The Winters Road Race has been canceled the last few years. I’d never done it before. Essentially, it’s a 24 mile loop with 1 big climb. The category 3 field completed this loop 3 times (~72 miles total).

Primarily, the loop is flat but there is one large climb. It’s around a 10-15 minute effort and can roughly be broken up into three pitches. Each pitch has a different gradient. After the first pitch, there is ~1km of light gravel. The third pitch is the steepest and has a 10-14% gradient. The descent of the climb was quite technical. The first turn was a hairpin that was easy to overcook. The road was also sort of torn up so you had to be pretty alert.

The start list had 24 riders. There was a mix of strong climbers and also some guys that exceled on flats.

During the race, I consumed two 20oz bottles. In the bottles, there was a mix of maltodextrin and gatorade powder. One bottle also had 100mg of caffeine. Combined, the bottles had ~120g of carbohydrate. Additionally, I went through 4 SiS Beta Fuel gels (40g of carbohydrate each). The course had 1 neutral feedzone which was after the second pitch of the climb. I ended up not leveraging the feed zone.

The flat parts of the course were tactical and dynamic. The strong riders wanted to try as much as possible to drop the smaller riders before the climb. Before the climb, riders kept sending fliers to try and get something to stick. This strategy didn’t work the first lap.

The group went into the first pitch of the climb together. One rider on the Mike’s Bikes Development Team (MBDT) attacked this first pitch. It made the peloton jump and the pace increased but the rider was quickly brought back.

After catching the MBDT rider, I noticed the group tighten up and the pace slowed. We were approaching the second climb which had the gravel section. I used this opportunity to try a counter attack. I sent a move up the start of the second pitch. This section also had the gravel. I held the gap through the gravel and through the feed zone.

Going into the final pitch (the steepest), I could see the gap closing. At the summit, I was extremely aware I couldn’t continue alone. The effort was really hard — I had spent the last several minutes at my max heart rate and at least 150% of my power threshold. Into the descent, the strongest climbers who had led the peloton caught me. We continued onto the second half of the lap. The main group eventually reconnected — although already the size had thinned out slightly.

The second lap had more break attempts. None of them ended up sticking. By this time of day, there was a pretty strong headwind. You had to be diligent about staying in the draft. Many riders ended up getting dropped because they fell off but couldn’t catch back on.

Going into the climb on the second lap, I was extremely conservative. It definitely wasn’t possible to attempt another attack at the effort I had tried initially. My goal was to just hang on.

There was an attack from another rider and my limits were tested. The group split and I was in the chase group up the climb. I would have taken water at the feed zone but I was intently focused on getting back to the main group with the riders I was with.

We could see the front group the whole time but the size of the gap stayed the same. It is extremely demotivating to see this happen. We descended as fast as we could and when we got to the second half of the loop, the 4 or 5 riders I was with started a paceline to close the gap. It was effective. During a pull, a bee (or wasp?) stung the tip of my middle finger which was really weird and irritating.

After reconnecting with the main group, everyone was torched. I sucked wheels until I recovered and caught up on fueling. I felt like I had burned pretty much all my matches attacking early and then working to catch the main group.

I don’t really recall much of the third lap except for the climb and the final sprint. At this point, I had refuled and was more recovered. I was intent on not falling back into a chase group again. Another strong climber, Tyler Mezzey, attacked going into the gravel. I followed with a small handful of other riders. We stayed together through the remainder of the climb. It was grueling. A chase group was slightly behind us but never caught back on.

As we entered the final section of the race, we had ~8 riders. Since the last portion was flat, people jockeyed for position and tried not to be in the front. There were several attacks but non were meaningful. Going into the last kilometer of the race, I was preparing for a bunch sprint. I found myself in second wheel behind Ivan Linser. Ivan started his sprint earlier than I anticipated and I followed his draft. He is little but has a strong punch. I’m not often in this position and it felt a little unnatural. As I opened up, I started to spin out but couldn’t reach from my drops to shift into a harder gear. I ended up losing second wheel and lost the sprint, coming in third. A tip I got from Jacob Timmerman was “pedal faster”. Definitely sound advice!