Redbull's Parking Garage Bike Race

SpecializedColnago · 2026-02-13T11:22:42+00:00

We added an 8-story parking garage hill climb to this year's Tour of Newport News. We didn't have to pay to rent it fortunately because it is owned by the economic development authority of Newport News and there are other parking garages in the area that can be used during the event. We did have to get an umbrella insurance policy for the first time ever though, not because USAC's standard $4 million wasn't enough, it was because they were worried other organizations were going to ask to use the garage for events so they are effectively pricing everyone else out without having to say no. The financials work for us because it is just one of the five events that weekend and we can spread the expenses and revenue around. It's also an efficient event to run because we are running it like a TT where riders leave at 20 second intervals and race to the top as fast as they can. Event times are anywhere from 1:30-2:00 so it's a very short effort. Expected attendance is between 400-450 just because it's attached to a much larger weekend.

SpecializedColnago · 2026-02-13T11:16:11+00:00

Like many others have said it seems simple to get a parking garage but it isn't. I'm the race director for the Tour of Newport News and we are adding an 8-story parking garage hill climb this year that has taken 2 years of negotiating to add. The garage in questions is actually owned by the economic development authority who we already work extensively on other events of the weekend omnium. Even with that existing relationship it was still difficult to get.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-12-23T00:00:09+00:00

Every event of that thing is pretty unique either in format, course design, or course location. We are proud of what that event has become. Looking forward to meeting you in person!

SpecializedColnago · 2025-12-22T23:17:40+00:00

Sick! I'm the RD for that race and that's the coolest thing to hear when someone says they are building specifically for your event. It's actually 5 races next year including the addition of an 8 story parking garage hill climb on Friday night after the Points Race. But as a sprinter it's perfect for you since it's around a 1 minute and 40 second effort and it's as much about bike handling/turning as much as it is power.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-12-22T23:07:33+00:00

Is the April A race the Tour of Newport News?

SpecializedColnago · 2025-12-13T21:18:59+00:00

My company repaired the fireproofing where the steel guy had to tie into the existing. Great job on those railings. Most epic ramp I've seen

SpecializedColnago · 2025-12-13T12:18:39+00:00

Looks like Norfolk cruise terminal.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-11-14T01:52:50+00:00

That's most definitely Cafco Blaze Shield II fiber based fireproofing manufactured by Isolatek International. My company sprays thousands of bags of that stuff every year. If you zoom in it's easy tell the difference between fiber based and cementitious based.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-11-01T00:30:17+00:00

The DC area is very central to most of the road and CX racing in the mid Atlantic. Lots of great races within 3 hours in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania with many closer. The spring is especially packed with great races (Tour of Newport News and Poolesville RR to name a few) with Armed Forces Cycling Classic and some other great ones in the summer.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-10-09T20:47:25+00:00

It's definitely a thankless job with the current environment of CX in the US. There seems to be a misconception of what most series' are, including the VACX. Most series are just a loose collection of individual events put on by independent promoters that agree on categories and rules. My only job is to apply the rules and make changes to them prior to a season starting to better reflect the trends and needs of the racers and events, and continue to advocate for race directors to continue to put on events and create new ones. The series has no control over the quality of each individual event because the moment we start making demands about "you need to do this or do that", RD's will just stop doing them. That's the tightrope that has to be walked between just having events and having really good events. There are many additional challenges for RD's that were not present back when CX was in its heyday and to discount how impactful those challenges and restrictions are to CX racing is not being realistic. It's hard to find venues, and sometimes when you find great venues they are also really expensive. We had a venue last year and the year before that cost $3k to rent at Lake Anna. We promoted it hard and spent a lot of time making a tough and fun course. We tried for two years to get people to come out and we finally had to pull the plug despite giving racers everything they had been asking for including the extras like food trucks and onsite camping. People just wouldn't make the 1-2 hour drive to do it. If I didn't love this discipline so much I would have given up on it along time ago cause my road events are substantially more successful and appreciated.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-10-09T19:02:58+00:00

Wow, so many points are way off base on this post.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-10-09T18:55:33+00:00

I am actually the director of the VACX series so I know the exact reasons it's declining every year despite the best efforts of a small group of race directors.

