Race Report: 2024 Bariani Road Race - Men’s 35+ 1/2/3
Race: 2024 Bariani Road Race- Men’s Masters 1/2/3
Date: March 17, 2024
AVRT racers: Nat Green
Top Result: Nat (11/26)
Course: 4 laps of a 20-mile course for about 80 miles total. The course is mostly flat or mild rollers, with a short hill on the back stretch before a right hand turn onto a section with terrible pavement, and then a (sandy/gravelly) left hand turn shortly before the finish that pitches down and then right back up. Wind was not a major factor this year, at least for early start times. Weather was chilly, warming up by the later laps.
Strava: Morning Ride | Ride | Strava
Nutrition: Two bottles of Skratch mix and a bunch of gels.
Recap: I was racing solo for AV in a field of 26. There were a number of strong teams, including ThirstyBear (Blaine Ashley, Brian Schuster, Michael Claudio), WHS (five strong guys), and a few teams with two riders (CoreTechs, Data Driven Athlete, Creative Blue). There were also a number of strong individual riders, including Will Riffelmacher (Olympic Club), Tony Little, and Alex Yermolovich (PenVelo), among others.
My usual strategy when racing alone is to conserve energy as much as possible, and stay smart about covering attacks by only going if multiple teams are represented, and even then following others who are covering rather than doing it myself, if possible. There was a different course last year, so I hadn’t done this longer loop, so I was hoping to use the first lap mostly to scout the course rather than to go hard. There were attacks right from the gun, however. Some were quite threatening, but all were brought back.
Eventually, however, a group got away near the beginning of lap 2. It included riders from ThirstyBear and WHS, so those teams stopped working, and the pace really slowed. A few individual riders tried to get a chase going, but we couldn’t really get a sustained paceline going and it seemed like the break was gaining time. About halfway through the second lap, a Data Driven Athlete rider went up the road to chase solo. I decided to follow him a minute later or so, and Alex Yermolovich quickly jumped, as well, and he and I caught the Data Driven Athlete after about five minutes. The three of us worked well together for the next lap or so, averaging about 25 mph and keeping the break at maybe 1-2 minutes up the road, but not gaining really gaining much ground, and the pack was slowly catching up to us.
They caught us near the end of lap 3. The break was not in sight at that point, and I assumed they were gone and we were racing for sixth, but improbably we ended up catching them with 2-3 miles to go in the race. That meant that the almost everyone was together going until the final hill and final turns. I tried to move up during the hill, but with the centerline rule in effect, it was very difficult and I really needed to have been farther near the front before then to have a chance. I was able to move up several positions during the bumpy and somewhat chaotic stretch right before the final left turn. I was maybe 8-12 going into the final corner, and ended up 11th.
Overall it was a good early season race and excellent training in a fast group (80 miles at about 25 mph). I was also happy with our hour-long chase effort in the group of three. Nevertheless, racing solo is very hard because you really have to pick and choose which moves you cover, since you only have so many matches to burn, and have to get lucky to get in the right one, so I’m hoping to get some teammates out there with me at some point this season.
Nat