Favorite CX Race of the Season?

[wongwongway]

Vote for your favorite race - best course and fun factor - or course a good performance counts!

[Rockin1Cog]

Anyone who votes for #2 must have spent too much time in the sandbox as a child.

[Geoff]

I'll wait to vote until after Satan Cross - last year's was fun and painful.
So far Turkey Trot was the best course but Spooky had the best atmosphere.

[gobes]

I voted for ventura but glendale and bakersfield were a very close second.  But I had to choose just one.

I'm not surpised to see that nobody has voted for anza.  I am however very surprised that there are two votes for adams ave (#14).

[scurvy]

am i the only one that loved SLO?

[Angelo]

I voted for Spooky, but it was really a toss up between that and Velocity Cross. Velocity did a really superb job in running the event! But the costume race was truly fun, though.

[Dave]

First let me thank all of the promoters and their helpers who put on 15 great races this year. My family and I had a blast racing and it wouldn’t have been possible without your hard work. As with any lists of likes and dislikes, the individual points below reflect my personal biases. If I wrote something bad about your race, it isn’t meant to be mean spirited – please take it as constructive criticism. Also, one of the cool things about putting this list together, is that it helped me crystallize what I thought were the semi-controllable aspects of what makes for a good racer experience on race day. Here’s what I came up with:

1.   Parking close to the course and expo area
2.   Smooth registration
3.   Bathrooms (quality and quantity)
4.   Good course (see other thread on this forum for discussion)
5.   Quick results (this is largely up to the officials, but the promoters can help this go smoothly)
6.   The expo area and the team tents arranged in close proximity to each other and both have a good view of a majority of the course.

Now for the races:

SCPS 1 - CXC Unification Weekend, Bonelli Park:
Excellent course and probably, within the series, the most appropriate for a UCI race. Too bad Bonelli South doesn’t have enough parking to bid this as a Nationals course. The venue was nice but somewhat spread out.

SCPS 2: Racers & Chasers - Cahuilla Moto-X Park, Anza: Let’s promise never to do a ‘cross race there again. Robert H is a great guy and I’ll continue to do MTB races in Anza, but it’s just not a good ‘cross venue.

SCPS 3: Velocity Cross, Irvine Lake: Great venue, great organization, and great atmosphere. Big kudos to Velocity. I do have to say, however, that while the 2009 course was okay, the 2008 course was much better. The “little Anza” section seemed gratuitous and the toning-down of the technical features in the grassy section (e.g. the tree-berm slalom) was unfortunate.

SCPS 4/5: Kross-toberfest, Bonelli Park, San Dimas
The courses were good (day 2 was better than day 1). The venue set up this year was a bit too spread out (parking far from the expo area) but I think you could easily centralize things a bit more with a few tweaks. This is definitely the venue to use for UCI bids and – maybe someday – a Nationals bid.

SCPS 6: El Dorado Park Cross, Long Beach: Thumbs up for the venue, organization and atmosphere. I may not have been quite as happy with the venue if I would have had to park in the far parking lot as many did. The course, however, was a big step backwards from the Jan. ’09 Cross Fever course. Way too much spaghetti – I was still getting lost half way through my race. And I think they found the bumpiest parts of the park of the park to use for the new course sections – it might have even eclipsed Hansen Dam as the bumpiest course of the series.

SCPS 7: Spooky Cross Night Race, Irvine
Best atmostphere! Great venue. Very good course. The kids race was great. And the costume race was the most fun I had the entire season on a bike. Probably the most fun event of the year overall.

SCPS 8: Storm The Beach, Oceanside
My club puts on this race so I’ll recuse myself from further comment except: (1) we need to improve our registration process and (2) scheduling the race around high tide was a major improvement for 2009.

SCPS 9A & 9B: Hart Park CX, Bakersfield
I love the venue and the atmosphere and organization is great but I hate the course. There’s too much singletrack where passing just isn’t possible. Plus, with all of the goat head, you probably wouldn’t have any finishers if it wasn’t for Stan’s. The one good part of the course was that all of the loose-over-hard turns (which I despise) were probably pretty good practice for nats.

