It’s a big weekend for cyclocross as the River City Bicycles Cyclocross Crusade series heads to Bend for their annual Halloween festivities.
This year — in addition to the usual two full days of racing, legendary costume contest, and huge blowout party sponsored by Deschutes Brewery on Saturday night — organizers have something new up their sleeve: an adaptive bike race.
The Crusade’s Halloween party has been a benefit for the nonprofit Oregon Adaptive Sports for the past several years. According to Sherry Schwenderlauf with the Cyclocross Crusade, the Bend chapter of OAS reached out earlier this year in hopes of allowing its members to try their handcycling skills on the ‘cross course.
Schwenderlauf says about six people from Bend will take part in the event. Using handcycles, they’ll race for 30 minutes on a modified section of the course’s grassy bowl area near the brewery on Saturday afternoon after the other races have finished.
“We are thrilled to have the handcycles riders race on our course. It’s something new and exciting,” Schwenderlauf said, “We believe everyone should have the opportunity to try ‘cross!”
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In other adaptive cycling news, the City of Portland will wrap up is Adaptive Biketown program this weekend. The program, which launched back in July, allows people to rent handcycles, tandems, and recumbents. Participants need to make a reservation at Kerr Bikes on Water Avenue (near OMSI on the Esplanade) and get properly fitted before renting a bike.
In an announcement made this week, Biketown said this weekend is the final chance to take advantage of the program.
The weather is supposed to be gorgeous this weekend, so give it a try!
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Hand cyclists can be amazing. I don’t recall his name, but when I was race-training in Eugene in the 90’s, a world-class hand cyclist would occasionally ride with us. He was within 10 or 15% of us in speed and climbing ability, which is just astounding, when you consider his machine weighed a lot more than ours, and he was using his arms, which are not even close to a leg in muscle size. and, he would have destroyed any ‘regular’ cyclist.
The last time I did the Crater Lake go-around we were stopped at a pull out near the end when a hand cyclist blasted by us like he was fresh outta the gate. I thought, what tha … ?!!