Race Report: 2026 Azusa Twilight Crit - Men’s Pro/1/2

Race: 2026 Azusa Twilight Crit - Men’s Pro/1/2

Date: July 11, 2026

AVRT racers: Jon Wells, Michael Bektas, George Wehner

Top Result: Jon Wells, 15th of 32

Course: 1 km top hat shaped circuit on route 66 in Azusa featuring 2 very tight 180 degree turn arounds with 4 more 90 degree corners. The u-turns sapped a lot of speed every time making for 2 very big sprints every single lap.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/19276705455 

Nutrition: Pre race redbull plus a 100g bottle of malto gatorade

Race Recap:

The AV crew made the drive down to LA on Saturday in preparation for the state championship crit on Sunday at Manhattan beach. Since we were already making the drive, we decided to do this smaller race the night before, which only ended up having about 30 starters. Legs were questionable after all the time in the car but it seemed like we had a chance for a result with a lot of big names not showing up to the Saturday night warmup event. Alex Akins from Terun was the scariest name on the start list along with some other strong socal individuals, but otherwise it was wide open. Our plan was to cover Alex and let him do work to bring back moves and not let any gap get too big since it can be hard to organize a chase on very technical courses.

The 75 minute race got off to a smoking hot start with lots of sprints out of corners and very active breakaway forming attempts. After maybe 20 minutes we were down to 15 in the group who would make up the whole remaining peloton. Me and Michael did a good job racing forwards and covering Alex. Eventually a socal rider got a gap solo that the field seemed cool with and we let him sit at around 15 seconds for most of the race. I would take turns when I ended up at the front to keep momentum in the group going but was not trying to put in a huge effort and was pretty ok with one guy riding alone. There were a couple bridge attempts that strung the group out for a lap but otherwise this section of the race was not very notable.

Around the hour mark we finally brought him back and there was immediately lots of countering and the action returned. In this section of the race, I followed a strong bridge from Alex that brought us up to the front group and having some momentum, I launched solo into the u-turn and tight turn section. I had less than a lap of glory before the group came back to my wheel. Unfortunately it was right back into the u turn where I had attacked the lap before and I quickly found I was too gassed to get back on the group after digging my own grave the previous lap. I got dropped from the group at this point and rode the last 5 laps solo off the back. The race came down to a field sprint but always happy to have rolled the dice and tried to win instead of sitting in for a field sprint that I also likely wouldn’t have won.

-Jon