Race Report: Santa Cruz Criterium WP123

Race: Santa Cruz Crit W/P/1/2/3

Date: March 23, 2025

AVRT racers: Ari Fischer, Rachel Hwang

Course: 0.7 mile lap, 60 minutes

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/13969254603

Race Recap: Rachel Hwang’s Perspective

Coming into this race, my riding has been very inconsistent and far and few in between, but after not racing one of my favorite courses yesterday for Cat’s Hill Criterium, I was pretty fired up.

I started off with a longer than average warm up on HWY 1 before taking a free lap and joining the start line behind Ari.  I was super excited to have Ari there, a teammate to race with but was getting pretty nervous as I didn’t know how long I’d last and it was my first crit this year.

When the whistle blew, we went off, and the paced ebbed and flowed. On the beginning of lap 2 or 3, Alex pushed the pace a little harder by going to the front, and I followed closely behind.  My legs seemed to know what they were doing, but my lungs immediately were giving out.  I was able to stick behind Alex through that entire lap before someone on Terun threw an attack on the start of the next lap, and without even thinking or trying, I was already dropped.  For the first few laps I was dropped, I could occasionally see the pack in front of me.  Normally I would’ve fought to stick with the group or tried to catch back up to the group, but with how poor I was feeling, I knew it was a lost cause.

The rest of the race was a “solo TT” as the announcer called out, and all I could do was bear my head down and push and pull the pedals, and through that last corner, keep a consistent watt up the hill with a bothersome headwind.  I consistently looked at the trees above to get a better idea which direction the headwind was coming from.

At one point, Jamie lapped me, and my motivation was to not get lapped by the rest of the field.  With each lap, what kept me going were the people cheering for me, teammates and random people seeing my struggle. There were a couple times I had really bad coughing fits and almost pulled myself out, but knew if I stopped riding, that would be all the miles I’d be getting this week.

I eventually passed the finish line signaling the end of the race. I’m not sure what I learned today other than the fact that racing sick sucks and I need to get back in shape, both my top end power and base fitness.

Nutrition: 1x 24oz Tailwind Cola, 1x caffeinated Torq gel at the start line