Race Report: 2024 Santa Cruz Classic Crit - Men’s P1/2
Race: 2024 Santa Cruz Classic Crit - Men’s P1/2
Date: 3/24/2024
AVRT racers: Pierre-Amaury Laforcade, Jack Liu, Greg McCullough, Cameron O’Reilly, Jonathan Wells
Top Result: Greg McCullough 9/60
Course: The classic Santa Cruz crit course, with a tight downhill U turn, a sharp final corner into a 20+ second final hill finish.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/11031945806
Recap:
Written by Greg. This was a close repeat of the Cat’s Hill roster the prior day, with Mike’s Bikes and Voler with full squads, plus Tyler Williams, etc. Again, with a smaller squad, we mostly bet on these guys keeping one another on a short leash. I was the protected rider, with PA on primary lead out duty for the last lap. The goal was being in the top 5 around the hairpin on the last lap, then I’d try to sort it out from there, knowing some of the remaining riders would be lead outs for other trains.
The race kicked off with a furious couple of laps, only to be halted due to a fire engine on course, due to a medical need at the senior living community located just before the hairpin corner. We had the option to cruise behind the moto until they sorted it out, which ended up being 10 slow laps. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the GoPro stopped early enough for this extra time and ended up running out of battery in the last half lap of real racing.
Once the race kicked off again, the attacks were pretty furious, keeping the pace pretty high. At one point, I jumped across to a threatening move, but it was brought back within a few corners. By my recollection, the most threatening attack came with about 20 min to go and PA put in a ton of work to pull this back over a couple of laps. I was able to sit in for the most part and keep my heart rate in a comfortable place, focusing on efficient cornering and drafting good wheels up the hill.
With 2 to go, I found myself in good position on Tyler Williams’ wheel (eventual winner). I stayed glued to that for another lap and a half, coming out of the hairpin for the last time still there, with about 7 riders ahead of him. This is where my GoPro gave up. The next bend and 3 corners are a bit of a blur, which is why I run a GoPro. Forming memories at 180 bpm is hard.
I shuffled back a bit in the next couple of corners and ended up sprinting for 9th. It felt like a bit of a disappointing result, given how good I was feeling with 2 to go. I’m hoping Zac or one of the other riders near me posts up some video so I can figure out where to improve my last lap decision making.