Race Report: San Ardo Road Race - Men’s Cat 4

Race: San Ardo Road Race - Men’s Cat 4

Date: Saturday Aug 14, 2026

AVRT racers: Kyle Martin

Top Result: Kyle Martin (9/12)

Course:

https://www.strava.com/segments/29585816

3 clockwise laps, 22 mile course, hilly with most of the climbing in the first part of the lap (lower LH corner) then really rough road conditions for probably 75% of the course.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/19756973117/

Nutrition: Starting Thursday I tried to hit between 6-7g of carbs / kg of bodyweight and had a Gatorade a few hours before the race—totally carbed up; this worked well for me and I felt super strong. On the bike I had two bottles with 90g of Formula 369 with some lime because I'm cultured. Would have liked another bottle of mix, but took water from the neutral support for the third lap. 

Recap (written by Kyle):

If I had to title this race it would be: A lesson in race craft: “norming, storming, performing” 

Lap 1, “Norming”

Everyone was kinda testing the waters to see who would attack. There were several bursts over the hills but mostly everyone stayed together. Against my better judgement (but in favor of having fun), I did some big surges off the front, felt cool in the wind and was shortly brought back. I must have thought, “attacking for no reason at mile 5/66 is a good strategy to preserve my longevity.” Also I would observe that people were generally super nervous—one guy kept looking behind himself while sitting right behind the leader like every 30 seconds and it was starting to make me uncomfortable so I decided to take matters into my own hands. 

Lap 2, “Storming”

Shortly after the first lap we started the gradual ascent through the fields and over a few more of the short hills—I was worried that all the sudden surges and nervous back-checking would eventually tire me out quicker than just doing a steady pace and decided to heroically <photo evidence> pull the group at a hard-ish pace. I thought, “If I pull hard, people will quit attacking (or just surging) off the front for no reason.” I was right, I took the front and rode (too) hard, and the surges did stop until I zoned out (the duplicity of both zoning out of my limits and forgetting I was racing is intentional). Just before the bridge somebody flatted which stoked some excitement causing us to hit the bridge with a lot of speed. It was so bumpy that it knocked my Garmin mount loose and I had my massive 1050 flapping around. 

After the bridge, the fresh riders (for whom I had been giving a phenomenal draft) made a move onto the long road back towards the finish and I was cooked (not able to follow). A small group of us tried to rotate turns to catch back up but that effort ran out of stamina quickly as my fellow racers did not know how to work together (i.e. ride a paceline). Instead of taking 10-20 second pulls it was like 1-2 minute pulls and hard pulls, in spite of my encouragement to rotate quickly, etc. 4 riders became 3, then 3 became 2 and then I was alone. My race was pretty much over at this point! 

Lap 3, “Performing”

I rode a consistent pace through the last lap, which I did entirely by myself as I watched the other pelotons race by. I took my flappy Garmin off and put it in my pocket so I (a) didn’t have to look at how many miles I had left, and (b) wouldn’t have to have it bounce around anymore! 

It was in this moment of solitude that I had an idea to vibe code a system that proves that I did way too much work on the front for too long. And that is where this comes from: https://github.com/mkylemartin/race-analysis-visualizer

If you have the “Strava Sauce” Chrome extension installed, from the Analysis tab of your friends’ rides you can download all the .FIT files and run them through this tool which time-aligns and aggregates everyone’s race data, essentially to show that while I did 268W average for 46 minutes everyone behind me was doing … much less (i.e. lighter purple means less power)! 

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In sum, even though I didn’t come close to winning I still had a really good time and had fun learning what to do differently next time! I’m super grateful to all the volunteers and organizers who spent a hot, long Saturday to support all the riders and it was very fun to congratulate and support other AV team members who also did so well!