Cyclocross in Seattle 2026
cyclocross
cycling
Intro
Here in Seattle we are blessed with an abundance of Cyclocross racing! I’ve been to races put on by four different organizations this season, and they’ve all been great. Until last year though, I knew nothing about it.
I wasn’t even quite sure what a Cyclocross race was, to be honest. But I had recently bought a gravel bike, and had been riding it a bit for exercise when a friend texted me about the MFG Pumpkin Smash race. We decided it looked interesting enough to be worth spending a few hours on a Saturday to watch, and then we figured, “eh, what the hell, we may as well bring bikes along in case we want to ride?” After seeing the course, we registered on site and it turned out to be a great first race. It was muddy, and slippery, and hard, but also beautiful with bright pumpkins along the course and a cornfield maze shaped like the state of Washington. I joined the beginner’s field and finished somewhere in the back, covered in mud, with a huge smile on my face and I knew then I would be back for more.
I did two races that season, and then spent the summer getting faster and looking forward to this fall. This season I’ve become a little cyclocross obsessed, to be honest, and have been racing every weekend since September 13th. So, fair warning: this post may contain a bit of the naivety of a noob mixed with the zeal of the convert.
What is Cyclocross
Cyclocross is the most fun you can have on a bike.
-Jeff McBride
Cyclocross is off-road road bike racing. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It rewards bike handling, and punchy power, but you’re going to put a lot of that power back into your brakes a few seconds later. It’s likely to make you ride through sand, grass, mud, pavement, mulch, or gravel, potentially all in one race and it will for sure make you get off and carry your bike up a muddy hill, some stairs, or over wooden barriers. There may be some grass, gravel or even paved straight aways where you can briefly get some speed, but much of the course will involve navigating tight corners.
Cyclocross spectators love cow-bells. When the crowd gets big, the noise gets loud. There is a tradition of “hand-ups”: while you’re struggling through the course, you might see a spectator holding out a hand with a donut hole, or a little cup of something, begging you to take it. Hopefully they’ll even tell you what it is first! It might be orange juice, apple cider, beer, or, fair warning, it may be a shot of fireball. Heckling is a thing – spectators may shout encouragement at you, or they might make fun of you. You never know. But don’t worry, it’s probably just a friendly heckle for the sake of tradition.
I’ve seen riders approaching 70, and I’ve seen riders who have not yet started kindergarten. There are racers with multiple expensive carbon bikes, warming up on their trainer outside their camper van in the parking lot before their Cat 1 race, and there are people out there in costume just having fun in the Cat 4 pack.
In serious races, there are rules about the type of bike you can ride, but none of the Seattle races I’m talking about require specific bikes. You can show up and ride whatever you’ve got and it will be fine. The only thing I would worry about is running tires with some kind of tread, rather than slick road tires. The slicks might leave you wishing for traction. All these races feature a beginner category – if this sounds fun to you, don’t overthink it. Just sign up for the beginner race, and get out there to get a feel for things.
Also there are plenty of videos of amateur races up on YouTube if you want to get a first-person perspective. Check out CurtisPNW’s Channel for the local Seattle area race experience.
Seattle Race Series
MFG Cyclocross
Award: Biggest Crowds
MFG runs the biggest races in the area. They do a six race season, with venues spread over Seattle and Tacoma. The final race of the year at Woodland Park is HUGE. For sure, it’s the biggest spectacle race of the season. It’s coming up soon this year and I’m looking forward to riding it again!
MFG courses are solid, and they are well-run.
Lemon Peel Productions
Award: Best Medals
The Lemon Peel NWGP series is the smallest series of the four I attended, but it was one of my favorites this year. They ran four races: Two in Bellingham, one in Shoreline, and another down near Tacoma. I only made it to the two in Bellingham – sadly, I missed the one which was right down the road from me because I didn’t know it existed yet!
Although I’m sure Steve, who organizes this series, would love to see more people come out and race (and so would I!), one of the unique things about the NWGP series was that the fields are pretty small relative to e.g. MFG so a lot of the race is just you and the course. Being able to take whatever line you want without regard for people around you really lets you experiment and optimize with each corner over the course of several laps. Lemon Peel also seems to take a bit of a different approach to course design – they call it a more “euro” style. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I think mainly that they try to stick closer to the UCI regs around course design, and keep the course wider. I think they tend to be a bit less of an obstacle course than some of the others, though both of the Lemon Peel courses I rode did include some steep technical single-track sections. Their approach works well, in my opinion, and Squalicum Park is still in the running for my favorite course this season. Lemon peel also gave out the best medals this year, in my opinion:
Cross Revolution
Award: Best Timekeeping
So far I’ve made it out to two of the Cross Revolution series, and there are two more to go. The CXR races are all south of Seattle, which is unfortunate for me but may be very convenient for you! I don’t know! Steel Lake was a huge sandfest, with a lot of riding on the beach and a volleyball court. Celebration Park was one of the most interesting courses: long, hilly, with long single track sections out in a high voltage right-of-way. I really enjoyed that one and I’m looking forward to find out what Frontier Park and Kelley Farm are like.
