Home > Cyclocross

Inside Victoria’s Underground CX series

The first rule of Cross Club is ...

Photo by: Caution tape and golf clubs

If you’ve seen David Fincher’s 1999 movie, Fight Club, you know the first rule of any group you want to keep secret is that you do not talk about it. The second rule is the same. For Victoria, B.C.’s Cross Club (or Underground CX), the short list of rules started just like that. At one point they were even listed on the series website, though the rules that followed differed dramatically from anything Bratt Pitt might have decreed.

As you might guess from the mention of Underground CX’s website, the weekly meeting is no longer strictly secret. In the 20 years since the first meeting of around 10 riders in the fall of 2002, it’s grown into something bigger and better than any clandestine event. Underground CX now hosts six semi-formal practice races, once a week all fall. There’s no timing, no results, no equipment checks and just two starts. Youth club riders rub shoulders with local pros. Everyone finishes the day smiling and everyone helps take down the course.

Secret beginnings

When Cross Club started back in 2002, it was much more unofficial. No reg. No official time. There wasn’t even course tape. Like now, it definitely was a race simulation, but not a race.

“We just rode the trails a couple of times as a pre-ride and to get everyone familiar with the ‘course’ we would be ‘racing’ that day,” recalls Drew MacKenzie, who started the series with Kelly Guest. “Then we did a 20-30 min seven lap “race” of the identified trails. No course marking or anything.”

Just a handful of people showed up, but they were fast. On the list are local legends and, with several National teams training out of Victoria, an Olympian or two. Even Simon Whitfield showed up.

Le Mans starts are the best start. The team relay season finale is a Cross Club tradition.

“It was a blast. Then we started looking at doing that a little more frequently just for fun,” MacKenzie says. “By the next fall in 2003 Kelly and I were scouting out schoolyards and forests or parks where we could do a ‘pop up’ event every week in Sept and Oct. It was fun and it was great training for the cyclocross racing I was doing.”

At first, it stayed secret. MacKenzie and Guest would scout a location. An e-mail would go out. Whoever showed up, MacKenzie recalls, follow the same pre-ride, race routine, “so everyone knew which tree to go around, what goal posts we went through, ect.” Then they would race. “Super hard.”

By 2006, the e-mail list had grown and there was some semblance of a course. “At that point, we were using a mix of irrigation flags, cones, some thin flagging tape from home depot and these foot-long metal ‘stakes’ someone manufactured as a donation.

MacKenzie went away for a year and Guest continued with Troy Woodburn and Rob Britton helping organize. When he came back, it had grown a bit more. One night around 2008, numbers jumped from 30-ish to nearly 75.

“That’s when we realized we had to get more organized. Make the courses longer to avoid bottnecks and lapping issues.”

Holly Henry and Emilly Johnston – both on the podium at Nationals – rub elbows in the final corner at Cross Club.

Golf clubs, caution tape and growing pains

MacKenzie and Guest also had to start asking permission. When courses made of cones turned into garbage pails full of broken golf clubs and roles of caution tape, and with numbers growing every year, some of the unexpecting “hosts” were starting to ask questions. Pointed questions.

“Finding venues was nothing but trouble,” MacKenzie says with a laugh. “I’ve worked with every municipality in Greater Victoria in some way and every year it has always felt tenuous whether or not we would be allowed continued access.”

As the event grew, one by one Victoria’s patchwork of School Districts pulled out. A complaint letter ended their use of another municipal park. A few venues are now Underground CX staples, though.

“Saanich has been really great to work with, putting on events at Layritz or any other park. Juan de Fuca Rec Centre is probably the biggest surprise and most unexpected success.”

Cross Club
Wellsman schemed up a “CX” shaped course for the ’22 finale relay. A full course take a couple of hours to tape with a handful of volunteers. Photo: Fabian Merino

Cross Club grows up

Growing also meant introducing registration. With the event requiring permits and insurance for every week to stay above board, and rolls of course tape needed to connect the donated golf club course stakes, a minimal registration fee was introduced. For a full season of 6-7 races, it’s now just over $20. At the pre-pandemic peak, 170 riders were registered for “Underground Cross,” says Peter Wellsman, who’s joined Guest and MacKenzie to help with registration and making the course, though not everyone makes it out every week.

What hasn’t changed is the attitude. “People that start off here find it is a really welcoming group,” Wellsman says. “They find that cross is really fun. It’s not intense road racing. It’s not crazy scary mountain biking. It’s just a good time.” Wellsman was drawn into ‘cross by while living in Nanaimo when two other Island ‘cross organizers, Norm Thibault and Wendy Simms, invited him to join a workout. “I was just hooked, immediately.”

Now, Cross Club/Undergound CX and Cross on the Rock, which Thibault founded and still spearheads (with the “Council of Cross”) feed into each other. For many, Cross Club is the first real taste of group racing before trying a COTR event.

“It’s huge for us. It’s the perfect stepping stone to Cross on the Rock,” says Lister Farrar, youth coach of Victoria’s Tripleshot Cycling. “We practice a lot on our own. Here, there are more people but it sets the right tone. It’s not too serious, but they still get to see all kinds of people and get used to racing against adults.”

“I think it’s cool how it is elite riders that do Cross Club for the rest of us, not the opposite,” Farrar adds. “Usually it goes the other way, elites absorbing energy. It’s just the most remarkable example of community effort.”

While Guest and Wellsman take on the bulk of organizing (MacKenzie now lives a few hours north outside Courtenay) Cross Club does remain a community effort. A few volunteers show up mid-afternoon and put up a course over a couple of hours. After the A and B practice races, everyone, whether you’re a local pro or one of Farrar’s youths, helps tear down the course. With everyone helping, it usually takes 10-15 minutes.

“Underground” CX at 20(-ish)

From its first meetings to its current, organized-but-laidback form, Cross Club has grown and changed significantly. It’s also lasted an incredible two decades (minus a couple years, and depending when you count the official start). What keeps MacKenzie and Guest (and now Wellsman) motivated after so long?

“It’s just a blast,” says MacKenzie, adding with a healthy dose of self-deprication “.. and it was really the only ‘training’ I would do for racing over the years!”

“I like that it has no results and allows fast riders and beginners alike to come out, participate and get some high-quality practice in without feeling as much pressure or elitism that higher-level events can sometimes involve,” MacKenzie elaborates. “It’s been so rewarding to see the level of participation grow and to witness first-hand the fun and excitement so many people have doing Cross Club. Plus, once turnout got to a certain level, the social aspect of the series became a big part of the appeal.”

The final race of the year is the perfect example of what keeps Cross Club from getting stale, even after 20 years. It is, traditionally, a two-person relay. Show up with a team, or find someone when you arrive. Then a Le Mans, running start, some sort of organized chaos for 20 minutes of pros racing against, or with 14-year-olds, Masters, novices and, usually, a team of MacKenzie and Guest.

There’s a vague sense of a winner, plenty of friendly elbows and cheering. Then everyone grabs an armful of golf clubs or course tape, the course disappears and everyone disperses into the late-fall dusk.