Race Report: Winters Road Race - Men’s 35+ 1/2/3

Race: Winters Road Race - Men’s 35+ 1/2/3

Date: August 23, 2026 

AVRT racers: Paul Levy, Jeremy Besmer

Top Result: Paul - 8th/26, Jeremy - 9th

Course: Three 24 mile laps (72 miles total) with 3,100 total feet of elevation. The lap is mostly flat, with a stairstepping climb in the middle that isn’t steep until the end (0.33 mi 9.2%). This climb is followed by a brief (< 2 minute) technical descent before false flat downhill to the finish.   

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/19871171515

Nutrition: Two large bottles to start with ~100g carbs each and two neutral bottles from laps 2 and 3

Recap (written by Paul Levy): 26 starters today. The largest team was Lamorinda with 7 riders. Cyclesport had 3 riders, and then it was a handful of duos representing other teams and seven solo riders. Lamorinda was pretty aggressive, sending attacks practically from the gun. But to their credit they didn’t just play an annoying numbers game and save one or two guys to stomp everyone at the end. Even their star rider who could have easily just sat in the whole race while his teammates attacked spent half a lap off the front in a two man break mid-race (and he still won at the end anyway). So this really ended up being a race of patience, trying to not spend too much energy chasing the constant attacks and saving up for the climb each lap. 

I thought I did a pretty good job of sagging the last steep bit of the climb on laps 1 and 2. On the third lap I hung with the leaders through a few punches in the earlier part of the climb that I think was splitting the group up behind us. When we got to the final hard bit I wasn't able to get quite as far towards the front as laps 1 and 2 where I was the second or third person going into the climb, and my legs were really hurting on the final go around. I thought I did finally just barely make contact with the guy in front of me over the top, but then he had a little gap in front of him going into the descent, I passed him but never closed it.

By the bottom of the descent there was a pretty big void between me and the next group of riders I could see. Jeremy got over the climb ahead of me and was up there somewhere. There were about ten people ahead of me. I think they were split into two groups so the ones directly ahead of me were chasing a bit. I was by myself and just held what I felt like I could do until the end. I could see glimpses of them up the road the whole way, not really getting much further from me, but definitely not being reeled in. Two or three guys ended up getting dropped from that group ahead and were pretty cracked (including Jeremy) so I was able to pass them and finished 8th behind what was left of the lead group of 7. This is how the finish has played out for me here once or twice before. I was happy at least looking back at the Strava segments and seeing that even though I didn't PR the climb or the descent, I did go slightly faster up and down on each lap and felt like I finished with a strong solo effort to the finish and no cramps or negative reactions to the heat which had steadily crept up throughout the race.