Race Report: 2025 Bariani Road Race – Women’s Cat 4/N/Masters 40+
Race: Bariani Road Race - Women’s Cat 4 / Novice / Masters 40+
Date: March 16, 2025
AVRT racers: Hannah Chen, Chris Davis, Samantha Dewees, Katie Monaghan, Janene Ostrow, Katarina Zgraja
Top Results: [combined Cat 4/N]: Katarina (1/28), Katie (8/28), [Masters 40+] Chris (2/6)
Course: 2, 20 mile laps of a mostly flat course. The most notable “hill” was about 3 km to the finish of each lap. It was super windy, I believe wind was blowing from the south, direction NNW, which meant pretty hefty headwind on an early portion of the lap, crosswinds along the back (northernmost) stretch of the course, and then headwinds for the finish.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/13903043901
Nutrition: Sis Go Isotonic Gel on the start line, 2 bottles of Precision Fuel (2 scoops / 30g carb per bottle + 1 scoop UCANN Hydration Mix) during the race and 1 UCAN Gel at mile 25-ish.
Recap (written by Katarina): The race started off extremely slow, disorganized and boring. Everyone seemed to be playing games. All of us Alto Velo riders had positioned ourselves within the group, no one was really up near the front. There were some sprinkles, Monarch riders up at the front, trying to figure out who was going to sit at the front of the group and pull. As we turned left into the first headwind section, the pace slowed to a crawl. Chris, our hero, got fed up with the shenanigans and rushed to the front and started pulling a great pace. It was awesome! It got things moving again. We all settled in for a bit.
After a while, I started to feel like maybe I should help Chris out, after all it is a “long” race (maybe not long compared to other fields races, but long compared to, say, a crit). I made my way to the front and told Chris that I’ll hang out here for a bit. I picked up the pace, pulled ahead slightly to get the others moving, and then after they caught up to me, we kept chugging along. At some point in time someone else came up and pulled, and I settled within the pack again for much of the first lap.
I spent much of the rest of the first lap chatting with a few teammates and riders on other teams, honestly it was very much coffee paced. There were a few surgy / challenging sections with the wind, and it was really hard to find shelter, even being in a somewhat big group.
I had never ridden this course before, so I was trying to keep an eye out for the “hill”. There were a couple of smaller rollers, then we started up the main hill of the course. I was just settling into a pace, when one girl dropped her chain. A few of us scooted around her, and kept riding. I looked up to the front of the group, and everyone just seemed to be in a bit of disarray. There were girls slowing down, looking around. Without really thinking things through, I came out to the left of the group, put a solid acceleration down and attacked on the hill. I didn’t look back for a while, but it ended up being somewhat effective, as I had managed to get a good little gap on the group. I assumed that once I hit the headwind section of the 2nd lap, I would be caught up with, but I focused on continuing to push a solid power since I had a surprisingly decent gap on the field.
I ended up settling into a consistent just-below threshold pace for the rest of the race, and the longer I rode, the more realistic it became to me that I would end the race by myself. It was a cool experience to be a rider off the front, as I’ve never done that before in a race. When I attacked, I was not doing it to get away, and was fully planning to get brought back to the group since the wind was such a strong contributor to the race. Even though it was not the plan for the day, and to be honest a little bit boring riding by myself for half the race, it was cool to try some new things, and also cool that it worked out with me staying away and winning.
