Race Report: Winter’s Road Race, Women’s 3/4/5
Date: August 23, 2026
AVRT racers: Hannah Chen, Orthja Efinger
Top Result: Orthja 6th of 22
Course: Two 24mi laps with ~1000 ft of elevation/ lap. The lap is mostly flat, with a stair stepping climb in the middle that isn’t steep until the end (0.33mi 9.2%). This climb is followed by a brief (<2min) technical descent before false flat downhill to the finish. Also, it was hot! S/O to Keegan for handing ice and water bottles!
Nutrition: Oats for Breakfast (what else), two gels (50g carbs) during the race, liquid nutrition in one of the two bottles.
Strava: https://strava.app.link/sz6jqrpxY5b
Recap:
TLDR: I dislike climbing and love a solo TT effort.
Hannah and I met before the race for a warmup and felt ready to tackle the course when we lined up with ice in our bottles and jerseys. Hannah: "I never felt more prepared."
We had lots of competition, mainly Super Sprinkles and Thursday Riders, who joined us for a hot race (literally).
The race started out pretty mellow, and everyone who knows me knows that I get bored pretty easily. When there were some attacks by the Masters riders who were racing with us, Hannah had to remind me to stay patient. Halfway through the first lap, though, I got bored and started a silly attack, and the race got fast from there.
When we got to the first climb, I wasn't able to keep up with some of the Super Sprinkles and Thursday Riders and dropped back. At that point, I was still confident that I could catch them on the downhill and flat sections afterward, but when I got down there, I didn't see them.
I ended up in a chasing group with maybe four other riders. I'm not sure what was going on with them, but no one wanted to pull, so I was chasing the leaders by myself. At some point, I dropped my bottle, and because it's a $50 titanium bottle, I turned around and picked it up. Then I was chasing the chasing group by myself for a while, but I was able to catch back up.
After we crossed the finish line for the first time together, someone in our group also dropped a bottle. This time, though, the rider behind her didn’t see it and did a somersault over the handlebars and crashed hard. I was right next to her when it happened and saw her fly, so I stopped to make sure she was okay. I even rode back to the finish line to get her help because she seemed to be in a lot of pain and wasn't sure if she had broken anything.
At this point, I had been passed by a couple of the other chasing groups, and I was debating whether I should just give up. Buuuut giving up is not me, so I kept going. I was all by myself and put in a solid TT effort for about half a lap until I finally caught the chasing group again. By then, the second chasing group had also caught up to my original chasing group.
Pulling efforts were still limited to one or two people out of probably seven or eight riders. Final attacks started on the second climb, but people were tired, and I was finally able to keep up. Once we hit the flat section, we were again reduced to a group of four riders.
One of the girls from the start, who hadn't been pulling all race, finally started pulling for a bit but then flipped her elbow pretty early. No one else wanted to pull, so I kept letting her sit on the front. When I saw that she was getting tired, maybe 5 km before the finish, I signaled to the girl behind me to follow and put in an effort to create a breakaway. The two of us held the breakaway all the way to the finish line, and I ended up in 6th place overall.
Hannah wanted to add that if you ever do this race and you get dropped at any point, don’t give up! You’ll definitely can catch up to some stragglers and work together and it’s not that bad!