Race Report: 2025 UCSC Slug Circuit M P12
Race: 2025 UC Santa Cruz Slug Circuit Race - Men’s P12
Date: Saturday, April 5, 2025
AVRT racers: Cam O’Reilly, Andrew Ernst, Erik Levinsohn
Top Result: Erik 1/6 (or 3/13 including the collegiate A riders), Cam 2/6, Andrew 3/6
Course: 20 laps of a 2.7 mile loop, with a 1.4 mile descent and a 1.3 mile 350 ft climb each lap. The climb varies in terrain to make it somewhat punchy and tactical. The descent wide open and straight, as safe and non-technical as it can get.
Strava: Erik: https://www.strava.com/activities/14092009104
Nutrition: Two bottles with malto:fructose mix and a few gels. In retrospect with the heat a few more bottles would have been nice.
Recap
This is the same course as the University Road Race in August but with a decidely chiller vibe (and correspondingly smaller field). The race was run with the P12 men (just 6 of us) with the collegiate A men (including our very own George and Jack riding for Stanford!). Many of us there saw this as a great opportunity for a solid workout and practice race ahead of a big April to come.
Big hitters in the field included Quinn and Mattheus from CycleSport, though they were racing for their schools in this case.
The race started with an attack off the front from Jack Grubb for Team California which was reeled in after a couple laps. As the field caught them things started to heat up. I did an all-out attack at the bottom of the climb and got a good amount of separation though was caught by Mattheus and Quinn by the top of the hill.
Andrew and Cam rode smartly in the pack covering moves and conserving energy. In retrospect their patience put them in a much better position to ride strongly towards the end of the race. In a race of attrition like this one, it’s extremely hard to not be totally gassed by the end and my own (over)excitement meant that the last five laps or so of Quinn, Mattheus, and I attacking one another were just absolutely brutal. I started cramping badly with a couple laps to go and managed to hang on until the final sprint but couldn’t keep up with Mattheus and Quinn.
Cam and Andrew were nicely controlling the race behind us and tactically played it perfectly, covering moves and supporting one another to finish out the podium such that they would get 2-3 on the day, with the three of us going 1-2-3 (or 3-4-5 when bunched in with the college boys). Cam threw in a savage attack towards the end to secure second and Andrew was able to diesel his way away from the pack smoothly.
The race was overall just as hard as we had hoped/feared and excellent training for April races coming up. Form is looking good for the squad!