CXR doesn’t bother with podiums or medals, so no awards there. To be honest, I can’t really blame them. At other event podiums, people often don’t snow up, even the winners! It can be a little anti-climactic. There are always other races going on, and these courses can be quite large so the spectators are often spread out far away from where the podiums are.
What CXR does do better than any of the other orgs is timing. I think they have their own software tools, and they are the only one that properly identifies and adjusts for the starting time. Others often perform weird hacks to update times, or don’t even record the time the rider crosses the start line, which makes it impossible to compare e.g. times between two waves which started with different delays.
Cascade Cross
Award: Best Handup Scene
Cascade Cross runs events in Bellingham. Some might quibble that this does not qualify as Seattle, but living north of the city as I do, I’d rather go to Bellingham than south of Tacoma! I didn’t even know this series existed until recently when one of the guys I met at Squalicum Park and have been racing with all season mentioned it to me. I went to the race at Fairhaven Park on Halloween this year and loved it, despite the fact that I got a flat and didn’t finish the race.
They do some things differently from the other orgs. They have different categories, and run fewer races with more categories in each. They started the 50+ Cat B ahead of the Open Cat B – I’m pretty sure they are intentionally designing their races for maximal passing! Everyone was super friendly, there were a lot of costumes at the race, and there were plentiful handups! Despite the meme, this is the first race where someone has handed me a beer mid-race. A tiny cup of warm porter, just before I rode through the smoke-machine filled haunted tent. It was great! Also, they had cookies and snacks.
Cascade Cross runs their season later than the others too! I thought my last race would be in November, but now I can extend that all the way to the Cornwall Classic on January 9th!
Upcoming Races
As of this writing, there are still some races this season!
| Race | Organizer | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Frontier Park | CXR | Nov 15, 2026 |
| Camp Lutherwood | Cascade | Nov 21, 2026 |
| Woodland Park | MFG | Nov 22, 2026 |
| Kelley Farm | CXR | Nov 29, 2026 |
| Hannegan Speedway | Cascade | Dec 5, 2026 |
| Cornwall Classic | Cascade | Jan 9, 2026 |
If you’re looking for one race to check out from all of those, I’d prioritizing Woodland Park. The fact that it is right in Seattle and is the last MFG race of the season means it will be very high energy. There were over 1000 racers last year at woodland! It’s nuts.
My Race Season
I have been to ten races this year, and have six more on the calendar. I was looking forward to CX season all summer, and it has not disappointed. It’s been really fun showing up every weekend to a new venue – most of which I’ve never been to – and discovering a new course. And every course is different, with it’s own style. Some are completely flat, and some make you climb alot. Some are fast, some are slow. Some have you getting off the bike many times per lap, and some just once to run over some barriers. There are massive sand traps, and scary rough descents. Muddy off-camber turns where everyone slides out, and big swoopy turns that you can fly through.
Over the course of the season, you tend to see the same people over and over again, so you start to learn who’s who. Some people are faster – they always beat you but you feel like maybe you have a shot at beating them on a good day, and damn are you going to feel good about it if you do. Some finish close behind, and you know they might be coming for you if you let off the gas at all, and then there are the ones you are constantly jockeying for position with where never know who’s going to win.
I struggled a lot in the first couple muddy races with crashing. Magnuson was a really fast race, with a few muddy sections. I felt like I made good time on most of the course, but I kept pushing too fast through slick corners and I wiped out three times. Each time, a bunch of people I had already passed overtook me, and then I had to pass them again. On top of the lost time, the crashes shake me up, and it takes me a lap to get back into the right head space. The third crash tweaked something in my leg, and I limped through the last lap. After that race, I realized I needed to slow down sometimes to go fast, and so I’ve been focused on just being methodical and predictable. If the corner is at all sketchy, I’m making a point to get my inside foot clipped out as I go into it, before I start sliding. It’s only been a couple races, but so far it’s going well and they were both crash-free.
After being back of the pack in the beginner category last year, I’m happy to find that I can hang with the front of the Cat 4 pack this year. I even got cocky and tried to enter one Cat 3 race at a Lemon Peel event – my ego was checked and I was dead last, way behind everyone else. My goal is to race Cat 3 next year though.
I want to send a big “thank you!” to all the people who work to put these races on every year. I’m sure it is a lot of work, and though they do collect registration fees, I doubt that anyone is getting rich off of these events. I do see a whole lot of people having a good time at them though!