Date: Sunday, Feb 23, 2025
LGBRC racers: Salvatore Talarico, Vu Nguyen, Elvis Wu, Luis Gomez
Results: Salvatore (13th), Vu (8th), Luis (4th), Elvis (10th)
Course: Closed course; 2.5 miles, 2.5 miles back; 180 degree hairpin turns
Strava: https://www.strava.com/segments/642369?filter=overall
Race recap: At the line, was a group of 19 revved up Master 35+ racers; a group of cocky Cat 4s and hungry Cat 5s. The sun was tucked away behind an overcast sky and the faint breeze in the air offered little resistance. With the whistle came the mad swirl of chains buzzing. However, going into it the Los Gatos team had set out with a plan in place: to provide me shelter throughout the race and catapult me to the podium with a precision leadout! The race started at mellow pace increasing in ferocity as time went on. The course, a long straight away with a couple of slow rollers, demanding the most at each hairpin turn where it forced every rider to slow to less than 10 mph and then abruptly into a 300-400 W near sprint to keep with the peloton. Early on, a few riders could no longer keep the pace and were dropped. Vu Nguyen, in keeping with the strategy, often assumed the difficult task of shooting out in front of the peloton, keeping the pace high and the herd thin thereby asserting control of the race. However, many solo riders wearing varied jerseys would often shoot out and attempt to frustrate this. A small group of solo riders, perhaps realizing the odds favoring us, seemed to sometimes work together. This carried on for nearly 40 minutes. However, with nearly 20 minutes to go, Elvis and Salvatore activated. Elvis, determined to spare my legs, moved to the front, controlling the pace. He did so for many minutes until his legs seemed to tire; at this point I foolishly came around him briefly. Realizing that I was deviating from the plan and exposing myself, he admonished me and directed me to fall back behind him. He had apparently not tired and carried me forward through a large part of the last lap leading the whole peloton from the front. Going into the last turn, I had somehow wound up on the front. Seeing this the whole team attempted to move to the front to provide me shelter and prepare the leadout; however, Vu and Elvis were swarmed by the peloton and only Salvatore managed to negotiate the path. As I was not directly behind Salvatore, a solo rider attempted to steal his wheel from me. I shouted for Salvatore to move over in front of me; now directly behind him, we were locked into position. With about 1 ½ miles to go, Salvatore attempted the longest leadout I have seen in amateur racing. I could tell that after about ½ a mile at the front he was tiring. He continued to turn the pedals, destroying his legs and any hope of himself contesting the sprint. I struggled with guilt from behind him as I watched him sacrifice himself to the cycling gods. With about 300 m left to go, one solo rider jumped the sprint and forced the final showdown. I shot around Salvatore, but bumped into a rider (who happened to also be filming the race on his GoPro) and went into a death wobble at my front wheel. Somehow, I did not go down and was able to recover with enough time to ramp up and then outsprint a rider who had several bike lengths on me to capture 4th place. This was exactly what we had planned for, a podium! In the end, mission accomplished for us all.
To close, this was a fun race and all of us managed to keep our wheels down! We learned some valuable lessons from this event and got to know better one another’s strengths on the bike.
On another note, all four of us also raced the Master 35+, 3/5 race an hour or so later. With a group of seven riders from Dolce Vita present, many of whom came in with fresh legs, we were outgunned. A group of them and another opposing team, got the jump on the peloton and early established a four rider breakaway. In the end, with gutted legs from the first race, we were all able to finish the second race while also narrowly missing a brutal crash during the final sprint. Despite the pain, it was fun to participate in the second race and we learned a lot more strategy!