Race Report: Athlone TT - Men’s Cat 4

Race: Athlone TT - Men’s Cat 4

Date: Saturday Sept 5, 2026

AVRT racers: Kyle Martin

Top Result: Kyle Martin (2/4)

Course: 

https://www.strava.com/segments/37690768 

Out and back, the course starts before an overpass and you use the overpass as a finish line, 18.5 mile total distance.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/20050301665/ 

Nutrition: I removed my bottle cages for insane amounts of speed (no nutrition on course) and consumed lots of carbohydrate in advance of this event.

Recap (written by Kyle):

This was a lightly attended time trial (TT) race and in the men’s cat 4 field there were only four people and one did not show up so it was a guaranteed podium. 

This was not my first TT and it was of a similar distance to the Picacho Peak TT in Arizona I competed in 2 years ago. My strategy was to go at a hard but manageable pace just below my threshold, which for a TT of this length I have learned, is less than what you’d usually think. Psychologically I did two things (1) split the time into four 10 minute intervals and (2) noted the halfway point for the turnaround.

There are levels to time trials and your speed tends to increase monotonically with the amount of time and money you spend in preparation (is this cope? maybe). I was running a borrowed disc wheel and deep front wheel from Robin which honestly worked so well; however, I was not able to snag some TT sticks before the race. I think these make like a 1-2mph difference and would have been worth tracking down! 

I was passed by fellow AV member (and future race team member??) Nikhil Sharma at about mile 7 and he was absolutely flying—into the wind. His setup was dialed and he trains specifically for these events and there was no catching him without blowing up before the finish. I held on to my pacing strategy and tried to stay tucked as aero as possible (which like, ow). After the turnaround there was an encouraging tailwind and I averaged 27mph on the way back (feeling really good at bikes). It felt like I substantially raised my intensity in the last 10-20 minutes but actually the watts stayed the same; the last part of the TT was super intense from a “perceived effort” perspective. 

It was a fun race, I took second! I also got paid 10 dollars in prize money to race my bike today so does that make me a professional?