Race Report: 2026 UC Davis Flatland Circuit Race - Men’s Pro/1/2/3

Race: 2026 UC Davis Flatlands CR - Men’s Pro/1/2/s

Date: February 1, 2026

AVRT racers: Andrew Ernst, Paul Levy, and Jon Wells

Top Result: Jon Wells, 7th of 21

Course: 3.86 mile circuit just west of Davis. P/1/2/3 race did 11 laps for 42 miles total. Course has 10-ish corners and is generally a square with some long straight roads. Coming through the finish and going out on the south side of the course is the most technical section and contains most of the turns. Course is pancake flat and definitely has the potential to be exposed to crosswinds (although today was calm)

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/17255724828/ 

Nutrition: a pre race Redbull and 100g flow bottle during the race 

Race Recap:

Hate reading? Watch the race here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLZyZLMa13c 

Pre race plan was to try and place Andrew into a break so he could ride off into the sunset and score a whole bunch of upgrade points. Then we would also clean up the field sprint and totally dominate the whole day. Pre race ambitions were extra high with the big teams like Cyclesport, Mikes, and Terun all missing this weekend. Isn’t it fun to dream?

Racing was super dynamic from the gun with the few teams all wanting to be represented in the move of the day. Andrew raced super hard at the front all day trying to start moves and also place himself into other moves that had gone. I tried to help get a break to stick by being a disruptive teammate at the front. This included sitting a few wheels back of Andrew’s attacks and slowly dropping off the wheel to make a gap form, interrupting rotations once moves had a gap he was in, taking big 200W endurance pulls at the front of the peloton, and cornering so slowly the cat 5 field would have been frustrated with me.

There were a couple times Andrew had made it into a move that got some separation, but eventually enough strong guys would try to bridge solo that the entire field had made their way back to the move. I also covered a few moves that went over the top of Andrew’s attacks being brought back. 

Eventually, a move of 8 separated off the front around 2 laps to go. The gap never got more than about 20 seconds and the field worked surprisingly well to keep it in check. We all put some big pulls in and eventually Paul took an insane rip at the front to finish closing down the gap as we went out onto the final circuit. Once the field was back together, I locked in to try and solo surf the field sprint.

I knew I wanted to go first or second into the final 3 corners and positioned myself in the top 10 wheels around the south and west sides of the course. Unfortunately, the front slowed and there was a huge swarm. I had an option to move up in the wind but I passed on it and tried to be patient surfing in the field. In retrospect, I should’ve just ate wind because the positioning was more important than the match I would have burned. I didn’t feel very good about the field sprint during and immediately after but it ended up still being enough for 7th.

Picture is from Cal Aggie crit the day before because I haven’t seen any circuit race photos.

-Jon