SCPS 10: Dog Gone Cross, San Luis Obispo
Great venue and good atmosphere. According to my daughters, they awarded the best prizes for the kids race (stuffed puppies). The course was okay – it would have been better to use more of the grassy sections. I heard there was pushback from the city on this – that’s too bad as it could have been a top-notch course.

SCPS 12: Convert CX Championships, Ventura
I liked the course and the venue. Reg was poorly organized (I think it was mainly due to trying to run a series race and districts at the same time – may have to rethink how to do that next year). Watching the elite men’s race, the course might not have been quite selective enough for a district championship, with a pack together until the very end.

SCPS 13: Turkey Trot Cross, Glendale: Probably the best course of the year and great atmosphere. Best kids race of the year. Very organized and nice venue. My one (very minor) suggestion for improving this race is to tweak the course a little to allow access to the expo area without crossing the course on one of the paved roads in order to create an area for teams to drop off their tents, gear, etc, before parking in the (relatively distant) parking lot.

SCPS 14: Adams Avenue CX, San Diego: The southern half of the course was a bit boring and wasn’t quite balanced out by the nicer northern half. Finishing on the velodrome, however, elevated the course from mediocre to pretty cool. The one very rocky section, however, was unacceptable for a ‘cross race. Organization could have been better (lots for problems with reg). The kids race on the velodrome was awesome. Not being able to warm up on the course between races was lame.

SCPS 15: Santa Cross, Woodland Hills: Good course, great venue (very centralized), great atmosphere.

[deeporbit]

Great recap Dave. I think you nailed it pretty good.
After racing at nationals I really realized one thing that we lack here in SoCal and that is technical courses. I don't think it's shocking to say that most of the courses if not all of them in SoCal favor the fittest riders. Before you all hemorrhage let me preface that by saying you still need CX skills. However, the snow and the ice changed the national races from a fitness contest to a technical contest. Of course fitness was still a huge factor but the conditions really showed who could, and couldn't, ride a bike. I have seen several riders in the last few years with excellent fitness but no dirt skills. If I pass them up on course you know they can't ride the dirt!

So for 2010 what can we do to create more balance between technical and fitness? A few ideas.

1. Rent a snow machine for the district champs and move the date to the coldest time of the year without infringing on nationals dates.
2. Make muddy sections. Nothing says fun like mud!
3. Faster corners with larger radius turns. Perfect example: Turn 1 after the start of Spooky Cross - fast and furious on moist grass - very nice and technically challenging since high speed and compromised traction can cause trouble. Ask Sid Taberlay.
4. Decreasing radius turns. Nothing gets your attention better than this. Drive north on the 110 from LA and you'll see what I mean. These are used on motor racing tracks around the world. The effect is speed carried into a turn must be scrubbed before entering the turn or you'll run wide and get passed underneath. Very technical.
5. More off-camber and berms if possible.
6. Longer straight sections into the barriers. Techno riders can carrying amazing speed thru the barriers. Less technical riders lose time here.
7. Kegs at every race.

Have a great holiday everyone. 

[ditcher]

The holiday courses ruled.  Spooky, Turkey, and Santa Cross, yay!  I liked the new changes to Santa Cross.. even more fun & crazy.

I did not like El Dorado.  Too bumpy, I just wanted to be off my bike.

[kep1974]

I loved spooky cross and the turkey trot. I like the combination of high speed sweepers and tight technical stuff. I'm going to have to second the snow machine sugestion as well. If we can't do that then we can just default to having beer at every event. Awesome season overall though. The enthusiasm for growing the sport was palpable at every event. Special thanks to Dot for all the work she did coordinating and doing the pre-season clinics. I went out to one and enjoyed seeing the newbies progress throughout the season (myself excluded, I got worse with practice). I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in the new year.
Josh