The route for the Amgen Tour of California, the largest professional cycling stage race in the United States, will include Pismo Beach and Cambria as host cities for the first time.

These locations will play a part in highlighting the beauty of the Central Coast, but looks can be deceiving, tour organizers said in a statement released Feb. 20. These stages will be complicated by head winds and lots of climbing.

“Every year we look to incorporate new destinations, as well as vary technical aspects of the race,” Kristin Bachochin, executive director of the race, said in the statement.

Cambria will serve as the final destination in Stage 4 of the race, a 105-mile ride from Monterey with very few stretches of flat road. Stage 5 will start off in Pismo Beach and end in Santa Barbara. In what was called “the most unique start in race history,” cyclists will being the 108-mile journey on Pismo’s 1,200-foot-long pier.

The eight-stage, 740-mile Amgen Tour, which draws thousands of visitors at each time trial, will begin in Sacramento on May 11 and end in Thousand Oaks on May 18.

Amgen, the biopharmaceutical giant based in Thousand Oaks, returns as the title sponsor for the ninth consecutive year.