I’m about to start my 30th season of bike racing. 30 years! I’ve seen a lot over the past three decades and I’m hoping to make the racing better. To do that, I feel we should adjust a few of the classes to bring the racing aspect back to racing.
For those of you who don’t know me, a quick back story will give some credibility to my requests. I’ve raced since the mid 90s and have been involved with, created or promoted a ton of races over that time period as well. Those races included everything from weeknight training races to being the race directory at an HC level UCI race.
Most of our age groups are based on old classes from back in the glory days. In the late 90s and early 2000s, the common age groups were 12-18, 19-26, 27-34, 34-44 and 45+. The fields were huge and all these classes were warranted. For example, Pedrostock II had 79 Sport 19-26 racers, and 83 Sport 27-34 racers! While I’d love that to be the case now, unfortunately it’s not. Later in the 2000s the age groups were adjusted to 10-year spans, 19-29, 30-39, etc. And then a few years ago, the 19-29 and 30-39 was combined in a single 19-39 due to participation levels. I think it’s time we make some adjustments again.
I really like how Secret Squirrel has set up their race. In 2024 They offer 19+ and 45+ and had large fields that promoted competition with lots of people racing for every position. For 2025 they have moved to a 19+/50+ set up I’m hoping more races adopt. Secret Squirrel also had the largest Expert Field (110 total) yet the fewest classes.
When you look at other races still using the historical classes, the competition is being diluted across too many fields. Landmine is one of the largest MTB races in New England. It has 27 adult men’s races and nine adult women’s races that are Cat 3 or higher. However, 16 of the men’s races had 10 people or less, and four had three or less. On the women’s side, only one race had more than 10 participants (which was 11), and another had zero. There were four women’s races with three or less participants. There are lots of other events with relatively good overall turnout, but like Landmine, it’s being spread over too many classes.
Looking at results from several notable races, the field sizes are small even when you combine everyone. Gnar Weasels had 52 Expert Men, Winding Trails 41, Belltown 32 and even Landmine (which had no Elite/Pro option) only had 57 total Expert men. I feel we are doing ourselves a disservice by diluting them over 4-5 different classes. And it may be leading to lower participation when others see small fields. I myself have skipped a few events due to small fields.
The Sport category, which is historically the largest, is the same. Secret Squirrel has nicely divided their race in half with about 60 in each of the two age classes. Landmine, would have had about 60 in their 19+ class, and around 40 in the 50+ if they went to a two class option. I feel these numbers are more than manageable and provide the large fields we want as competitors. The same can be said about Novice as well.
The new RaceDayXC series looks promising and is offering a fresh take on local racing. It’s what we needed. Yes, the fees are higher than what we are used to and they offer way more classes than I’d like. But they are providing some great changes that other races can benefit from. Instead of set distances for each category, racers will be competing for a target duration (XCO format). This opens up more opportunity to separate categories and classes throughout the day. Most races use 2-3 times slots with multiple categories and genders all on course at once. The race times for the front end of a Sport race can be an hour shorter than the tail end of the same race. All of which needs to be accounted for with logistics. RaceDayXC is planning courses around time constraints and each race will complete a different number of laps to get close to their target time. This is how cyclocross is run, and there’s no reason we can’t use this format for XC. I would like to encourage others to consider this set up. Mostly so there is consistency when it comes to race duration (rather than distance) across similar categories. The Pro Men’s winning time at an 18mi race is going to be drastically different than the newly upgraded Expert racer at the same distance, which is a typical set up.
Promoters, to help new racers, please organize your BikeReg pages. You are probably an experienced racer and/or promoter if you’re putting on bike races. The categories and classes are easy for you to decipher. But there are a lot of people we want to encourage to race. If your reg page is just one giant list with no separation and excess information it will be confusing and intimidating to a new racer.
Here’s an example of a great BikeReg page. https://www.bikereg.com/gnar-weasels No excess clutter on the classes, all separated by category headers, adds a simple note about novice. Everything is simple, to the point and easy to find. Although Colin, I would list it in chronological order.
A final request. Promoters, the term Open refers to category not class or gender (class is age or equipment). You use the term “Open” to specify a race is open to any category. For example, Men’s Pro/Open is open to male pros and any other category male racer. If it’s listed as Pro, it would only be open to pros. Listing something as Open Men’s Cat 3 is not what your intending. If your category has no age restriction, then you leave that part blank. So, you’d say Men’s Cat 3. Also, if you say Pro Open 1/2/3, technically a Cat 5 can register for it. So even then you only say 1/2/3. You don’t need the Open in the category title.
Lots of racers and a few promoters have contributed to this idea, and the number one request was for larger fields. Everyone wanted to race against more riders. They all wanted to challenge themselves, battle and compete. The only way that is going to happen is by reducing classes. Let’s move to 19+ and 50+ to generate competition through larger fields. I know this might be hard to come to terms with, but we made adjustments in the past for the same reasons. It’s time we adjust again to keep the racing aspect of racing alive. Let’s have big fields where staging and holeshots matter. Let’s have fields where there are battles for first as much as 31st. Let’s race again.
Now, who wants to hear my thoughts on cross…