gerundium

Cool report to read! Hard race from the sound of it.

EDIT: to add some more content here i raced my last race of the season yesterday.

National student championships in amateur category. A 54 km race on a 9,5 km lap with some gentle rollers on the backside and a 3 minute not so steep climb with the finish at the top. Due to the road being throughgoing we sadly could only use one half of the road. 6 laps in total. Because of the very nice weather and the headwind on the rolling part it was quite quickly clear that it would be impossible to get away from the 110 person field. Because we only had half the road on the finishing climb it was very nervous going uphill the first few laps.
It was 3,5 riders wide on the climb and because of that if the front didn't want to ride it would bunch up really bad and be impossible to get through. This made people antsy. Only on the third and fifth lap the field went hard from bottom to top stringing out the field a bit more. Third lap i suffered the most with gaps opening up which i had to close twice and got lucky with two other gaps being closed by the guy in front of me. This was in the top 20 or 30 riders. From teammates reports it was chaos in the back. Out of 110 riders 40+ got pulled before the end. The other laps it would be super sketchy with people trying to move up and getting squeezed due to the lower pace. To mark the half road they had fences set up once every 20 meters. People would get pushed off the course in between the fences and steer back in.

I had decent legs and tried to be up there for the inevitable sprint up the final climb, i was consistently in the top 20 or 30 riders so doing quite good but of course in the final lap it was hectic because of the narrrow finishing climb. With three narrow corners in the lead up to the final climb the pack was like a maelstrom with people trying to divebomb in the turns etc. In this shuffling i turned onto the road of the final climb in maybe 30 or 40th spot. Because of the turn onto the climb it got lined out and i hitched a ride behind another guy who went through the wind past the line and managed to move to a spot around 20th or 25th. Then when the climb started the pace dropped a bit and the pack bunched up.

I could see the front and had good legs and wanted to move up but it was impossible on the narrow road and lowish pace. As the climb started kicking up a bit more the paced started skyrocketing in the leadup to the sprint. This meant it started lining out a bit more but still i was too far and it was hard to move up. I could see my teammate around 10th spot get squeezed bad in the final where he even momentarily dropped his chain. He managed to get it back on nearly instantly to stay in contention up there and was on the wheel of the later winner but his legs were gassed and he didnt have a sprint in him. In the last 600 meters also at around the 20th spot where i was it started breaking up the field and i managed to move up a lot of spots without ever having the space to really sprint all out, just holding the high pace to the line. Even passing my teammate before the final to finish in 11th spot.

so a race on a very nice lap but was made boring due to the conditions and the way the final climb was setup had a large influence in the result and caused a super sketchy final. See the video for indication.

EDIT 2: video of final climb: