Like stated earlier, this was my first CAT4 race so my result was unpredictable. I've been training for this race the whole year, focusing on Force, Muscular Endurance, and Speed Skills. Despite my training, I placed pretty poorly, but personally I think my physical ability during the race was alright.
The race started at 7:45, I met up with John Luk also from PenVelo, but I didn't communicate with any other PenVelo members. I wasn't able to warm-up even though I brought my trainer and everything, so I just rode around and did 1 hard max effort. I also had a terrible starting position, in the back of the pack, because I thought there would Juniors' rollout and I'd just be able to hop into the front, but there wasn't any rollout. The pack went hard right away especially because there was a Prime coming up. Coming into the Stage Rd. climb, there were multiple dropped chains so there was a bit of dodging going on. I saved my energy on the climb, and I felt really strong on the climbs on Stage Road...
However my efforts on the ascents were worthless because of my descending. Ever since my teammate Alex crashed in Sea Otter, I've been really aware of my descents and those who descend around me. I thought to myself it wouldn't be so bad since it's the CAT 4's, but at every race I'm at there's always a crash in the 4's so I was taking it easy. So I was falling back on the Stage Rd descents...but I caught up at the La Honda rd North and I decided I should start moving up the pack to ensure a good position up Haskins so I wouldn't get dropped at the descent.
Suddenly, there was a crash about 3 riders away from me...at the center of the pack. They didn't see a pothole and a few riders went down. Fast forward a little more, about 10 minutes later, another crash when someone's wheel overlapped, I was going pretty fast and it was quite a close shave from me.
So we went up toward Haskins and I was feeling pretty good. However I was in the back, and so were some of the guys who weren't really climbers...It was so hard to go around these guys since we couldn't cross the double yellow line. I was feeling really strong and I needed to get around them since I was 40 riders back from the front. Well I couldn't really and I only passed about 15 guys at the end of the climb...then the descending came and it's the same story as Stage Rd.
At Pescadero Road a small group of 5-6 guys saved my life as we took short pulls to try to catch the peloton. When we returned to Stage Rd we actually saw the peloton and we started chasing, but I was toasted from chasing earlier so I didn't see the peloton again.
After that, I just continued to try and finish the race, I encountered other riders and we made a paceline until the final time up Haskins.
I really need to improve on my positioning in races and have more confidence while descending. At least I have some experience with the 4's, I have a feeling I will be in the 4's for a while but honestly I felt safer in the CAT5's pack.
My result was 44/64 and 58 guys finished. Hopefully my next races will be a little better especially when I apply those limiters.
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