Race Report: 2025 UCSC Slug Circuit Race - Women’s 345/CD

Race: 2025 UC Santa Cruz Slug Circuit Race - Women’s 345/CD

Date: Saturday, April 5, 2025

AVRT racers: Hannah Chen, Robin Kutner, Elena de la Paz 

Top Result: Robin 3/15, Hannah 4/15

Course: 10 laps of a 2.7 mile loop, with a 1.4 mile descent and a 1.3 mile 350 ft climb each lap. There was a slight crosswind from the west. The climb is average 5.5% grade with a kicker halfway up (just before the finish line) and another kicker at the top of the climb. There are 2 notable “corners” on the loop: one at the start of the descent, and one sharper one at the bottom of the descent. Good pavement.

Strava: Robin’s: https://www.strava.com/activities/14091479925

Nutrition: Two bottles on my bike: one with skratch+malto (50g carb) and one with plain water. Two sleeves of shot bloks in my pocket (96g). Ate a few bloks on the start line and consumed everything else during the ~90 minute race. 

Recap (written by Robin):

This race was composed of majority collegiates, two familiar faces from Terun (Sofya and Veerle), a third Terun who’s very new, and the three of us (Elena’s first ever race!). Having raced a mostly collegiate circuit race last year which was 95% coffee ride, I was envisioning prior to the race that the race would boil down to me, Hannah, Veerle, and Sofya in a front group and then a trickle of cat5/collegiates somewhere behind. This is exactly how it played out.

Lap 1 was jarring with all the fresh legs, squirrely/inexperienced riders, and everyone trying to scope out the course. After two full climbs, we had shed most of the collegiates. In the early laps, it was mostly Hannah and Sofya pulling; it was clear that we had similar plans, with Hannah protecting me and Sofya protecting Veerle. I think it was on Lap 3 that Sofya said “can we work together - all take pulls - to definitively separate from the field?” We then started a tight rotation up the climb. We sorta continued rotating on the descent, but Hannah helped me tuck in for maximum recovery.

It was either Lap 4 or 5 climb when AV teammate Drew Mathews, cheering on the sidelines and testing out his feed zone contraption, reported our gap to be 25 seconds. We had all thought one full lap of intentional pacing would’ve distanced the field more than that, so we kept the effort going. This dropped Allie (Davis) from the group. By the next lap, we had a 45 second gap. Impressively, Emma (Cal Poly) caught us right after the descent. She must be very strong to have done that, so we said if she worked with us we’d secure her collegiate win. She had never done a rotating paceline before, so we basically taught her how. This was a reminder to not rest on your laurels especially on a course like this - someone who is inexperienced yet strong can catch back on! All of us in the break were very encouraging, reminding each other to eat and drink, pointing out when gaps formed, etc. This was my first time in a break off the front and the collaboration was super fun, even with the hard effort. We eventually dropped Emma while pushing over the top of the climb. The laps continued at a sustainably hard effort.

Corners are my weakest link and the Terun women were adeptly full-sending them, so Hannah and I strategized positioning so she could stitch me back to them when needed. This meant Hannah moved herself to the front as each descent progressed, doing a lot of work plus tucking very expertly. (We kept catching dropped men from other race fields on the descent, and Hannah’s aero form was a big reason why). We got into a routine of these same maneuvers each lap: Hannah would control the sharp right turn at the bottom of the descent, I’d stay on her wheel, and then I’d swing out to start pulling the bottom of the climb (shallow and exposed) to maximize her recovery time. Terun noticed the pattern, and ultimately they were smart in exploiting this. 

With 2km to go, Terun sent the corner at the top of the descent and dropped me and Hannah. Hannah and I relayed a bit on the descent, but their gap was good, Hannah had gassed herself working for me, I was running out of steam, and Sofya was the strongest in the field by far. She did an impressive job leading out Veerle pretty much all the way to the finish line. Hannah led me through the final right turn one last time and then I pulled around. I gave it all I had at that point - which was just a notch above threshold - and grabbed 3rd place behind Terun. Hannah hung on for 4th. 

I am super happy with the outcome here because it was fantastic teamwork with Hannah, a great experience in the break, I’m pretty sure I secured my cat3 upgrade, and we’re super proud of Elena for getting her first race in. When I look back on what we could have done differently, I am not sure that anything was likely to change the outcome. Hannah set me up for the best possible finish. If my cornering were stronger (working on it!!!), Terun may have broken away a little later. But on a course like this, we were beaten by two stronger riders, so chapeau to them!