Race Report: 2026 San Ardo Road Race - Men’s Cat 3

Race: 2026 San Ardo Road Race - Men’s Cat 3

Date: Saturday, August 15

AVRT Racers: Drew Matthews, Kevin Kauffman, Zhejin Huang

Best Finish: Kevin Kauffman 9/13

Course Description: Three laps of a 23mi flat (mostly) course through the head of the Salinas Valley in southern Monterey Country. Morning fog before the beating sun - it’s a nice change from the typical Central Valley road races of NorCal. Front half of the course features most of the rolling hills to be found with a slight headwind, before coming south for the flattest tailwind return to San Ardo before finishing on a ~0.5mi slight hill. 

Strava:https://www.strava.com/activities/19756490339/

Nutrition: Coffee and half a bottle of carb at the start; ~300g carbs over 2 bottles for the race (or, that was the plan)

Race Recap (by Kevin Kauffman):

A flat road race and a break from the July heat with the organizer-promised good-to-fair pavement was enough to convince me to show up to the start line at San Ardo. It couldn’t be worse than Snelling, where earlier this year the Pavement Gods showed me every single bolt that I hadn’t re-torqued in months. The start line was 13 strong, with the only team representation being the three of us from AV, and 3 others from E-Voke while still some strong individuals from down-state. It was cloudy with only a slight wind, set up for a good day of racing.

We rattled our way over the bridge out of town and fairly early on (wait, the pavement will get better, right?), one racer from UCSB and Zhejin traded short, spirited attacks over the hills, which was fine with us as we thought it best to try and get Zhejin in a small breakaway so that Drew, myself and E-Voke could keep the peloton back. Early ones incentivised bridging and even forced splits, and after a few lazy moments of waiting for others to close them and being forced to close them myself, I decided I’d rather keep at the front with Drew and shut down anything that wasn’t Zhejin.

As the rollers died down, the road began to washboard itself toward what the peloton would soon find to be a bridge certainly designed by the Carb Gods to bring their nutrition back to their tables. I don’t think somebody could sabotage a course more than the inclusion of this feature, which left the peloton looking like a family of rabbits being chased by a wolf hopping every which direction over buckles and ruts to make our way across, with the sounds of cased wheels and bouncing bottles filling the morning air. Looking down once I made it across, I noticed I lost over half my carbs (all in liquid form), along with half the peloton. Great…. Will have to do that twice more.

The rest of the loop was pretty uneventful with a bone flat rugged straight-shot back to San Ardo with a couple small bumps where a few more short attacks were made and easily pulled back. The group was working together well now, letting people dangle who weren’t a threat and slowly pulling everyone back. I spent most of the first and third lap here pulling, really just trying to keep the pace above recovery.Lap 2 was more of the same, with the Bridge to Hell consuming more bottles. I lost my second bottle of carbs here, thankfully I was slightly prepared and chugged half the bottle in the mile leading up to try and force down what I could knowing the fate the bottle had coming. Then bump, bump, splash - it joined my other bottle in Valhalla. Rather entertainingly, caught on camera (above!)

Lap 3 I was really missing my carbs. All neutral bottles turned out to only be water. Thankfully, one friendly guy on RedPeloton was really looking for that since his hand-up was all carb, so we traded some water for a few gu’s (which I remembered how much I hate… took me half a bottle of water just to get them down and tame the chemical burn it left in my throat). The third Bridge Survival was sent Zhejin’s whole drivetrain into crash mode, which left us in a tough spot on the final stretch killing our odds of his breakaway on the last remaining rollers.

I ended up pulling this last stretch and a little over 2mi from the finish, I decided nobody would expect me to just attack from the front. Flo told me he won that way last year, and my hair used to be as long as his was back then, so I thought I had a chance. Put my head down and after a minute or so, I looked back and the peloton out of sight…. Well this is where they say to keep your head down and stop looking back. I kept the gap until the last quarter mile or so when I heard the last thing any break wants to hear - freehubs. Saddened by the motivation of the group to chase me down, I rolled in behind the sprint for 9th.

My new least-favorite bridge, mid-bottle consumption