– Back for another year the CCC will again have Pactimo Leaders Jerseys… this year with a women’s cut version for the ladies.
– In case you missed it 2 weeks ago the 2015 and 2016 CCC series will be “Powered by SRAM“.
– All 11 events in the 2015 CCC will have One2Go timing, lap times, and new for 2015 real time LiveLynx Results. Please make sure to search for LiveLynx Results and not just LiveLynx… just trust us on that one. Because of the increased accuracy of having a camera running all day long the series is also increasing the self imposed 100 rider field limits of a few categories. No this is not a money grab, we’re just opening up a few more spots for the fields that tend to sell out on BikeReg.com so there are fewer waitlists to deal with.
– Speaking of BikeReg, the individual race directors are working on getting their races permitted with USAC and we’ll have pre-reg pages up on BikeReg sometime around the end of July or beginning of August and open pre-reg for most if not all events at the beginning of September.
– All 11 events will also include SRAM Neutral Race Support as well as Kenny Labbe announcing all day long.
– Speaking of all day long, the CCC series directors thought long and hard and tried to figure out a better race day schedule, but without any luck. There are just too many people in too many categories who want to race CX from September to December where we have less daylight to work with. Despite a few predictions to the contrary we think last year’s schedule worked as well as any could have. Considering the new staging changes (see below) and raising of field limits we feel leaving the race day schedule unchanged from 2014 will work fine again.
– Speaking of same schedules, the same 11 events from the 2014 season will be back for 2015 with the exception of Carpenter Park. Due to construction at Carpenter Park the crew at Main St. Bikes and the Sasquatch Squadron are temporarily moving the event 3.5 miles to the West to Randall Oaks Park. Race director Jeff Provisor tells us Randall Oaks has more space and even though there may not be a corn field (or Chubby Spud) the racing will be just as rad. We’ll update the series Google Map soon.
– No changes to the series minimum purse. Some events may increase payouts if they have the means, but given the scoring upgrades, neutral support, announcing, etc… and the fact that entry fee prices have remained the same for at least the last 5 or 6 years, all riders in the series are getting more bang for their buck than ever before. Remember payouts for the Men & Women Cat 1/2/3 races already scale up with the overall number of pre-reg’d riders.
– If you are interested in becoming a 2015 CCC Series Sponsor please review our 2015 proposal and contact us at ChicagoCrossCup@gmail.com.
– And finally… we did some spreadsheet magic (see Hopkins and Montrose, all races to follow eventually) and found that CrossResults.com rankings are actually very indicative of where riders should be staged during the entire season, regardless of CCC points. That being said this is still a series with series standings so it wouldn’t make sense not to use them at all. We initially considered staging the first 2 rows by CCC points for the whole season, then all others by CXR rankings, but then we thought that staging mid/downstate riders no better than the 3rd row at Montrose didn’t make sense either. Since riders good enough to win the state championship could probably win from the 4th row (see 35 seconds in) we decided staging the first row by CCC points and all other rows by CXR rankings for the entire season was a good compromise. Long story short, if you’re fast but not racing the entire series and earning CCC series points (traveling to far off lands, injury, ate too much ice cream, etc) you’ll be staged no worse than the 2nd row. Also CrossResuts rankings already handle DNF’s so those of you who have asked over the years to have your worst placing thrown out kinda, sorta get what you’ve been asking for. The Series Rules & FAQs page will be updated soon.