Thursday Anticipation: An Idea

This weekend's cx races have already received plenty of attention. Double your pleasure with Happy Land and Woodhaven. They both promise to be super FGBC friendly, each of them in their own way. But you already know that. So for Thursday Anticipation this week we take more of a long-range view. Here's an idea I've been tossing about recently. Let me know what you think.

MUCR has done a good job in promoting cyclocross in the province. And while cx is easily the best racing available, I find the really long ones to be a lot of fun as well. So to do for the enduros what MUCR does for cx we need, at the very least, an acronym and a logo. And so I present:


Pretty catchy, eh? The ultra-endurance racing part is pretty self-explanatory, I assume. Think Red Ass, Reach the Beach, our annual winter 24 Hour race, Blundrd Hundrd, this year's Fall Classic, etc. But what is ultra-endurance talking, you ask? It is a crucial and often overlooked discipline. It's what you do while you're out on those long rides, even if only to the demons in your head. We practice it weekly at the clubhouse, after the Tuesday Night Ride. The president is known to be somewhat of an ultra-endurance talking specialist. A number of us even talk for a living. Dallas and the poosher are both really accomplished ultra-endurance talkers as well, each in their own unique ways. It's what we at the FGBC do best, really. All of that, and it makes the acronymn work out too.

So now that we have an umbrella concept, I present the idea itself: We already have some pretty sweet long races in Manitoba. I've mentioned a bunch of them above. What if we brought them together and formed a series of sorts? For starters, we could shoot for roughly one a month

1) Back 40 (late may/early June)

The FGBC missed out on the inaugural edition of this one due to a conflict with the Spring Ride. But it sounds like it was super sweet. This is not surprising, because our friends at Tinker know how to do it right. We will make sure not to have the same conflict this time around. 40 km isn't super long. Maybe they could add a longer version. The Double Back 40?

2) Red Ass (June)

The monster. I missed it last year, which was a big disappointment. It will be back again, right?

3) Reach the Beach (early July)

A classic. After a brief hiatus, we expect it to be back and better than ever in 2009.

4) PFL (August)

This is a new one I've been thinking of. The secretary made allusion to it a while back. Pinawa to Falcon Lake. Let's call it PFL for now, if only because it rhymes with DFL, which is where I hope not to finish. The rough idea is as follows: Begin in Pinawa and take advantage of what they have there before following the Trans-Canada Trail to Falcon Lake, doing a lap of Ingolf along the way to kick it up a notch. One thing that's uncertain at this point is the state of the TCT. Specifially, it's not clear that there is a continuous trail from Pinawa to Falcon Lake. If anyone knows about that, please let us know. But either way, I'm sure we could figure something out.

5) Birch Fall Classic (mid- to late-September)

Assuming it's run as an 8 hour again. That's a great idea, and it sounds like it worked out nicely.

6) Killer Cross (October)

This one's based on Iron Cross, which is in turn based on the Three Peaks cx race in England. Dave D made mention of it the other day. I'd never heard of either of them before, but they sound brilliant. If I wasn't busy next weekend, I'd drive up there and check it out. It's not too far from Durham. In any case, Dave's right that we could do it in MB. He suggested Birch, which would work. Morden/Tinker would work as well, I think. Perhaps somewhere else. Riding Mountain? Make it part of a double cross weekend: a regular cross race on Saturday followed by a 100 km cx race on Sunday.

That's the idea in outline. Comments?