Race Report: 2024 Go Fast Upland Crit - Men’s 2

Race: 2024 Go Fast Upland Crit - Men’s 2

Date: May 12, 2024

AVRT racers: Jon Wells

Top Result: Jon Wells, DNF of 8

Course: 0.5 mile loop at Upland Memorial Park in Ontario, CA. The short course featured 9 corners (!!) on a slight hillside (maybe 1%) that made for very dynamic racing. The course still had very good flow despite all the corners once you found the groove.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/11397513844/ 

Nutrition: a pre race Redbull and 60g flow bottle during the race

Race Recap:

I found myself in LA this weekend with my road bike so decided to go give this SoCal crit a try. I was very excited for the technical course and the cat 2 only field! The race was very professionally done with an exciting announcer, lead car, and was even live streamed online! Unfortunately, the race also fell on Mother’s Day, which seemed to keep a lot of folks home and made field sizes smaller than usual for SoCal racing.

The cat 2 race only had 8 starters. The 9 corners in a half mile loop made it race kind of like a cyclocross race where you were pretty much always going full gas and punching it out of corners as hard as possible. There were 3 of us (myself included) who all took massive digs at the field until it started to split up after about 15 minutes. Unfortunately, as the move of the day was going, I managed to get a flat tire which ended my race. Upon further inspection afterwards, I had put a huge gash into the sidewall of my one week old tire (Enve SES tubeless - paper thin sidewalls, do not recommend) that I was unable to fix. Unfortunately I did not have a replacement tire with me so I was unable to line up for the Pro/1/2 race later in the day.

-Jon