Race Report: 2025 Snelling Road Race - Men’s Cat 4
Race: Snelling Road Race - Men’s Cat 4
Date: March 1, 2025
AVRT racers: Wil Gibb (7/27)
Course: Approx. 60 mi and 2800 ft of elevation. We did five laps of the Strava segment linked below. There are several rollers but nothing so significant to cause a selection. The pavement is bad throughout, especially so on the back half of the lap towards the finish. I was extremely grateful to have 32mm tubeless tires at 60 PSI as I know many people got flats.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/segments/1030145
Nutrition: Two bottles of 90g Skratch high-carb, 100g caffeine PowerBar gummies (150mg total)
Recap:
This was my first time racing solo, and there were two large, strong teams: Dolce Vita (5 riders) & Velo Trap (4 riders). Both teams have been well represented on podiums this year. Given this, and the fact that the course didn’t really seem to have selection points, my goal was to chase attacks if both teams were represented to see if something stuck.
The attacks started almost right away, and there was little motivation from the peloton to chase. I brought the first few back with some other solo riders. After this, a Dolce Vita rider (Adam - who won all the early bird crits) attacked and no one followed. I probably should have jumped in this move, but I needed to recover and thought Velo Trap would organize a chase. They never did, and early in the second lap we were already racing for second.
On the third lap, on the biggest “climb” of the race, there was a wheel touch behind me that sent 4-6 riders down in a crash. Not five minutes later, the peloton approached the sketchiest corner on the course – downhill, sharp, and covered in sand from an oil spill earlier in the morning (is this Mario Kart?!). I thought being second wheel going into this corner was smart, but the rider in front of me wiped out and blocked the entire narrow strip of road. I slowed into the gravel shoulder to avoid him, but still had enough speed to hit the deck, get some road rash, and derail my chain.
Dusty and bloodied, I still had the peloton in distant sight given the long, straight road ahead. This motivated me to chase back on. After a 10 minute solo effort, I had a chance to recover for a good while. For those keeping score, the Dolce Vita rider was 90 seconds ahead at this point. Late into the fourth lap, a Velo Trap rider attacked and I followed. The VeloTrap team did a good job of blocking, and we had a nice gap right away.
After about five minutes, we had probably 30 seconds on the main peloton and our gap was growing. Unfortunately, we came up on a small group of riders from a different category and inexplicably the moto made us stop and rejoin the peloton instead of easily going around them on the closed roads (which we had been doing in other parts of the course). Not only did this cripple our advantage, but it also slowed the entire peloton down as they were also going to pass this group at their speeds.
After the post-crash solo effort, and the neutralized breakaway, I had limited matches left to burn. Towards the finish, I wasn’t able to get into the Velo Trap lead out and took a lot of wind. I missed the first sprint group and came in just behind for 7th. Overall, I’m proud of the way I was able to come back after the crash, and am continuing to learn more and more about race strategy – both what I can and can’t control.
Thanks for reading!
Wil