Its almost like cycling races are a secret

Racing
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I’m on the east coast of the US and not sure if it’s just my region, or it’s USAC in general. Cycling races, as it appears to me, aren’t approved until the last minute. It’s already December and most cycling race organizer websites still have March 2021 events listed. Their 2022 calendars aren’t posted and its difficult to find which events might even be happening.

Triathlons, by comparison, seem to be approved a whole year out or more. At each event they’re already offering discounted registration for the same event next year, which makes planning so much easier.

Is there some secret way to find out where and when to race?

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They’re generally going to be held at about the same time each year. For example, the race you did in mid-July last year will probably be in mid-July this year. Bigger national level events are often announced further ahead of time.

It is definitely a pain though. It isn’t unusual for events to officially be announced until the month they are actually going to be happening.

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What you describe is how things work unfortunately. Welcome to bike racing in the US. There are a couple things in play that lead to this less than ideal situation. Most bike races are locally promoted, usually by cycling clubs and things tend to get done at the last minute. (Very few bike races are put on by true promoters like is fairly common with triathlons). And, approvals for course use (e.g. The local town) take a long time to get so things often are not truly finalized until fairly close to the event. Also, USA Cycling, if you are using their tool for entries, does not let you start accepting entries until almost everything is in place so that does impact early entries too.

Among the clubs there is often a tacit agreement of who’s going to put on which race when so many local racers roughly know the season schedule long before it is made public. And as mentioned, there is very little change in dates or events from year to year (absent COVID - things are still a bit messed up). That is one of the many reasons that if you want to race bikes, its a great idea to join a club and get involved so you know the scoop in advance without having to wait for websites to be updated.

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Good tip. My local cycling club isn’t very race oriented so its me and two other interested riders trying to get a good calendar going.

The worse alternative I guess is prick your finger and ride in circles to get strava invites from the velominati

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There is definitely a huge range of quality when it comes to local USAC regions. Some have full calendars planned out, and others have websites that haven’t been updated in 3 years. It is frustrating, especially since it makes things so much harder for newbies to get into the sport. Unless you know the events that exist or know a group that puts them on, you are stuck in the dark.

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I feel your pain. I was planning on doing a lot of national MTB races in 2020, but I couldn’t find any information! You would think there would be plenty of information available about the main mountain bike professional race calendar, but I couldn’t find much. I went to individual races websites or social media pages, and often times found little to no information. I canceled the season due to a lack of information, thinking there wasn’t a race season because of Covid (coincidentally I was in a car accident to that prevented me from racing this year).

Then I start seeing race results from other pro MTB racers I follow. One of the venues hadn’t updated their page since the 2019 cancellations, and my emails went unanswered, but they still raced and I some how was supposed to use telepathy to find out I guess.

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One really tough thing local bike racing faces is that while it takes at least a small group of day of volunteers to pull an event off, often many races are literally the brainchild and baby of one person. When that one person stops (or dies suddenly in the case of one local race in my area) the event stops being held if no one new steps up.

That sucks and has a big role in the lack of races. But it also points out the fact that literally one person can get a bike race going. And, no one ever bitched about some one or some club adding a new event. Volunteer! One more in a long list of reasons to join a club and get active.

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Basically agree with posts above - not sure where other regions maintain there lists, but here is the one maintained by our local USAC official

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Gravel races seem to have figured it out (here in MI anyway) - I don’t think these are USAC sanctioned though…

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As said above, PA/NJ/MD races typically show up on the same weekends each year (barring pandemic years). To get a hint of what races could be coming up and when go to usacycling.org and look up race results for PA (or any other state where you’d race). I’d recommend skipping 2020, 2021 will have a few, but 2019 results list should give you a better idea of what races and when. Here is PA results for 2019: USA Cycling Browse Results - USA Cycling

Keep in mind some races from 2019 may not return and there could be new races for 2022 replacing them.

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In NJ, the local association typically holds a scheduling meeting with clubs and promoters early each year.

The calendar is kept online. 2022 is not populated yet. You can look at prior years. 2020 we planned a “normal” year but of course that didn’t happen. 2021 there was a smattering of races but not in their normal slots.

http://www.njbikeracing.com/wp/calendar-page/

For folks that enjoy detail:

Pre-covid, we would anticipate most races coming back and promoters usually wanted their normal dates year after year. That allowed us to pre-populate and publish a pretty good race calendar which riders could use for planning. We would start with training series circuit races in March and you could race most weekends both days through August and then cyclocross in the fall.

Unfortunately, with the Covid disruptions of 2020 and 2021, many promoters, clubs and riders have gone away and that means fewer races. We will need to rebuild and that will take time and people willing to organize and promote events.

As an example of change over time.:

The NJ Time Trial Cup series several years ago had 15 events. We also held an Eddy State Championship and another 4-6 reliable non-series TTs on calendar. That was 20+ time trials - all in New Jersey.

Organizers of the TT series recently had a discussion and are hoping in 2022 to hold an 8 race series and bring back the 40km state championship TT. I can see a couple other TTs from long term reliable clubs and promoters. That’s less than 50% of the races we had in the 2105-2019 time frame and will be lucky to get them.

Take home is road racing was already becoming more difficult to organize pre-Covid. Ten years ago races were fighting for dates. But today, given the last two years of almost no consistent road or CX racing, it’s going to take some real effort to rebuild race schedules in our area.

Take home is nobody is keeping secrets or hiding races. The situation for road and CX events is simply much less good going into 2022 than it was before two seasons of covid disruption.

Perhaps some positive thinking - there is racing, just have to be a little more flexible with travel and timing. There is also no better time for an aspiring promoter to get a course, get their permits and put on a race.

Hope that helps.

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Where on the east coast are you?

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@dsheldo, I’m in Fayetteville NC. Hincapie series and winston-salem / herbalife seem to be pretty well known and reliable from last year, but even these ones don’t have a real good forecast on when they’ll start! Looks like TOSH '22 in Georgia got listed though and that’s a pretty solid one! It’d be nice if their crits had amateur cats too, not just pro/juniors.

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It’s the same for UK time trialling too. Coming from a running background I’m used to being able to plan races months in advance - and often enter next year’s race immediately after I finished this year’s. But TTs are all governed by the same body (CTT) and they seem to announce the entire calendar in one go (apparently in early december but who knows?).

To counter some of the points above about races being small, local and volunteer-lead, they still take plenty of time to organise and plan. Organisers could at least publish a date with a “pending approval” asterisk. My running club puts on two local road races, another bigger event with a national (global?) promoter, two or three smaller club/invite only races and in the past a cross country race - all of these are announced and have full details on the club’s website. Dates are published at least several months in advance for the public-entry events.

Granted the race organisation is mostly down to one or two members per event, and the website is also mostly the work of one or two people, but it can be done. Well-run committees that engage with their membership should have little difficulty in recruiting more volunteers to help with such work - we have several sub-committees that offer a less time-consuming option for those that still want to help out.

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If you think the CTT are bad, just try and find out about British Cycling run road races…

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Do you use bikereg.com? They seem to have the best collection of information.

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Yup, meanwhile the MBRA website hasn’t updated to any 2022 events. But because those are USAC sanctioned I think there are more hoops to jump through.