Shortly before I went to work last night, the Wisconsin Cycling Association announced its 2016 cyclocross schedule. It probably goes without saying that I thought about almost nothing else all night! The WCA says the dates are final but the locations are not, and one of the races not currently in the SuperCup could be elevated to that status. Here’s the schedule in its current form:
09/10 Sat - Cross-Shooshko @ Milwaukee (SuperCup)
09/11 Sun - Wausau
10/01 Sat - Flyover Silver Creek @ Manitowoc
10/02 Sun - Omro
10/08 Sat - PumpkinCross @ Grafton (SuperCup)
10/09 Sun - Sheboygan
10/15 Sat - Celtic Cross @ Fitchburg (SuperCup)
10/16 Sun - Badger Prairie Cyclocross @ Verona
10/22 Sat - Velocause Cross @ Milwaukee (SuperCup)
10/23 Sun - Sun Prairie Cup @ Sun Prairie (SuperCup)
10/29 Sat - Halloween CX @ Milwaukee
10/30 Sun - The People's Cross @ Oshkosh
11/05 Sat - Estabrook Park CX @ Milwaukee
11/06 Sun - CamRock CX @ Cambridge
11/12 Sat - Waterloo (SuperCup)
11/19 Sat - Team Wisconsin CX @ TBD
11/20 Sun - Cross The Isthmus @ Madison
12/03 Sat - State Championships @ Waterloo (SuperCup)
12/18 Sun - USGP Redux @ TBD
That big gap in late September comes from the two UCI events in our part of the world: the Trek CXC Cup in Waterloo (Sep. 17-18), and Jingle Cross in Iowa City IA (Sep. 23-25). The WCA was wise not to schedule anything against those.
I have no Trek CXC Cup or Jingle Cross ambitions—not as a racer anyway, though I might show up to watch the pros—and I have no prospect of success in the SuperCup series. I may forego the opening weekend of the WCA season in favor of a weekend getaway to downstate Illinois: mountain biking in my former home of Charleston on Sep. 10, followed by Patriot CX in Rantoul on Sep. 11. Look for me in the Wisconsin Endurance Mountain Bike Series race at New Fane on Sep. 17, after which I will be in cyclocross-only mode.
It’s interesting to see Estabrook and CamRock on the same weekend. They are the last of the five races that made up the inaugural WCA cyclocross season in 1996. And it’s always interesting to see new locations like Wausau and Omro getting their chances. In 2006 I made my racing debut at the now-defunct Omro Classic Road Race in the Wisport series, so it will be cool to go back 10 years later. If the weather is nice enough I will break out my souvenir T-shirt! On the downside, the Lake Geneva race lost its spot to the Trek / Jingle Cross juggernaut and could not be rescheduled, and I think the Manitowoc and Sheboygan races worked better on a single weekend than they will apart, and I’m not crazy about pushing the state championships back into December. Oh, well. For what it’s worth, the 2015 state championships were held in November in freezing temperatures on a snow-covered course … and I couldn’t be bothered. I don’t think of myself as a fair-weather racer, but I have my limits. The weather makes no guarantees, so I make none. I expect to participate in most of the races on this year’s schedule, like usual.
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