Race Report: Pescadero Road Race, Men’s Elite 3

Date: July 11, 2026

AVRT racers: Wil Gibb, Jack Lund, Drew Mathews, Zhejin Huang (guest rider)

Top Result: Wil, 7th of 30

Course: ~72 miles, 3 ascents of Haskins climb (1.6 miles at 7%). After a neutral rollout, the race begins on Stage Road with two punchy climbs separated by fast, technical descents. A right turn off of Stage leads to 7.5 miles of false flat uphill. Next is a right turn onto Pescadero Road with a short uphill/downhill before turning right onto Pescadero Creek Road for the final Haskins climb.

Nutrition: Two bottles with 150g Formula 369 each, two 45g 369 gels, and a neutral Bottle Grab with 30g carbs from Torq 

Strava: https://strava.app.link/Scl7mnnbK4b

Recap:

What were you up to when you were sixteen? I was stoked that I could finally drive to and from school and soccer practice. I also got promoted from bagger to cashier at my local grocery store. I thought using the barcode scanner was super cool. I still remember the codes for bananas (4011) and organic bananas (94011).  

If you’re a teen in the bay area, however, your mission is simple – dominate the cat 3 field in 2026. It’s already hard enough to explain to my family and “regular” friends what I spend my weekends doing. How am I supposed to tell them that a good portion of my energy at races is spent trying to keep up with kids who are half my age? Specifically (since I’m crazy enough to do the math), 24 of the 39 people who’ve beaten me in NCNCA races this year have been teenagers. Another shout out to gravel racing – they have age groups! 

This race was of course no different, with 40% of the field from the U20 persuasion (more than double the other men’s fields). Given this, we knew the race would be decided on the climbs and just wanted to survive to the last one. Shortly after turning onto 84, where breakaways usually go, Adam Suczewski from Dolce Vita sent an attack. Adam won Snelling from a 40-mile solo break in 2025, and anytime he sends it, I can’t help but follow. Plus, we were two big teams in the race so I hoped we’d be able to get a gap and give the rest of AV a free ride. Adam is a triathlete and is definitely stronger in these types of efforts, and thanks to his encouragement — and the work of my teammates in the bunch — we were quickly out of sight of the peloton. 

The seven miles of flat-ish road leading into Haskins was tough but manageable. However, going into the climb after a 20 minute breakaway effort was really difficult. Without time to clear the lactate from my legs, every pedal stroke on the climb felt twice as difficult as it did on the flats. Adam and I were able to get up and down Haskins and into Pescadero without getting caught, though I later learned we lost over a minute of our two-minute gap on Haskins. The remainder of our lead evaporated by the top of the second Stage Road climb, and we were back in a reduced peloton of about 15 riders. 

It seemed that the junior riders knew they could smoke us all on the climbs, as the pace on the rest of the flats was pretty easy and there were literally zero attacks. The efforts would be hard on the climbs, with about half of the 15 riders getting dropped, but they’d later be able to catch back on as the pace subsided. Really nothing else happened in the race until the final Haskins climb. I set my PR but lost the wheel to the front six riders with 500 meters to go, rolling in about 10 seconds behind. Did I lose on purpose so the juniors would get more upgrade points and move on to the P/1/2 field? I’ll never tell. 

Thanks for reading!

Wil

Our two-man break entering Haskins Hill — Photo courtesy of Dirk Bergstrom (otisbean.com)