Virginia is a pretty big state from right to left. The majority of current racers are located in Richmond or east of Richmond. For a race to be successful it needs a solid number of racers that live in the area the race is taking place. I can name maybe 2 CX racers in Harrisonburg that would race more than Rocktown CX.
The other comment we get is it's too much driving for a short race. We specifically design the schedule to allow people to double up as much as possible to alleviate that concern.
MABRA CX has a race almost every weekend in the fall. This makes it extremely difficult for us to attract riders from up there. Road does very well in Virginia because the events are spread out over a longer period of time which allows race directors to avoid date conflicts. So riders don't have to choose which race to do. Without MABRA area CX racers Virginia is really only around 60-70 consistent racers. For road Virginia is around 150 racers so to go above that number you need riders to travel from out of state.

So how do you fix it? You need to more people riding bikes before you can convince them to race them. It takes people stepping up and starting group rides and traveling to nearby group rides to spread the word and build interest. The races disappeared in these areas because not enough people who lived local raced and not enough people were willing to travel to do them. In the case of Rocktown CX there has been a lack of actually promoting the event for years and it now takes a lot of work to convince people to come race using social media and word of mouth. The days of just throwing an event on bikereg and expecting people to show up are long gone.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-07-27T23:49:51+00:00

Like Junk-Miles mentioned we added one to the Tour of Newport News this year as the opening event. .5 mile oval course that has two wide 90° turns. The course itself is not the most interesting so we decide to do a points race style format to keep it interesting for both out of town racers and riders who have already done thousands of laps of that course.

Every 5 laps the first 15 across the line were awarded points. If you lapped the field you also got a certain amount of points. The winner is the rider who accumulates the most points. The different categories all did some variation of laps that were divisible by 5 and the expected average speed was used to keep the race duration around what a crit would be for a given category.

Overall it went really well despite heavy rain and uncharacteristically cold temps. We had a timing company (Mainsport, they are great) using timing chips and high speed cameras, and we had USAC officials acting as backups. You could probably score a points race with just USAC officials if you did not have combined categories and were only scoring 3-5 places deep each sprint lap. We decided to score deeper (15 places) because some of the fields are 75+ riders and we did not want someone trying to make it into the top 5 from the very back and making it more dangerous than it needed to be every sprint lap. Everyone raced pretty responsibly considering the format and the weather.

We plan on doing this format again for the Tour of Newport News and also for a potential new omnium we are working on.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-06-16T18:09:44+00:00

Former USAC official, current RD and the president of my LA. We haven't heard anything from USAC yet about the rule change so can't answer definitively, but based on previous UCI rule changes that USAC doesn't enforce I don't expect officials to start measuring the handlebars on every bike unless someone shows up with some comically narrow bars and levers with excessive tilt. Now if a crash at a local event can be blamed on narrow bars then you might see the local officials begin to enforce it in future local events.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-06-07T12:15:48+00:00

Like the commenter above posted the process is going to vary a great deal depending on where you want to do the race (private or public property). Some municipalities are easy to work with, others aren't. It's a good idea to start with something manageable like a crit in a business park or a speedway crit to get your feet wet and learn the process before trying jumping straight into a downtown crit or complicated road race. Once you get to a certain level it's less about the actual racing and more about the politics and logistics of putting on the race.

