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Your summertime cyclocross check-up: Part 1*

Is it time? Well, with the first North American UCI cyclocross race over 14 weeks away, we can’t exactly start trumpeting “cyclocross is coming” with any kind of real fervor. And yet…it IS coming. We’ve already heard a couple of big announcements from the UCI and the USCX cyclocross race series, that are worth reiterating here in the early days of June.

Shrinkflation?

As first reported in The CX Hairs Bulletin, North America’s premier elite cyclocross series, the Trek USCX Cyclocross Series, lost last year’s title sponsor and with it, a full weekend of professional and amateur racing. There were over 1300 paid entry fees at last year’s 3 days of races at the Wisconsin finale of the USCX series, making it one of the most popular cyclocross race weekends of the year. And with local cyclocross calendars very much in a summer slumber, we’re yet to know where those racers and their fans will end up in 2026. All we do know is that the secret bar in the woods behind Trek HQ in Waterloo, Wisconsin is playing Semisonic’s “It’s closing time” on repeat, and the grass on “Factory Hill” will have a chance to grow a little greener this year.

Fortunately in 2026, sponsors Pactimo, Bikeflights, and Full Moon Vista Bike & Sport remain committed to the USCX and are providing equal prize purse payouts to the 2025 series despite only having 6 races over 3 weekends this coming year. The Northeast CX Report would have loved if, for example, Really Rad could have stepped in to take the over the 4th weekend slot from Trek, but we’re also extremely grateful to the organizing teams behind the three remaining race weekends in the premier North American racing series.

Rochester Cyclocross starts things off on September 19th and 20th, before series competitors move on to Roanoke for Virginia’s Blue Ridge Go Cross on September 26th and 27th. Charm City Cross in Baltimore closes things out on October 3rd and 4th. Each of these races is great in their own right and new subscribers to The Northeast CX Report should click on the links above to read our reporting from last year’s races!

New Bike Day?

The other big story for the coming year of North American cyclocross competition is that all riders entering UCI sanctioned races will be required to have UCI approval and a sticker that looks similar to this:

Most competitors at the elite level won’t even give this rule a second thought, as they tend to already ride bikes that have been UCI approved. We could have assumed that—but we also had to double check (#journalism)—of course Canadian National Cyclocross Champion Maghalie Rochette’s custom built carbon Seeker frame is on the UCI approved list. But only the “Seeker CX” in a size 53 (with an Enve cross fork). So unless you are riding Rochette’s actual pit bike, if you’ve been racing some other Seeker bike in cross races, you will have to find another ride if you want to enter UCI races in 2026.

More broadly speaking, we can imagine that some juniors who are either on smaller teams or riding solo with just the support of their parents and second-hand equipment, might be caught out by this announcement. Similarly, whether you are a penny-pinching masters athlete with a vintage “run what you brung” attitude, or a resourceful racer who’s found a direct-to-consumer connection abroad for a no-brand-name bike that gives you top-dollar performance for a fraction of the price, or a big spender with a one-off custom rocket ship, you might have to buy a new bike or cross off Pan Ams and/or World championship races from your calendar in 2026. On the other hand, with over 70 pages of bikes that have UCI approval, this might not actually be the full, “American-sized” 40cm shin-busting barriers (placed on at the entrance or exit of a hill for maximum devastation) that we’re making it out to be. Click over here to see if your bikes are UCI legal.

New Subscriber?

Due to what we can only logically assume is a glitch in the matrix (and a shout out from another great cyclocross newsletter, The CX Hairs Bulletin) our little newsletter has somewhat recently received a surprise and largely unexplained influx of new subscribers and so we thought we better say hello and introduce ourselves properly to all our new readers!

The Northeast CX Report is heading into its third season of publication focusing primarily on reporting on the many great cyclocross races and the riders of…wait for it…the northeastern region of the United States! That said, subscribers who have been around for a minute know how quickly our particular definition of “northeast” expands to bring you the latest on the very best in North American cyclocross race conversations throughout the fall and winter cyclocross season. And when North American riders head to Europe to test themselves against the best? From top-10 contenders to the lead-lappers fighting a little further behind, we strive to keep you informed on their weekly progress in France, Belgium, Holland and other places…northeast of the United States.

It’s relatively easy to read about Lucinda Brand’s championship-winning ride at Worlds, but if you want to know about Alexa Haviland, Ada Watson, Aida Linton, Kira Mullins and the rest of the North American Junior Women’s race, for example, there’s literally only one place you are going to find that! Click here to read the North American World’s Wrap-Up from last year’s exciting race!

Now, for our subscribers in say…checks data…Türkiye or Australia, reading about the very best in North American UCI cyclocross races might be the extent of your interest in our newsletter. And that’s great! Glad to have you as a subscriber! But we started with a core mission to contribute to the virtual hype-machine of local northeastern United States cyclocross racing scene, and so we’re also going to talk a lot about smaller local and regional races that you may have never heard of! That’s never going to change.

And while you’re free to pass on seeing pictures, video clips and reading about the action from, say…the grounds of Moran Middle School in Connecticut for race #6 of the Project Mayhem CX series, you would miss out on a great video interview with Colin “Results Boy” Reuter, the founder of one of the most influential cyclocross websites in North America, crossresults.com. Seriously, for our international subscribers, cross racers in America track their “crossresults” points with the passion and desperation of an international racer trying to sign a contract for next year tracks their UCI points!

Or maybe you international fans think you don’t particularly care about a local northeast race called Crossasaurus Awesome; why would you? But if you missed that edition of the newsletter, you also missed watching clips of this year’s Paris Roubaix 115th place finisher (just 15 minutes behind Wout’s race winning time!) Robin Carpenter (Modern Adventure Pro Cycling) getting ready for his return to world-class international road racing by taking on the locals on a sleepy grass field of a thousand turns in Pennsylvania. Click here to watch the interview where Carpenter talks about his racing, a new team and more!

We’re still a free publication, dependent on the financial resources of our actual paying job (Emergency Department Nurse in a stupidly overcrowded NYC hospital), and the time constraints of being a father to a busy teenager, so we can’t get to every UCI race in North America, but you and I are extremely lucky in that many of the great UCI races are a) in the northeast(ish) and b) that we are active racers and love torturing ourselves in morning races before ditching our cyclocross gear in the back of a station wagon and quickly gearing up in a baseball cap, pen, paper and an old iPhone to bring you the highlights from the afternoon’s elite showdowns. Lucky for you, over the years, The Northeast CX Report has made friends with a few actual professional photographers who often generously contribute their great shots to the newsletter too!

Throughout the cyclocross season you can expect a minimum of one post a week, although most often, there are two. VERY occasionally there are none. (See above about this still being a free volunteer newsletter, busy dad, active bike racer trying not to get lapped in masters races by dudes wearing stars and stripes jerseys, etc.) A preview of the weekend’s upcoming races delivered to your inbox on Thursdays or Fridays and a wrap-up of all the action on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

*Part 2 of the Summer Cyclocross Check Up is going check in with and highlight some of the road season results from our favorite cyclocrossers as they prepare for the upcoming CX season on skinny (ish) tires on the roads of the world.