Cone Azalia Road Race

The time had come for my first Cat 4 road race as Cone Azalia, located just outside of Milan, MI.  was finally here. The race, put on by the Ann Arbor Velo Club, is a somewhat unique road race featuring around 4 miles of dirt roads within its 10.1 mile course. As a cat 4 we'd be doing 3 laps around the course in a clockwise direction for a total of right around 30.3 miles. The course was flat, but holy cow was it windy. A Strava gps track and elevation profile (which looks deceiving, but note the scale) of the course can be seen below:

The race started quickly as everyone was trying to be in a good position going into the first section of dirt road. We crossed over the railroad tracks, hit the dirt, and the race was on. The field probably resembled an amoeba rather than a neatly organized peloton as everyone worked to dodge the big potholes that could put an end to your race in an instant. Bottles were flying out of cages and littering the road, which created yet another obstacle to maneuver around. Unfortunately I lost one of my water bottles about 2 miles in, but I didn't exactly have time to stop and pick it up.

Eventually the first dirt road came to an end as we took a right onto Cone road, which was paved. We had a nice tailwind here so we were going properly quick until we reached the next dirt road and said goodbye to the pavement. After some loose dirt, a left turn, and a plethora of potholes we were back on the pavement once again heading north.

At this point I had been working quite hard to stay with the lead group, which was down to around 10-15 riders. I was keeping an eye on my heart rate and noticed that it was around 190 and not going down. My legs echoed this sentiment as they eventually made it clear to my brain that it was break time. I had to let the lead group go and wait to be caught by the next group to come through.

After a short bit two guys caught up to me and we started a rotating paceline after turning right to head eastbound (into the brisk headwind) towards the start/finish line. Shortly after crossing the line we were caught by the group behind us and came together to form a chase group of around 10ish I think.

After turning back onto the dirt Zack went to the front and started splitting the chase group apart. I just couldn't keep up and got discarded out the back with a few others. We would stay in our little group for a while until once again my legs gave up on the section heading north. The crosswind made it hard to draft well and another guy and I got left behind. The two of us worked together, taking turns into the wind as we finished the second lap. After the finish line he started accelerating and I just didn't have it, so I let him go. Time to ride by myself in a race. T'was not fun.

Eventually a group of 4 came up from behind. I grabbed onto their wheels as they passed. We shortly picked up the other guy that I had been riding with previously. After the turn onto the loose dirt we dropped one guy and were left with a group of 5 that would stick together for the rest of the race.

As we were making our way towards the finish line I was kind of hoping that we weren't going to sprint for the finish. The sprint would be for 20th, not exactly prestigious. However, as we hit 1k to go it was pretty obvious that a sprint was about to happen. No one would let the guy pulling off the front as he weaved all over the road trying to get someone to pull through. As the 200m to go sign came I saw two guys start the sprint on my left. I jumped on their wheels and started my sprint. I passed them pretty easily and ended up taking the sprint by a pretty comfortable margin. This locked me into 20th place. Results below:

 

Overall I was content with how the race ended up. Obviously I would have preferred to do better, but beating 50% of the field in my first Cat 4 race isn't too bad. That being said, I definitely have some work to do!