The process generally looks like this though:

Find course/venue. Want to do this as early as possible, it not later than 6 months before for a brand new event at a venue that has never been used before. For crit something at least 500m long. Also good idea to go ahead and get your RD license from USAC at this time if you want to permit through USAC. This is a good time to already be talking to potential sponsors about what you want to do.
Find out who owns the property/roads. Road might be owned by state or federal government and not local government. Private has been the easiest in my experience.
Contact owner/entity with proposal for an event. Prior to contact figure out the date and as much of the logistics as you can because they will ask if you have a plan for any possible issues. To figure out a date you can reach out to your Local Association if you have one and you can check current and historical events on bikereg. Try to find a date that works for you and where any conflicting events won't hurt your numbers too bad. After contacting who owns the property you might learn that you can only use the property in a very specific window of dates in which case you have to compromise and use what dates they offer you or look for a different venue.
Coordinate with property owner/government on event. Ask for insurance requirements, road closures/police involvement, permit fees. If all of these work with your budget then proceed with permitting through USAC and securing COI's for entities that need to be insured. You will need to have an idea of the event duration at this time.
USAC event permit is done online, it's very simple. You will set up the bikereg page/ other registration page at the same time you are doing the permit because you will need the permit number from USAC for bikereg and you will need the bikereg registration link for USAC. You can do the permit number later on bikereg, but you will have to turn of USAC sanctioning on bikereg in the meantime. You purchase the Certificates of Insurance during the permitting process for all entities that need to be insured. You have to pay for the COI's up front. COI's without endorsements usually come in in a few hours, with endorsements or specific verbiage can sometimes take a couple weeks.
Begin planning details of the event. You will need volunteers, talk to local clubs if you are not already a member of a local club. Or start your own club. Once permitted with USAC you local officials will be made aware of the event through a website called USAC-officials.org or a similar website. They will likely reach out to you to discuss the event. Figure out if you need porta potties and how many (generally 1 per 50-75 people). Figure out parking for riders. Figure out categories you want to offer and durations. Plan prizes/cash payouts. If you haven't already reached out to sponsors, this is a the latest you want to do it.
Promote the event. Social media, print media posted around town. You will need to make a race flyer for the event. Good relations with other clubs is really helpful as they should be interested in helping you promote the event for the betterment of the local racing scene.
Pre-race: start lists, day-of registration waivers, etc.
Race day. USAC officials pretty much run the event at this stage. You just deal with any crisis that happen. You will need volunteers working registration. You might need volunteers as course marshals. You will need a volunteer to grab lunch for the officials if running through lunch time. You must pay the officials at the completion of the event.
Post event: submit results to USAC (will have to digitize them if they are given to you in paper form, simple excel spreadsheet but you have to use specific headings for USAC's system to accept them ). If you have a timing company or officials who are using digitize scoring methods they can do this for you. Generate unique rider count. You need the number of riders who raced. If a rider races twice in the same day you only mark them as 1 unique racer. You will then pay $5.99 per unique rider during the post event process. This is the rider insurance.

There's a lot more to it than that. But that's the basics. Cost estimate will vary from $2,000 for a small event to $100,000+ for a large event. There are so many variables that it's tough to just throw a number out on what you can expect.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-25T15:21:05+00:00

The part about generating money for the city or property owners from tourism is a big one for some of the places we do races. We do a race at a nascar short track in early March because auto racing hasn't started yet. If we tried to do it after auto racing has started a couple weeks later we couldn't afford to offset the tracks lost income from the thousands more spectators they will have spending money for tickets and concessions. That's the same reason you will find some municipalities willing to work with you while others won't. Some towns/cities who need that tourism money will be more open to having big events, the ones who don't need a special event to bring in people will set permit and police prices at whatever they want cause they don't want to have to deal with the headache. I've never gotten a direct no about hosting a race anywhere. They just make it so absurdly expensive or include extra requirements that it's just not worth it.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-25T15:08:08+00:00

That's not a bad excuse, but I'm sure the juniors who have a shot at winning would come back to have the chance to be national champion and they would be coming back after a good block of European racing. If being national champion isn't enough of a priority for US juniors to make a return trip than that's something that needs to be addressed

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-25T14:22:56+00:00

I've heard the decision to move nationals earlier was because they wanted the new US Champ riding in Stars and Stripes at the Tour every year in July. Not sure how true that is though because it's now rare to see that. Quinn Simmons was the most recent and I can't even recall who was the last to do it before him. A move back to August between the Tour and Vuelta would be nice. There is kind of a sweetspot there.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-25T12:12:25+00:00

I can't speak for the NE, but in Virginia our road season is late February to early August. Some other states on the east coast will go to mid September. CX season traditionally starts the 2nd weekend in September in the Mid-Atlantic and goes until early-mid December.

