There are many disadvantages to being a cat. 4, one of which is that your races are usually the first of the day. Our race start was at 8 am and that called for a 4:15 am wake up.
After we arrived in downtown Oakland, we learned that the course wasn't even set up yet. You know it's early when the race promoter still isn't sure which roads to use for the race at an hour before go time. After throwing on my kit and warming up, we went to the line. Since this was a cat. 4/5 combined race, we had a race mentor and we did a course preview before starting. At the whistle, the pace was set pretty high but would surge quite a bit due to the course. The course was a ~.7 mile rectangle, with one turn that was very tight. Though it's a bit hard to tell, the picture above was taken on that turn and you can begin to see the degree of the turn. Coming out of it, there is a block of rough, bumpy road followed by the rest of the lap being smooth, newly paved tarmac.
The remainder of the race was fairly fast and to keep the pace up, myself and a few others launched a few solo flyers here and there. No real breaks were established, although there were a few that were getting close. The last lap is where the real decider of the race occurred.
After passing the one lap to go card, we came into the corner hot and I had somehow drifted to the back of the middle of the pack just before the corner. Although it was accidental, I still had time to move up past ten or so people to be in a good spot for the sprint. Coming out of the corner someone clipped their pedal and went down on a man hole cover, causing all the other racers behind him to slow down to avoid crashing. Somehow, everyone was able to avoid the crash and no one else went down. Unfortunately, that meant that I was placed in a very bad spot for the sprint. I had about 50 seconds to move back up to the front. I tried extremely hard to get back up to the lead group that had broke away after the crash, but just couldn't do it. I still sprinted for the line against a few others, but ended up with 19th out of 51 riders. It wasn't the result I was looking for, however on the bright side I am stoked to have avoided the crash!
Photography: Alex Chui, Stefan Hubrich
