Race Report: 2025 Davis 4th of July Criterium - Men’s Cat 3
Race: Davis 4th of July Criterium - Men’s Cat 3
Date: July 4th, 2025
AVRT racers: George Wehner, Kevin Kauffman
Top Result: Both DNF
Course: 0.7-mile figure-8 course. Wide roads with some slightly sketchy pavement in the corners.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/15008967619
Nutrition: Red Bull an hour before the race, and just water during.
Recap: (written by George) Going into the race, I thought it would be a good course for a breakaway, but after getting there and seeing how wide the roads were I wasn’t totally sure how it would play out. Additionally, it was quite hot — around 90 degrees Fahrenheit. I was hoping to get into a breakaway and contest for the win from there.
The race was quite hard from the get-go, and I shuffled to the back early. On lap 2, a guy wearing all black kit clipped his pedal right in front of me and nearly went down, but he saved it. This made me quite wary for the rest of the race, and I really wanted to move up, but with how many turns there were on course, it was quite hard to find good spots to move up. I frequently found riders slotting in front of me on the straightaways and then losing the wheel in the corners, forcing me to close a lot of gaps. It was one of these gaps that took Kevin off the back around this time.
About 20 minutes into the race, I made my way up to the front, but a couple guys had gone off the front at that point. I attacked a couple times to try to bridge the gap, but my attacks were quickly shut down. Later on, the group ended up catching the break, so even if I had bridged up it probably wouldn’t have worked. Pretty soon after this, the heat really started getting to me, and after about 30 minutes of racing I wasn’t able to stay with the group’s surges anymore.
This was quite a frustrating race, as I knew I was just as good of a racer as everyone else in the field and felt that I should be trying for a result, but my legs weren’t great and things just didn’t go my way. Sometimes, you just have a bad day in bike racing, and this just was one of those days.