Race Report: 2024 Monkey Hill Time Trial - Men’s 2/3

Race: 2024 Monkey Hill Time Trial - Men’s 2/3

Date: May 17, 2024

AVRT racers: Jon Wells

Top Result: Jon Wells, 1st of 8

Course: 2.8 mile loop in downtown Wilmington, DE. This is a rolling, twisty, sometimes cobbled time trial that finished with a ~45 second steep cobbled climb known as Monkey Hill. This course was originally raced on as part of the Tour DuPont and Tour de Trump back in the 80s and is still running today. There is a huge block party, including live music, food trucks, and beer garden on the hillside that starts in the afternoon and continues all race!

Nutrition: a pre race coffee loaded up with maple syrup

Race Recap:

This short time trial is on the Friday afternoon before the Wilmington Grand Prix, held about a mile down the road but they are run as two independent races without any sort of overall. The course starts at the top of the hill with a few high speed corners before taking a tight right turn onto a bone jarring cobbled descent. This is followed by a minute long climb, right into another quick descent. Then there are about 3 minutes of gently curving flats before a sharp right hand turn back onto the cobbles for the finishing climb up Monkey Hill. My plan was to blast the two hills as hard as possible and just be aero with some decent watts on the flat parts in between. I was really excited for this course since I think it suits me very well with its multiple VO2 efforts combined with a few technical sections.

Everything went pretty much exactly as I planned! I caught sight of my 30 second man when we came onto the flat section and ended up catching him as we turned onto the hill. This ended up being perfect timing as the two of us raced side by side up the hill in front of the electric crowd! I crossed the line in 6:38 (well under my goal of 7 minutes!) with a time good enough to win the cat ⅔ race. My time also would have placed me 2nd overall in the pro race! 

-Jon