As a discipline, cyclocross is ancient. It’s the time-honored, bare-bones, all-terrain steeple chase.
As a proving ground, however, cyclocross is like guerrilla warfare. Course tape comes and goes in less than 48 hours as racers weave their way to and through unassuming venues where there’s hardly ever evidence left to prove we were there. This makes Fifth Street Cross a total outlier as it transforms terrain and thrives in a test of time.
“We wanted to honor the roots, but move the needle of who here we’re talking to,” organizer and shot-caller Gabe Lloyd told me at the conclusion of the opening night chaos. Given the record-setting three-digit attendance for the 2023 series kick-off, it proves the Thursday night plan is running like a finely-tuned groupset… and we all know how that usually goes.
The Promoters
It’s a little after 4 p.m. Early, yeah, but it’s a traffic-jammed two-hour drive from New Jersey and I quit my job earlier that morning… so I had some time to kill. Competitors, including cross-country runners, begin tricking in; there’s no shortage of support for FSX in bike-crazy Emmaus, Pa. – including that of the borough, which allows use of its property. The weekly event, in all its forms and venues, dates back to 2005. Lloyd and wife Kacey, who ran registration, scoring and fielding all forms of last-minute needs, are the current caretakers at the helm from late August through mid-November.
‘The challenge with this is trying to stay authentic to its roots. Authenticity is so important.’
“The challenge with this is trying to stay authentic to its roots,” he said of the series that long ago outgrew backyard status. “Authenticity is so important.”
It’s not quite outlaw racing, but it’s a malleable thing molded just a bit different each year. The “stoke” surrounding the social media presence is real, he adds, and race results plus plenty of photo galleries and merch to boot are all part of the exhaustive production. There’s even a Halloween week race with costumes pretty much required.
Lloyd knows the torch will be passed eventually but for now, he’s in a good place with good company. Those he thanked specifically for wearing all the hats, braving poison ivy and bushwhacking their way to an unrivaled circuit include Finn Harrington, Mike Yozell, Dan Feeney and David Lloyd.
The Racers
I’ve been here in the golden hour dust at dusk, single-digit cold, slick-as-shit downpours, campfire darkness, a post-Thanksgiving endurance event and locked into a last lap pass with my cousin in his first-ever bike race. I’ve rolled off a tubular tire (FSX’s rulebook would say this is my fault) and won a gift certificate to the local brewery for finishing in some randomly-selected spot. It’s never gets old. At 7 p.m., we’re somewhere around the bell lap and gridding up for race two.
“It’s super twisty. Tonight’s going to be dry and fast,” Tom Repkoe, last year’s series winner, said. “Winner” is of course subjective here at Fifth Street, where mental math with your weekly points (double if it rains!) to somehow arrive in – you guessed it – fifth place is the podium-topper.
Repkoe has been coming for seven or so years, he estimates, since upgrading from a parts bin bike to being out at the pointy end of things. “Everyone has someone to race with here,” he said of those up front, the rest of us off the back and even the ones who got dropped, yet still found someone to chase. “It’s still a good group, even late in the season,” he offered of the cold and dark that dwindles entries.
The Support Systems
From “do you think I own a torque wrench?” to “outta gas – just pass,” there’s no shortage of mid-race gallows humor when everyone is heaving and hurting. Trying to clamp down on a QR skewer while the guy two turns over has his bike upside-down to inspect an inoperable rear derailleur could prove frustrating. Or, you can find the absurdity in pairing rigid frames, drop-bar ergonomics and just-wide-enough tires with punishing terrain.
Are you battling with the person in front while simultaneously trying to shut the door on the racer behind, or is it just surviving the circuit for 40 minutes to an hour? It’s the unofficial job of Jody Hauck, an impromptu grill master and father of a regular FSX racer, to help lighten the mood.
Here with Allentown, Pa.’s Blink Optical, which helps cover entry fees for juniors, Hauck is head hype man, heckler and hot dog hander-upper. He’s got your pit stop covered. I just don’t know how anyone who accepts his cupcake hand-ups keeps them down.
“I know people are suffering. My whole life is trying to make people laugh,” he offered, adding that as a former mountain bike guy, you’ll get out what you put in. “It’s a great training exercise.” Back markers in skin suits and Cat 3s in jean shorts are all welcome here in this run-what-ya-brung battle for the same square foot of earth. No matter why you exchange hard-earned money for Type 2 “fun,” do thank Keystone Running Store and Action Wheels Bike Shop for their support in 2023.
What’s the First Rule of Fifth Street Cross?
There’s ’90s radio rock in the staging area, pits buzzing with last-minute mechanical Hail Marys and bench racing that begins the second you’re past the finish line. It’s the motocross race day atmosphere I could only watch some 30-odd years ago; now the action is painfully participatory.
Nowhere is this personal throwback more apparent than FSX’s rollers, a supercross-like whoops section that sends speeding neon and screeching stoppers into a tight turn of a berm and then throwing a little whip or cross-up out of the last hump. Who says you can’t go home again?
On that note, it’s just short of 10 p.m. and while I don’t have work in the morning, I do have a van loaded with damp gear, a muddy bike and a wonky rear wheel that caused half the field to ride right past.
There’s plenty to ponder during a long, dark drive down I-476. How does an unassuming public works yard at the bottom of a dead end road, dotted by compost heaps and bound by an active railway line, become a real-deal race track every fall? It’s a testament to promoters, volunteers, fans, friends and Mid-Atlantic riders who engage in a weekly campaign of ‘cross combat.
For nearly 20 years, season after season, this lightning in a bottle has been uncorked and re-captured. The cleats click in, the cranks rotate for leverage and at this point, the PSI is what it is. Here’s your moment of silence, a dead reckoning with alleged fitness and supposed competitiveness.
“It’s important to me that this lasts another 20 years,” Lloyd said.
Ditto. Oh yeah, and don’t be a dick.
Greg Adomaitis 