Race Report: Golden State Race Series - Day 2 Criterium Men’s Cat 4/N
Date: May 2, 2026
Race: Golden State Race Series - Day 2 Criterium - Men’s Cat 4 / Novice
AVRT racers: Suhith Rajesh
Top Result: 7 / 25 (Cat 4)
Course: 5 corner crit, all roads were quite wide, with a very good road surface
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/18347853478
Nutrition: Overnight oats for breakfast, a caffeine gel 30mins before the start of the race, bottle of water for the race
Recap (written by Suhith Rajesh):
After a 5:30AM wakeup, and a quick drive over to the race course it was time to get a nice warmup in. The bright side of being the first race of the day, is that you can typically just warm up on course. Quite helpful in reconning corners and scoping out the wind of the day.
Tailwind for the start-finish, headwind for the backside. Very wide roads, with the slight exception of T3. Pavement quality: extremely good for the most part with a large clump of leaves/debris on the entry to turn 2.
Legs felt a bit weird but good for short efforts and so I would play a ‘sprinter’ today (are you a sprinter if you can only sniff a kilowatt when the planets are perfectly aligned?). Plan was to only follow moves if the race started to get hard, thinking I don’t want to be first to go, but perhaps second.
The race started out with everyone settling into a pace and a couple break attempts over the first half however nothing seemed to stick and get more than a few seconds.
I spent almost 30 minutes surfing wheels trying to find the smoothest wheels through corners.
With 2-3 laps to go a Data Driven Athlete rider attacked hard on the start-finish to create a small gap with 3 other riders. I was in position to jump with them, however I didn’t as I gambled on the folks who had chased down other attacks having the juice left to chase down this one too, given we’d had an extended period of not the hardest pace.
They were brought back in the final lap, and served to increase the pace for the end of the race, a valiant effort nonetheless. With the final approaching I was focusing on not losing positions and trying to take each corner as smoothly as possible. The final lap is always a bit hairy as everyone is taking the course a good 2mph faster than any other lap (my activity shows the last lap @ 30.5mph with most other laps between 25-28mph). I ended up at the last 2 corners a bit too far back ~P10 (classic bike racer excuse) but had enough energy for a sprint.
Good for 7/25 in the 4’s!
Looking back, given I had some in the tank for a sprint I should’ve expended some energy sooner to have a better position into the final. Something to keep in mind for next time, we’re always learning with racing!