscrew so I couldn’t touch it for the last hour. I put back my chain on and started back my effort to finish the race. Forgetting to pick up my glasses that I lost in the fall.
I finished 5-10 minutes ahead of the other racers.

For the 70 miles, 2h45min, I averaged 280W with a NP of 300W. So it was a good training day!
Even if the fall let me with a nice bruise under the eye, and a painful knee for a few days after that.

Masters 30-34 should not exist, we are still young =)

Andrea Cloarec