Race Report: Watsonville Criterium (Men's Cat 4/5)
Race: Watsonville Criterium - Men’s Cat 4/5
Date: July 5, 2025
AVRT racers: Michael Matthews
Top Result: 2nd Place (of 25)
Course: The course has five corners and a little kicker to the finish. Rough roads in places and killer drainage, like the wheel-eating kind. Wind was a factor on a few straights. Crispy cool ocean-town weather.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/15018564144
Nutrition: ~100g of carbs in a bottle for pre/during race nutrition. Typical breakfast eaten at home. Sugar, food, and electrolytes ready for in between races.
Event Recap: After racing twice yesterday, I came into today planning to be a little less active and more on the opportunistic side… let’s see how that went. No teammates today, and no teams with numbers in the race. Ripe for a breakaway win. From the start, I stayed close to the front as the field learned to maneuver the course, from the kicker to the finish to the drainage ditches, and parked cars. After a few laps, and about 10 minutes, well, I got bored. I attacked heading into the pitch up to the finish and took one rider with me. We worked together for a couple of corners and the gap grew slowly. Once we realized we had a chance to make something stick it was time to commit. All in. There were 40 minutes left in the race, oof. But, this is how I like to ride criteriums, so I was not upset. We got to working well together and would shoulder check every couple of corners as we took pulls. We shared the laps 50-50. For much of the course we were out of sight quickly. Eventually on the long start-finish straight we could no longer see the group behind. We kept working to maintain the gap at a reasonable pace. Skip ahead to the last lap. Games begin. I exclaimed that the gloves were off now. We made the final corner and headed towards the pitch up to the finish. My plan was to attack the opposite shoulder that he looked to next. He looks left, I jump right…. and drop my chain. Second place, in destructive fashion. Luckily, there was no surging group coming from behind. Fun race, my style! Masters 1/2/3/4 next…
