Race Report: 2026 CBR #2 - Men’s Cat Pro/1/2/3
Race: CBR #2 - Men’s Cat Pro/1/2/3
Date: February 1st, 2026
AVRT racers: George Wehner, Michael Bektas, Levi Ritter
Top Result: George 17th/101
Course: 0.8 mile 4 corner crit, very wide roads.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/17255807001 (Livestream) (Michael’s footage)
Nutrition: 1L water w/sodium citrate during the race, a couple fig bars on the start line
Recap: (written by George) This field had EVERYONE. Cadence brought a 3-man hit squad of Lucas Bourgoyne, Luke Fetzer, and Danny Summerhill, Legion brought a massive team as usual, Speedblock-Terun also brought a big squad in support of Alex Akins, and a few other serious hitters showed up (Ama Nsek, Dante Young, Alejandro Che, and Scott Redding just to name a few). So we knew this was going to be pretty hard. Also, this was the second race of the day for both me and Michael, and it was Levi’s third race, so we were all pretty tired already. Our gameplan was pretty simple: race passively, follow the sprinters and see what we could do.
I decided to throw out my plan when I saw Legion and Terun try for a break 15 minutes into the race and was in great position to follow. I wasn’t the only person to think this as shortly after I joined the break, seemingly every hitter in the race wanted to be there: Lucas, Ama, and Justin and Cory Williams all bridged to this break. So yeah, this break was STACKED. But I decided to commit to it anyway because I still thought it was my best chance at a result. Sure, I’d almost certainly get dogwalked by Lucas, Ama, and Justin, but maybe I could squeeze out a top 5 from this group if it stuck. With how insanely strong this field was, that would be a massive result, and I’d also get a ton more upgrade points (I’m only about a third of the way to my cat 1 upgrade, so those would really help).
Unfortunately, every team not named Legion or Cadence wasn’t really ok with this break sticking, and it was just a bit too big to really work together, so we got caught after about 15 minutes off the front. I tried to follow a couple other moves, but with 25-30 minutes left in the race I started to notice my legs were really tired, and decided to just chill, try to connect with Michael, and wait for the sprint.
The ending of this race was pretty chaotic. For each of the last 10 laps, there was a $100 prime PER LAP, so it stayed fast for the most part. I did connect with Michael a couple times, but it was hard for us to stay together. Our main priority was trying to move up and then maintain position near the front. If we could get together, great, but I didn’t think it was worth sacrificing position. I was trying to find any space I could squeeze through - I ended up moving up in some really tight spaces next to the cones multiple times - and I also was trying to follow the wheels of guys I knew were technically skilled (primarily Dante and Scott). In the last two laps, I wasn’t quite assertive enough and lost a few key positions, but I still found some good lines and stayed close enough to the front to sprint for a top 20.
Normally, this result wouldn’t be much to write home about, but when you look at who finished ahead of me, it’s a who’s who of the best crit racers in the country. And I finished right behind them on tired legs on my second race of the day. So I’m pretty stoked about how that went, although I clearly have some areas for improvement, mainly in connecting with my teammates and being assertive in the final laps. It’s really cool to see that I can rip it up with racers I’ve looked up to for a while and am actually a lot closer to their level than I thought. I’m really looking forward to racing more crits with the Alto Velo boys and establishing ourselves at a high level.