carpediemracing 

Okay, so this is stuff I know - I've been around a while, although this year I'm not in any kind of fitness compared to my peers.

Let me preface things by saying that the Rent course is not very forgiving. There is very little time to recover, there are no coasting spots, and for me it's one of the harder courses around. It's much easier dealing with a course that involves a little uphill, like at New Britain, so you can ease a bit on the corresponding downhill. My favorite course was the Bethel one, where I promoted races for a long time. It had a steep uphill finish and the rest of the course was a gentle downhill. Ideal for sitting in.

In 2014 I wrote a series of posts on racing at the Rent. At the time Cat 3s could do the B race. I would say right now that the B races are about as fast as they were back then, meaning it was quite fast at times. The difference now is that there are many fit racers without much experience, so they're still 5s or 4s. In 2014 I was pretty unfit 3 and my Cat 4-5 teammates were struggling to get good places, so the B race worked for all of us. They were strong, like on training rides, but they had a hard time finishing off a good race. Some of them asked me questions about the race, other non-team riders also asked me for tips on racing at the Rent, and so I wrote these:
Sprinter della Casa: Racing - Approaching A Training Race
Sprinter della Casa: Tactics - Get Lapped Less Than 4 Times
Sprinter della Casa: Tactics - Out of Position Regarding Wind
Sprinter della Casa: Tactics - Cornering
Sprinter della Casa: Tactics - Struggling With Peak Speeds

There's also some videos from that year:
My teammate Heavy D getting the win (soloing off the front, but clip is from my point of view - I tell him to wait until the next corner to go, he goes, and he is gone).

My teammate Aaron getting the win (I love it when I tell him to wait for the next attack to go because it should be the best time to go - and he goes with the next attack and it wins the race).

Heavy D and a teammate in Green helping me get the win, over my protestations. Heavy D in particular was incredible in babying me back up into position, carefully dragging me without blowing me up. My other teammate, in the green, also did some big moves to help me out, like bridging across two huge gaps to put me back in the front group. I actually didn't realize who it was the whole race because I've only raced with him and didn't know him in a non-team kit.

My first ever race as a 2, at the Rent (2010). I was suffering like a dog.

The time I got stuck in the 39T ring in the A race. The guy I follow for a bit, who didn't like it (he swerves hard at me), was apparently a very good Cat 1 from California, visiting the area. Had his team shorts but a local team's jersey.

A race at New Britain (Cat 3-4). Last race I won, last race I promoted. You can see the hill sort of affects things but not really. It's a good view of a typical last lap in the field there.

And a blast from the past, a Bethel race, probably the best one in a clip. One of the hardest races I've done, avg 187w (155 lbs). Tons of team work (by my team but also by my rivals). My leadout guy, I learned later, used to be a pro MTB racer. He avg 287w in the race. And in the finish line clip (link in vid description) he finishes something like a 25s down on me. He chased down the winner of the 4 race, a guy that would be a 1 by the end of the season - I think he mentions that race when interviewed when he was a pro, when asked "what was the first race you ever won?".

I'll add a P123 Bethel that included Eric Min (aka Zwift), Christian Stahl (former National Team Sprint rider, winner kilo at Pan Am games), Anthony Allessio (currently smashing the M50s and also placing in the P123 races), and a slew of other riders. Declining fitness for me but managed to get to the finish on this one.