Race Report: 2026 Merced Criterium - Men’s Pro/1/2
Race: 2026 Merced Criterium - Men’s Pro/1/2
Date: March 1, 2026
AVRT racers: Jack Liu and Jon Wells
Top Result: Jon Wells, 12th of 21
Course: 0.7 mile circuit in front of the courthouse in Mercer. It is a short, flat rectangle course. All of the corners are pretty open and can be pedaled through. Hardest feature of the course is the terrible pavement.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/17571139634/
Nutrition: a pre race Redbull and 100g flow bottle during the race
Race Recap:
Hate reading? Watch my recap on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGBBKBCUXWg
Pre race plan was to try and get into a breakaway with both Terun and Cyclesport since they were the two biggest teams. We weren’t going to initiate but wanted to cover everything with them so we wouldn’t have to do the chasing. Terun was the biggest team by numbers but both the small Cyclesport squad were all quite strong so we were going to still treat them like a big team.
Race started pretty aggressively for the first 15 min with lots of attacks flying. We did a really good job covering all the moves with Terun present and let Cyclesport chase back things we’d both missed.
Next 15 minutes Terun took the front and tried to do a Legion impersonation, with mostly Donald riding us around the course at 27-28mph, just fast enough to keep everyone in line without any attacking.
This peace would be short lived and Terun would restart the aggression. After a few moves and subsequent chases, a solo Terun rider got away. Neither Jack or I was in an easy position to cover it. We decided to rely on Cyclesport to lead the chase but their efforts were not very well coordinated as a team and the peloton slowed a lot. Eventually the Terun rider would take a lap on the field as we continued to putz around.
Once it was apparent we were going to sprint for second, Jack and I talked and decided he would lead me out in the sprint. Something was up with the lap cards, not sure if they skipped one or just showed up laps way too early (1 hour race was only 52 minutes). Regardless, the bell caught both me and Jack off guard at the back since we thought we still had ~10 minutes of racing left. When I heard the bell, I took a big old send into corner one up the inside to put myself back into a relevant sprint position inside the top 10. Jack came around and offered a lift to the front on the backside. Unfortunately I got squeezed off his wheel and then the guy who pinched in proceeded to sit up and let Jack go. So I was now officially wayyy too far back for the last lap. Bummed I couldn’t convert on Jacks great leadout on the last lap (he was in a great spot!). Excited to get some more crit practice in the next couple weekends!
-Jon