This past weekend, I got up early on Sunday, I packed a bag, put my bike on the car, and drove more than two hours to a brewery in an industrial park in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania* because I’ve heard about this really fun race.
I wasn’t even intending to race. I had hip surgery a few months ago. My first attempt at racing in mid-October went poorly, and I’d resigned myself to simply being a spectator. So, yeah, I got my ass in the car for 5+ hours round trip this past weekend to go WATCH an amateur bike race. My friends and I drove from Brooklyn to PA on I-78 via the Holland Tunnel. We paid the CONGESTION FEE x2 on top of the Tunnel toll to race this race.
I got there and the first thing I did was ride the course (racing hurts but I’m not dead, and I needed to ride the woods). What a course! So fun! We won’t talk about the pinwheel, but lots of off camber, tricky turns, turns that set you up poorly for the next one and even more poorly for the one after that. Fast turns, road transitions, and even a few power sections. The crown jewel though was obviously the long, steep hill—just short enough for some people to think it could be rideable—full of spectators, just a few steps from where the brewery was selling beer. Yes! YES! This is cyclocross. That’s what I came for.
After preside as the men’s 3/4 started their race, I headed to the hill on foot. There I encountered: donuts on a fishing pole (quite a bit off the best line up the hill), dollar bills on a fishing pole (on the good running line), lots of shouting people. WHAT A VIBE. It made me so glad I got up and got in the car that morning. I even decided to go pay money to register for the race, because I felt like I couldn’t miss it, no matter how many screws were in my pelvis and how little I’d been training.
Later, though, I learned two of my teammates (who also drove two-plus hours to get there) had been disqualified for taking hand ups during the race. The dollar bills. The off-line donuts. For some reason, someone was posted up at the top of the hill through most of the day, taking down the numbers of people breaking the rules on mid-race “feeding.” From my understanding, at the start line each category was warned about the USA Cycling (USAC) rules on feeding, and that those rules were being enforced.
My question is why. I want to be respectful of both the officials, who are paid so little they may as well be considered volunteers, and the race organizers, who I’m sure make zero to negative dollars on this race. Other than this tangential complaint I’m following to the end of the earth, the race was amazing, well-organized, and a really good time. This is more about USAC forcing adherence to rules that don’t make sense accelerating the decline of cyclocross more than it is about any one race.
I kind of think the rules on feeding are stupid and antiquated, but even if we take at face value that there is a feeding rule in place for a reason, that reason is based on performance, and leveling the playing field. Basically, you shouldn’t win because you have a guy feeding you a gel on the side of the course with 1 to go or whatever. Maybe also because feeding could be dangerous if you are riding in a fast group? Though this is a sport where people speed through the pit at 20mph while chucking their bike at a mechanic all the time, so I’m not really buying that one. Regardless, the performance/safety rule has absolutely nothing to do with people in 30th place stopping for half a donut on the side of the course while running up a hill.
The handups I saw and participated in last weekend were not giving anyone an advantage, not getting in anyone’s way, in no way negatively affecting the race except maybe my own, when I lost the wheel in front of me because I was eating a Twizzler while inhaling a lung full of bonfire smoke while also running the barriers. I chose the Twizzler over 6th place.
The handups on the hill were actively engaging both the racers and the crowd, many of whom I’m sure want to come back next year in part because there was a woman dressed as a pickle handing out pickles with a grabber stick. I know I was partially convinced that my 5 hours of driving was worth it to take a pickle from a pickle. You can’t get that at home, even in New York City.
And the context matters: Generally, this race was not super well-attended. The elite women didn’t even fill two rows. None of the races I’ve been to this year have filled more than three. Further, this race overlapped with the Pan American Championships in DC, and anyone with any ambitions at cyclocross greatness was there (also: smaller than previous years). That puts even more emphasis on the fact that those of us at the non-championship race were there because we are mostly mediocre at bike racing but love it anyway, and we really want our bike racing to come with a side of donuts and beer (sorry to the winners, who are still very fast!).
Cyclocross didn’t make it into the Olympic roster. In the U.S., most of the major bike brands have pulled out of any kind of major sponsorship. We’ve lost the great World Cup experiment. It’s no longer really a viable way to be a professional bike racer for any American, unless they move to Europe. What’s left of cyclocross in the U.S. is a fair amount of grassroots races and amateur riders who like to spend the day doing silly hard physical things before/while/after drinking beer in a field. The only way that cyclocross survives the next few years is to lean hard into that. The fan and the racer experience has to be fun. There has to be a reason to drive 5 hours to get 30th place, if any of us want 30th place to exist as a concept in the coming years. Screw the rules, give me a pickle.
