Race Report: 2025 Tour de Murrieta - Men’s 4/5 Circuit Race
Race: 2025 Tour de Murrieta - Men’s 4/5 Circuit Race
Date: Sunday, April 6, 2025
AVRT racers: Wil Gibb
Top Result: Wil Gibb, 3/54
Course: 8 laps of a ~3.5 mile circuit around old town Murrieta. The first mile or so of pavement was quite bumpy, and the first left handed turn was pretty sketchy. Otherwise, the turns could be taken at speed. Points which could be considered features on this course were this left-handed turn as well as a short & steeper hill at the beginning of the back straight. The entire road was available for about half of the course. There was almost zero wind, and this was my first “hot” race of the year, at 80 degrees.
Strava: https://strava.app.link/cqKfqLKDnSb
Nutrition: Two bottles - one with water and one with 90g carb mix. Shout out to Louise for giving me a funny look when I suggested only having one bottle for a 70 minute race in 80 degree heat - I brought an extra and both were empty at the end.
Recap
I went into this race with zero expectations and no course recon; I was racing solo and hadn’t been at the previous day’s crit.. I was intimidated at the start line as this was a big field (50+) with lots of teams I’d never heard of. My main goal was to stay towards the front but not do work on the front, which has been a mistake I’ve made in previous races this year.
The race started out a little spicy as the first mile was very rough pavement. This prevented any attacks as people were just trying to stay on their bikes. The finale of this section was a deceptively tight left-handed turn which of course featured a generous helping of gravel. This caught everyone off guard, including myself — my left cleat unclipped at the apex and I had to go off the road, but managed to stay upright. Feeling satisfied at my smooth recovery, I went to shift and realized my rear derailleur seemed to think the race was over and wouldn’t budge. This has become a fun recurrent quirk of my bike as of late.
While being out of the saddle in the middle of the peloton during a flat section might look cool, it certainly wasn’t the most efficient way to spend the rest of the next five miles. During the time it took my batteries to wake back up, two solo riders had snuck away from the bunch. The efforts from the big teams were nonexistent to bring this breakaway back. There were a couple rollers on the course that would shed a few riders each lap, but the peloton never fell to fewer than 25 or so.
On lap 5 of 8, we came within about 15 seconds of the break and I made a move to try and bridge. A few other riders came with me, but our bridge attempt was poorly timed as it was clear the peloton was going to catch us on the downhill. I used the next few laps to recover from the effort, and thankfully nothing else happened. It was really easy to move from the back to the font of the peloton on the final part of the lap as the road was wide and pedaling was always minimal.
As we were rolling into the last lap, myself and two other solo riders coasted to the front, all wanting to be in the front for the final time through the sketchy gravel corner. One of the riders (Torsten Bartz, shoutout!) suggested we send it coming out of this corner since the riders behind would be slowing. I was the first one through and went all out, deciding there was no reason my heart rate needed to be less than 180bpm for the next 6 minutes. By the time I looked back, there was enough of a gap to keep myself motivated to push to the finish. It was a pretty great feeling to time an attack well for once and see the elastic break, especially at the end of a race. I’m excited to work on these strategies with the team the rest of the year.
