Race Report: 2026 Copper Valley Circuit Race - Men’s P/1/2/3

Race: Copper Valley Circuit Race - Men’s P/1/2/3

Date: May 31, 2026

AVRT racers: Paul Levy

Top Result: Paul Levy 7/21

Course: 90 minutes on a 4.8 mile rolling out and back loop on one divided road with a u-turn at either end. Wind was from the WNW giving a cross-tailwind on the starting half of the course and a cross-headwind on the second half of the course which included the finish.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/18735481988/

Nutrition: Juicy Burst fruit snacks before the race, orange Gatorade during the race, one large ice sock down the back of my jersey before the start.

Recap (written by Paul): This was the final wave of the day at 2pm. Temperatures were in the mid-90s and many riders donned ice-socks.‍ ‍The P123 field had 21 starters. Terun and Los Gatos both had strong representation with 6 and 5 riders respectively. Team California Academy also had two teammates present, but the rest of the field was solo riders. Alex Akins, currently the sprinter to beat in NorCal, was there with Terun so my assumption was Terun would probably let some of their guys up the road throughout the race to give everyone else something to chase and wear us all down. Then if they weren't going to obviously win the break they'd probably reel it in and let Akins do his thing.

Right at the start, a couple guys punched it for the first few hundred meters after the whistle blew then sat up. I was catching on and had some momentum, so I just kept going and ended up off the front with a Terun guy for the whole first outbound half lap. There was a nice tailwind in this direction and with a Terun rider along and a Los Gatos rider attempting to bridge, it seemed worthwhile to commit some effort to this move. We were going pretty fast apparently as the Terun guy with me tied for the Strava KOM on the outbound half of the lap. But the group wasn't just twiddling their thumbs either and our gap was practically nothing by the first turnaround and we were caught soon after turning into the headwind. 

There was an immediate counterattack by Terun rider Donald Hersam. Donald’s a very capable breakaway artist and I knew that this was a pretty ideal scenario for him to stay away for the rest of the race (and, spoiler alert, he did with some eventual helpers) but I was still recovering from my initial flyer and couldn’t follow him.

As expected a lot of bridge attempts started shooting off and Terun shut them all down for a while. Unexpectedly, Akins flatted out in the second lap making the likely course of the race less obvious to me. 

Donald stayed steady as the rest of us continued to yo-yo closer and further from him as the whole group would accelerate following an attack then slow down again. Eventually four more guys ended up bridging making it a break of five riders in total. A few of these I was in no position to follow and a few I hesitated because in the back of my mind I thought Terun might chase the break down if they didn’t think their guy was going to win in that group. I wasn’t super familiar with the remaining guys on their team and with Akins gone I was pretty uncertain exactly what they’d do. It did seem like they decided to chase eventually with two guys keeping the rotation going, but it was too late if chasing the break back was the plan. The gap had ballooned with the five leaders out of sight most of the time and the rest of the group had splintered more than I realized. We were down to 7 riders in the chase group racing for 6th place. I ended up second in the chase sprint for 7th overall. I was happy to see Hersam still got a podium spot in 3rd after being out in the break for almost the entire race. My takeaway here I guess is don’t overthink everyone else’s plans or motivations or allow that to make you lazy.