Cyclocross courses: Cautionary tales
Aug 1999
 
 

Introduction	So you want to run a cross race. Should be easy, right?  Just find some land, string some course markers and away you go. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. Cyclocross, being held in the worst season of the year, often leads to significant impact on trails, and this is the kind of thing that upsets land managers.  For example, the prestigious World Cup MTB race at Skyline Park in Napa, CA was cancelled because a little bit of rain (in April no less) plus a few hundred bikers made for a bunch of ruts that annoyed the park board. More about that later. Off the topic of course damage, there is another land access issue you should consider.  Last year (1998) Chris Grealish, the promoter of a number of 'cross and MTB races in Colorado including a few Super Cup events, ran afoul of a few citizens who didn't like bike racers in their neighborhood. As reported in VeloNews, Chris thought he was all set: he had a good course, on a piece of private land, with a cooperative owner.  What could go wrong? It seems the NIMBYs in the area figured out that they could kill Chris' race by invoking a little known provision in the local code. The land parcel, though privately owned, did not have a use permit for "recreational" activities. Based on that rule, they got Chris' races cancelled.  Don't think this couldn't happen to you. This is the same type of law that could have prevented the World Cup from relocating from Skyline Park to private vineyard land in Napa Valley. Back to the issue of trail damage. Jeff Clark, promoter of the venerable Surf City series in Santa Cruz, ran into serious difficulties with course approval after one particularly muddy event turned off the maintenance staff. The following is Jeff's description (from rec.bike.racing) of his nightmare event.  --Dave Carr	Dave Carr in muddy conditions  at the Soquel High School  Surf City race in 1997. Photo: Mark Dawson
Commentary by Jeff Clark (Promoter of the Surf City cyclocross  series)	We had a textbook case [of course management issues] at the Surf City CX Series in Santa Cruz, CA during the 1997 storms of El Nino.  Too bad I don't have before and after pictures, though the maintenance staff from the school might. [See picture at right --Ed.] This was the third event of the series and was preceded by 1.5 weeks of on again-off again showers. The weather gods followed through with continuous showers the day of the event up to the start of the "A" group at 2:00pm. And, of course, fate saw fit to provide us with 350 participants, the largest turnout ever at a SCCX event.  The course was 1.8 miles around and had a variety of elevation and terrain changes. There was a fast 1200' (all distances are approximate) paved section terminated abruptly by a 90 degree, left-hand, off-camber, uphill dirt turn which opened up onto the grassy plateau of a little league field. We stayed on the perimeter of the field at the request of the senior maintenance person. This flat riding section went on for about 800' before entering the hard pack of the baseball diamond. We exited the diamond into a short, 15' runup completely devoid of foliage. Because it was short, we preceded the slope with a double or triple barrier set to ensure it was run.    A variety of twists and turns ensued.  Other elements of note were a 100-150 foot runup on a trail created and maintained by the cross-country running team, and 1500 feet or so of bumpy, hard-pack fire road access along the perimeter of the school boundary. We also had a 250-300 foot off-camber, grassy section along a slope above the school's farm & garden. This section dropped gradually to the bottom of the slope, then hung a left and headed back up in the form of a 50' runup.  Which dirt or grass section had suffered the most impact after the event? Answer: All of them. Every sinlge section that wasn't paved was a semi-plastic combination of ruts and soupy mud. The school wasn't concerned about the fire road or the off-camber hillside, because these sections weren't immediately visible. They were pretty grumpy about the perimeter of the warmup field, though, which stood out like a sore thumb.   It was clear we needed to deal with the ruts before they dried.  Naturally, the weather was beautiful and sunny in the first few days following the event. We attempted to rake the ruts out, but though this was effective and a good upper body workout, it was also time consuming. And other than myself, the rest of the SCCX staff were gainfully employed, so this left me to work by myself on the weekdays. At one point I rented a water filled soil compaction wheel, but this was largely ineffective.  As luck would have it, a friend of Dale's (the SCCX right-hand man extrordinaire) let us borrow his old Honda balloon tire ATV (the illegal ones which flipped over when making turns above 5 mph, remember?). This was a godsend. Because it had three wheels and fat balloon tires pumped up to 5-6 psi, this vehicle had large footprint, and proved extremely useful at smoothing ruts without sinking into the turf. In fact, I was able to glide over the top of a couple of soupy sections in which I would have sunk to my ankles had I attempted to walk through them. I proved this by stopping at one point to pick up a waterbottle and nearly sucked my boots off.  During this process I discovered we hadn't done as much "damage" as I'd thought. Though the sections looked bad, it was because there was a layer of mud covering the grass. As subsequent rain storms passed through, a fair amount of the mud washed away, exposing the surprisingly healthy fescue. All things considered, if I'd had access to some pressure washers after the event, we could have sprayed the affected areas, knocked the tops off of the ruts, and exposed the grass effectively.  The only thing which prevented the area from looking normal within a month of the event was the fact that seed doesn't germinate during cross season. It wasn't until March that the grass began to grow back in the affected areas. The cross-country running team doing laps through the area when school opened back up in January didn't help much either.  By the end of Spring, the area had returned to normal, complete with grass, gopher holes and shoeprints from the runners. All without re-seeding or sweat equity from the grounds maintenance staff.  The irony of all this is that we'd had an event at the same location two weeks prior. The weather was hot (80+) and sunny, the ground was dry, and we left virtually no evidence of having been there. From one extreme to the other.

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