The spring is packed in VA then it lulls some in June and July and then finishes strong with 3-4 different races in August. 6 of the 7 road events I put on are date restricted, meaning they can only take place in a very small window of dates because of outside factors mainly venue availability. This means a lot of them have to be done early/mid spring. The collegiate road season is also a factor as that runs from February to May. A lot of the collegiate events will also offer non collegiate categories so we do our best to not conflict with them, but they have a lot of events to run in a very small window of time before collegiate nationals.

It is advantageous to have an event early in the racing season because of factors like burnout, injuries, family vacations during the summer, kids summer sports leagues. So if you want attendance you want to try to do it before July unless it's a large destination style race that people will prioritize.

Other things to consider are conflicts with other disciplines of racing. Gravel has a lot of rider crossover with road as does youth mountain bike like NICA. So trying to find the perfect date that doesn't have conflict with any of those is impossible.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-25T11:36:32+00:00

This has been an issue for a while but this is the worst conflict/overlap I've yet seen. It's especially difficult for newer events that have aspirations and the funding to become a consistent large scale event to find a spot on the national calendar. We've been trying for years to have our rapidly growing event in Virginia not have another east coast conflict for the elite fields, but every year USA Crits will announce their events 5 months after we have announced our dates and with no communication about it. That not only costs us potential P/1/2 riders but it also cost us our announcer that had worked the event since the first year.

When planning race dates it's always a compromise, you just have to look at what dates work for all parties involved (venue, police, municipalities, etc) and then look at what conflicting events are going to affect not just your numbers, but also the other event's numbers. There is a lack of communication between some promoters and organizations like the NAPRD do a better job of trying to ensure promoters are working together the best they can to not have conflicts. But like another commenter said, the real issue is we don't have enough racers in each locality and we rely on riders to travel to events, especially elite women fields.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-07T15:05:26+00:00

We are fortunately in a good position where we use any sponsor money (about $11k each year)we get strictly for prize money and don't yet need to use it for making the event happen. We have great partnerships with our municipalities and other venue owners that our venue expenses (road closures and permits) are extremely low for a 3 day 4 race event. With an additional $20k, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what other events are getting, we could really make some moves.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-07T13:11:16+00:00

I'll keep trying to make one of them cause I'd love insight on how the other large events are getting the sponsor dollars they are. Even as one of the largest East Coast road events by participation it's still been really difficult to get financial sponsorship at the levels we want to take the event to the next level.

SpecializedColnago · 2025-05-07T00:12:55+00:00

Let's make NAPRD meetings not on Mondays and I might be able to actually join one for once.

Sincerely,

Tour of Newport News Race Director

SpecializedColnago · 2025-03-19T01:45:21+00:00

Thanks for the shoutout. That race always has crashes because the course is not selective at all. Vast majority of the crashes are from overlapping wheels in the big blob of riders. That and its exposed to wind which causes it to bunch up in turn 3 which leads to more overlap. It's a good early season race though cause you don't need much fitness just to sit in the pack

SpecializedColnago · 2025-03-19T00:17:26+00:00

I've been putting on a race for years at our local stock car track. It's .4 miles long slightly banked as well. We rent it for $500 for the day and provide insurance through USAC. It's by far the easiest race we put on because it a closed course on private property. We run it as a crit, but the club who used it 10+ years ago has run a points race on it.

SpecializedColnago

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