This past weekend concluded the 7th annual Annual BayCross cyclo-cross races. Now I probably don’t have the longest tenure of cycling as others but I do now have close to a decade under my belt and am a pretty astute observer of history.
Baycross was started in 2005 as an initiative by Paul Belknap, who was always trying something new & different. Be it 29er MTB’s when they first came out or single gear/single speed MTB racing. Something caught this guys attention about this type of racing they call “Cyclo-cross” which happened well into the Fall months when a lot of folks had normally thought much of road & mtb racing was done. Perhaps his world travels or what not gave him the gall to think “Hey, we should do this!” Paul? are you out there…What’s the real story?
Anyways, Cyclo-cross as a sport has origins anyone can wikipedia to find out, in a nutshell it’s been around close to 100yrs or so, began in Europe as a post Road racing season training for Tour de France guys. It didn’t get more formally recognized until the 1950’s and events in the US didn’t pop up until the 1970’s and it wasn’t until the 1990’s & especially the 2000’s that it caught on as much as it has. According to some it’s the fastest growing adult participation sport in America.
Another aspect that makes cyclo-cross so different from it’s cycling brethren of road cycling & Mt biking – is that it’s truly only a competitive event, not a recreational activity. You & your buddies aren’t ever going to say.. “Hey, let’s go out and go for a cyclo-cross ride!” Like they would for a road ride or MTB ride. You just don’t go riding through a park, baseball field or golf course hopping off your bike to jump over barriers – like picnic tables, park benches & fallen trees or ride through sand traps, am I right? Perhaps for reasons like that there are geographic pockets where it really has grabbed hold and other areas where it hasn’t… yet (as I’d like to think).
However it is by FAR the most spectator friendly cycling event between the three disciplines (road, mtb, ‘cross). The course is short, there are multiple laps and fans… well, they get to be part of the action be it with loud roudy cheering, ringing cow bells, handing up dollar bills or malted beverages as distractions (or entertainment) to the racers.
Fortunately, it brings aspects that merge the summer cycling activities of MTB’ing & Road riding, so it’s the time of year where cycling competitors, good in their own respective disciplines, can compete in the middle against each other. Plenty of times there are good MTB’ers who can’t hang in hard road race and it goes with out question great road cyclist can get there butts handed to them in a MTB race. But in ‘cross it’s all even, with aspects of both disciplines and you gotta love that!
So I feel Ashland’s Baycross is unique and ahead of it’s time in having brought forth the cyclo-cross racing opportunity for riders. Especially given it’s demographic/geographic setting, as much larger centrally located population centers haven’t brought forth this kind of racing yet. In this part of the Midwest there are really only three other places riders can get in the opportunity.
In the U.P. of Michigan there’s UPCross – an awesome series & organization they’ve put together there. With excellent participation given the relatively size of the population. To give some idea they get equally participation at races to other cities that have 100 times the population to draw from. It’s nuts when you think about it.
Then there’s the Wisconsin Cyclocross series which is really completely in the deep south & south east corners of the state, I must selfish say is unfortunate being on the other end of the state. And fortunately MN runs a pretty good series based around the Twin Cities.
So how did BayCross turn out this year? When an overabundance of time hits my schedule like we all wish for. I’ll be sure to give a solid & hopefully remotely entertaining & interesting recap.
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