TBD will be kicking off the cyclocross season by heading over to Pennsylvania to participate in the PACX Whirlybird Pineapple Crush Double Header Omnium (quite a mouthful). Shane has teed up the Whirlybird Race Preview over here, today we will cover the race preview for the 2024 edition of Pineapple Crush Cross. 

Weather

Looks like it’ll be another early season warm CX race. Accuweather has it as a high of 85 degrees with a real feel of 88 degrees in the sun. I was seeing around 60 degrees at 8am so a light long sleeve or vest for pre-ride will be perfect if you run cold like me. As Shane mentioned, it looks to be a dry week in PA and therefore the course should be running dry and hard, which will be an interesting switch up to the sloshing rainy mud for the race’s debut in 2022 and the misting rain and tacky ground in 2023.

Course

Woof this course is a doozy. There are a ton of turns. If you are good at cornering, this is the course for you. The corners are all unique, like snowflakes, with different ruts, bumps and divots to maneuver around. Pre-riding and a good memory will be key for figuring out how to link up lines between turns.

The first part of the course has a few straightaways to lay down power, it also has the barriers which are fairly routine except for a right hand downhill turn shortly after you remount – not difficult to do slow but hard to do fast. After this turn you hit a single track straightaway through the woods which is another good place to lay down power. Then come the turns. 

Somewhere in the middle of the course there is a fun pump track that you go back and forth on before making your way back to the start / finish. Towards the end of the lap there are a few hills that you go up and down that are off camber that can be hard to nail.

This course is used as part of the Fifth Street CX Series so it gets a good amount of use. I’m hoping there might be some burned in lines. (Edit - I did see on IG that someone was out with a heavy duty roller which I bet might flatten out the course a bit)  

The below is the Fifth Street CX Series course — for Pineapple Crush, the start / finish location will be slightly different but on the whole the course looks to be the same.

The Omnium

New for this year is the Omnium: a three race event that includes participating in your normal category at Whirlybird & Pineapple Crush and a relay race at Pineapple Crush. The top three finishers in the omnium will split a cash prize of $300 (nice!). 

The relay, which we are particularly excited for, includes a Le Mans start and requires 1 Master and 1 junior to be on the four person team. Now’s the time to join forces with all those juniors that regularly whoop our butts.  

Hangs

The weather will be nice! There will be a kooky relay! This is a good opportunity for CX race hangs. Last year there was a DJ and a food truck and I’d expect this year should be the same. Remember those pesky corners I mentioned earlier, they make for great spectating as you can get a full view of the race in a small snapshot.

Bring a chair, bring a bevy, kick-up your feet and enjoy the start of CX.

Photographs BY Gabe Lloyd