Race Report: 2025 Shea Center Criterium - Men’s Pro/1/2/3
Race: Shea Center Criterium - Men’s Pro/1/2/3
Date: August 10th, 2025
AVRT racers: George Wehner, Henry Mallon, Leo Minami
Top Result: George 5/30 (Pro/1/2) 5/42 (overall)
Course: 0.6 mile 4 corner crit, with a slight uphill on the start-finish straight. Strong wind coming from the west (start-finish straight was in a left-to-right crosswind).
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/15416449706
Nutrition: 2 full bottles of water, each with 1 tsp sodium citrate. I went through both of them — it was about 95 degrees outside.
Recap: (written by George) This was my first local P12 race after upgrading to cat 2 a couple weeks ago at Chicago Grit, so I was hoping to do as well as I could and see how I stacked up against the rest of the field. Our strategy was to have Henry and Leo try to get in a breakaway, while I sat in as the protected sprinter.
The most threatening team in the race was SpeedBlock Terun, as their sprinter Trevor King won the race last year. Additionally, Monterey Bay Racing had 3 riders, and there were some other small teams and strong solo riders.
This race was quite dynamic from the start — there were a couple significant breakaway attempts in just the first 15 minutes. Henry kept attacking the field to try bridging to these breakaways, and he successfully made it up to a couple of these early breaks, but none of these breaks lasted longer than 5 minutes.
That changed about 20 minutes into the race, when a group of 8 or so riders, including Jacob from SpeedBlock, got up the road and gained a 15 second gap on the field. At the time, I thought Leo was in that breakaway as well, but they were far enough up the road that I couldn’t clearly tell (I was sitting pretty far back when the break went). 10 minutes later, I saw Leo come up behind me and realized I completely misjudged the race situation. Fortunately, Henry and a few other riders had been controlling the field and keeping the breakaway at about 15-20 seconds, but at this point in time I told Henry and Leo to start working to bring the break back.
It took quite a while to catch the break, though. Henry and Leo couldn’t do it alone, and the break hovered at about 10 seconds until the final 5 or 6 laps. I even sent a short-lived bridge attempt pretty late into the race, but all that amounted to was motivating the field. We finally caught the break with about 4 laps to go, at which point solo rider Aubery counter attacked and got a solo gap.
I moved up quite a bit to join Henry and Leo near the front of the race, and with 3 laps to go I told them to take the front of the race to keep things fast. I knew we needed to catch Aubery, and I also wanted to avoid getting swarmed. Henry pulled for about 3/4 of a lap, and then Leo pulled for another 3/4 lap, keeping me out of trouble and making sure Aubery’s gap didn’t get any bigger. With around 1.5 laps to go, though, both of them were gassed and I was on the front with no teammates left. I looked back and saw Miles Hubbard and the Terun train right behind me; fortunately, with Aubery still off the front, they pulled through and I could slot behind them. It stayed really fast until we caught Aubery with half a lap to go, at which point I started getting swarmed a bit and lost a few positions. However, I picked up a couple positions in the sprint, ending up with a 5th place result.
As a fresh cat 2, I’m very happy with how that race went. I still have a bit of room for improvement in assessing the race situation and staying out of trouble in the last lap, but proving that I can compete at this level has given me a massive confidence boost. Huge shoutout to Henry and Leo for some amazing teamwork — I couldn’t have gotten that result if they hadn’t been pulling the break back while I sat in, and the two of them keeping it fast in the final few laps was incredibly helpful as well.