anybody doing the panoche valley road race this sunday ?

yes i will be there in the 3's

its a great race - bring lots of water

Molesto crit/RR instead

I live 6 miles from course, maybe we should get together?

I'll be racing 45+ 4/5 , I go an hour before you, ride for don chapin/ monterey bay racing team

Where is the best place to stay the night before the race? Hollister looks like the logical choice. Is the race really only 10 miles from Hollister? Last, what RR course would you compare Panoche to? Copper, Wente, some other? This is my first time doing it.

Thanks in advance for any insights you have.

gene r

I was reg'd but a HS friend I haven't seen in years is going to be in town. Now I need to rework the race calendar to make sure I don't miss my dose of crack

Panoche is my first race of the year.. 2 weeks ago I felt like a gorilla on steroids, climbing in the big ring and beating my teammate's arses during training... presently I will be surprised if I can hang onto the back of the field and make it to the finish line I was out of protein powder for awhile, maybe now that I have my 5lb bag of Cup Cake Batter flavored whey protein my legs will feel better

ive done this race the last couple of years and it has become one of my favorites. Its an out and back with all the climbing in the middle. The climbing kind of steps up gradually so there is a little bit of recovery inbetween efforts. Total elevation +2,534

It can be HOT so bringing extra water is a must. My first year the neutral support ran out of water and i just about died!

There will be a tail wind going out that will make you feel like a pro (we were hitting 40mph in the flats with little effort) then you hit the turn around and realize why...WINDY no one will want to work and the pace will be slow to a crawl. Finish is a slight downhill with center line enforced so if its a big group it can get tight!



not sure what race you are doing but this profile is from the 40 mile course.

^^^^^
Thanks much. I was hoping this would be a race of attrition and we wouldn't get a big group sprinting on a narrow road. Not sure why promoters set up finishes that way. We had a race earlier this year w that kind of setup and it was dicey at best.

Thx again.

i did this race as the collegiate stanford race last year. it was a big group sprinting on a nasty narrow finish. I know this year (i wasn't there) there was a nasty pileup at the end of the MD race. the shoulder at the finish isn't forgiving and the lane isn't much more than 3 wide. If you want to to split up, you may have to put in the work on the hills

hey LT there's a best western motel in town and a couple of others, race is fair to good roads , was just on course this morning . some gravel in corners by land slide area. very bad head wind going back to finish. will be very hot 90+ this weekend,

the first year it rained the whole race, very hot last yr. 40 mile race not bad if you have to go over the hill into the valley can be like a convection oven. finish straight is wide enough, get there early as parking and lines for toilets can be very long

first big climb is about 12 miles in and the next one is at 15 miles in.

Im racing it this year,
What are the climbs like? I heard it was 2000 ft total but is it 5%, 10% 15% etc?
I just moved to the area and am not familiar with Hollister yet. I did go skydiving there once though. From the air it looked pretty hilly. A fun kind of hilly.
I will be the one legged dude with a peg-leg with a cleat on the end of it.

course is pretty flat for about 5 miles then you have acouple of small hills then pretty flat till mile 12 when the first climb happens , then next climb is at about mile 15, then just rolling terrain. looks like from weather report the wind will be blowing from valley, which is head wind out and tail wind back. and hotter at 102 degrees.

102 degrees? Wow I am so not acclimated to that temp yet. I might be really hurting. Here in Oakland we have only had a few really warm days, as in it hitting 80 in the late afternoon.

was that a hot race or what( I mean temp). it was like riding inside a convection oven. lots of people didn't finnish. some crashes one kid in group in front fell, and i ran over his bottle. but he kept on going. so guy dropped a bale of hay in front of me on the way back, that was fun. that is the hottest race i have been in.

Put on your TT helmet. Add another 50 humidity points. Welcome to Houston.

First off the area and the course are beautiful, and promoter and volunteers did a great job. Incredibly organized, friendly, and having cut up fresh fruit at the finish, outstanding.

But the course isn't selective enough. The climbs on the way out put some hurt on folks, and we dropped a few at the turnaround, but they were able to get back on.

When you have course that is not selective, and you don't have full road closure, you've got issues. They allowed us the full road at 200 meters, but that's not enough. Maybe allowing open road over the last 1km would make it interesting.

The course had more hills than Warnerville (which was VERY selective), but with only one lane available, and no wind, it was basically a crit. Oh yeah, it was HOT!!! Not Houston hot, but 103 is still hot, even if its a dry heat.

I grew up in Georgia and North Carolina so I should be used to the heat, but I have gotten spoiled living in the Bay Area the last couple of years I guess. I really enjoyed that race, but the heat did end up getting to me enough that I fell way, way back. About 8 miles from the finish I finally gave out from the heat and just cruised to the finish at a moderate pace.
It was a great setup for the race, having the whole winery field for parking, very well organized. I will definitely do that same race next year.

Usually there's a gnarly head wind on the way back and cross winds after the turn - that caused selections last year, but in general the road closure issue isn't worse than other area races IMO (specifically, Winters comes to mind).