Race Report: Cal Aggie Crit WP123

Race: Cal Aggie Crit WP123

Date: January 31, 2026

AVRT racers: Katie Monaghan, Louise Thomas, Rachel Hwang, Sophia Hu, Steph Hart, Stephanie Hayos, Sue Li Holt

Top Result: 1/17 Rachel Hwang, 2/17 Steph Hart

Course: Round-ish course with a chicane. 4 notable “corners”, 2 < 90 degrees, ~2:30-3:00 minutes per lap

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/17244469771

Race Recap:  

Going into the race my strategy was to follow Steph’s every move because I know she’s going for the breakaway and I wanted to test myself to see if I had gotten strong enough to hang.  I know I have a decent sprint so I wanted to try something new, get in Steph’s break and see what works and what doesn’t.

Race started out kinda slow, but quickly Louise, Sophia, and Katie threw in attacks to spice it up.  At points, maybe twice, I attacked to see if I could create the breakaway but every time there were a few people trailing me so I would sit back up.  Seeing that I wasn’t able to create a break, I gave up and just waited for Steph to attack.  Around 7 minutes in Steph attacked, and she attacked hard.  I don’t know how long we were going for but it was a much longer effort than I could comfortably produce and was very impressed with the power Steph was putting down for the amount of time we were going, but that’s why she’s able to create a break and I can’t.  

It was now me, her, Haley.  She says, “This break needs to stick” and us two trade pulls, and Haley is sitting on our wheels.  The pack is close behind so Steph and I are putting in everything we got on the pulls.  During one of my pulls, I look back and Steph and Haley were no longer behind me.  In my head I know I can’t keep this up for another 52 minutes but want to give it my best so keep hammering.  Maybe half a lap later I see Steph bridging the gap to me and in my head I think “thank god cause I can’t solo break the rest of this race.”  Steph later tells me as her and Haley dropped back, Haley told Steph they could work together to get back to me, and Steph just sits up and lets Haley pull.  As Haley slows down to merge with the peloton, Steph starts bridging to me.  Perfect execution in my book.

For what feels like forever even though it was probably only 20 minutes, Steph and I are hammering to keep the gap.  It fluctuates between 20-25 seconds and every time we go through the chicane, we can see the group on the other side close by.  Now from the peloton’s POV, a few people kept attacking to try to bridge to me and Steph, and AV chased down the attacks, and Louise saved our asses and got to the front of the peloton or second wheel to slow the field down and discourage them trading pulls.  Obviously it worked wonders and the gap quickly went from 25 seconds to 35 to 40 to 1:10.

As the gap increased, Steph and I were able to relax a bit, trading pulls, having fun through the chicane, just pedaling not really thinking.  I was honestly having such a fun time up there.

I wasn’t sure how the race was going to end.  I wasn’t sure if Steph was going to attack with 2 to go and try to drop me, but we kept it civil and with half a lap to go Steph asked if I still wanted a lead out to which I said nah.  As per our usual friendly competition between the two of us, I wanted to see if I could drop Steph.  The answer was no.  I tried attacking during the chicane and she was right behind me, so I slowed down and then put down some power right before the finish line, but I don’t think Steph was trying to race sprint me.  I still don’t know how to post up, embarrassingly, so I just rolled through the finish line.

For the pack finish, it sounded like the train was Louise in front leading out the two Mike’s Bikes girls, and Shannon Pidd on fourth wheel.  I think AV was trying to lead out Sophia or Stephanie? But ultimately the other strong sprinters specifically Haley and Sarah on Mike’s Bikes and Shannon riding solo were able to get in better position, and with Shannon’s perfect fourth wheel and strong watts, was able to win the pack sprint getting third.

It was a good season opener.  I barely raced with other team members last year since there was hardly a W123 field, so this was one of the first and definitely best executed team strategy I had been a part of, specifically Louise slowing down the field and Steph dropping Haley and coming back up to work with me.  Next time we just need to execute on the lead out to get the win for the pack sprint finish to sweep the podium.

Louise: 

After Steph and Rachel broke away and then subsequently dropped Hayley, it seemed like the perfect set up. Now we just had to prevent the field from catching them. Everyone was pretty motivated to chase, which was kind of to be expected with two AV in the break.

I tried to stay in the top 4 wheels to shut down any attacks, and repeatedly inserted myself in the rotation at the front to slow it down. The other racers clued into my tactics pretty quickly and tried to shut me out, which became a fun game of stealing wheels and getting in just the right place to disrupt the rotation. Honestly the whole race was pretty fun. 

Sue Lin did a great job of calling attacks so we could anticipate them before they got to the front, and it was a team effort covering every single move. 

With about 8 laps to go, the race slowed down a bit and it seemed like everyone had given up on trying to catch Steph and Rachel. Originally Rachel was going to be our sprinter and we hadn't discussed who would be our backup sprinter if she was in a break, so we came up with a makeshift plan of Sophia ramping up the speed with 1 or 2 laps to go, Katie next, then I would do the final lead out for Stephanie with Sue Lin sweeping. It seemed like a reasonable plan at the time, but in reality both Mike's Bikes riders and Shannon Pidd got on my wheel and I ended up leading them out instead. Definitely some improvements to me made, but hey it's only the first race of the season.

Sophia: 

For the pack finish: We were trying to lead out Stephanie.  I started the lead out with 1.5 to go, then Katie, then Louise. By the time the pack was near the finish, me and Katie were not able to tell what happened since we were further back. When I pulled off I noticed that the 2 mike's bikes riders, then Shannon were behind Katie?

To disrupt the chase, Sue Lin did a really good job calling out attacks. We were almost always 2nd wheel when someone would try to chase so it was impossible to get a rotating chase going.

I feel like this was a great race for a breakaway to stay away. Since the other riders were either really small teams (2 or 3 riders), or individual riders, nobody was incentivized to do a solo chase to the breakaway and burn all their matches.

Nutrition: Torq gel on the start line, one bottle of Tailwind during the race.