Weekend Forecast: Whirlybird CX
Cross is here.
Some of us have been waiting all year for this part of the season to come around. Others are looking for redemption from road season, or hoping to put the last bit of pre-burnout fitness to work.
Before heading to Nittany next weekend, we're kicking off our 2019 CX campaign this Sunday at Whirlybird Cross – also part of the MAC series – in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.
Here's the forecast for the weekend, along with a few photos by Eloy Anzola (@groovylab) from our 2017 Whirlybird Race Report.
Weather
78° and partly cloudy. A small chance of light rain overnight. Expect dewy morning conditions.
Winds out of the Northwest at 5-10mph. A Perfect Day™ for cyclocross.
Hangs
Relatively small fields this year with lots of intra-team competition. Perhaps a source of heckling energy.
We're racing on the campus of Bryn Athyn College, which is a dry campus. Leave the brews at home. Fun fact – the pre-registered racer pool for Whirlybird is just under 100 folks smaller than the undergrad enrollment at Bryn Athyn.
We're fans of Palz Taphouse for post-race beers and eats.
Spectating at the finish is decent. This is a pretty spread-out course, but if there's a group returning to the start-finish area together, those final turns should be pretty spicy.
Bikes
We're not big believers in filetreads, but Sunday is setting up to be a day for them once we're past the dewy bit of the morning. On dry days the grass gets velcroey – great for cornering, bad for the long exposed false-flat heading East.
Group riding. It'll be a thing. I absolutely died trying to stay away from a chasing group a couple years ago in similarly fast conditions, and I should have just been smart and waited for them to pull through.
See you out there.
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Our first cyclocross race of the season. Some old, painful lessons re-learned, great times with friends, and an NYC podium sweep.