Tomorrow, the first two stages of the 2011 Nature Valley Bicycle Festival will hit St. Paul, and wander around the area (including Wisconsin) through Sunday. This is a fun pro event, offering a variety of disciplines and opportunities to watch race action. The criterium stages are especially good events to attend with children, as unlike a road race everyone gets to see the racers repeatedly — a key entertainment plus with little ones in tow.

The schedule is also good to know for another reason: If you need to get around in downtown St. Paul Wednesday, or Uptown on Friday, the race will seriously mess with your routing.

Here’s the race schedule:

• St. Paul TT: Wednesday, 8:30AM -noon
• St. Paul downtown criterium: Wednesday, 6:15 PM – 9:00 PM (expo opens at 4)
• Cannon Falls road race: Thursday, 5:00 PM – 8:30 PMish
• Uptown criterium: Friday, 6:15 PM – 9:00 PM
• Menomonie road race: Saturday, noon – 4:15PMish
• Stillwater criterium: Sunday, 11:45AM – 4:00PM

The St. Paul, Uptown and Stillwater sites are easily accessible via multiple bike routes, with the caveat that going in and out of Stillwater can be a wee rolling and possibly a challenge with small children, trailers or trail a bikes. Using the Midtown Greenway to access the Uptown Crit is a best bet and avoids the headache that is Uptown parking on a Friday evening.

This year’s event also includes a gran fondo in Menomonie, and an amateur race in Stillwater. Most stages feature a kids’ fun race before the pros get rolling. Full info is available at the festival web site.

Not one, not two… but four days of track racing! This weekend at the NSC Velodrome, there’s a full schedule of track cycling to check out. Here’s the deets:

• Thursday: Thursday Night Lights, 7 PM — The weekly racing at the NSC Velodrome. $2 for adults and over-12s, free for under-12s, prize drawings for picking the winner in selected races. Fun for the family, with decent food, beer and ice cream on sale at the Snack Shack.
• Friday: Fixed Gear Classic, 6 PM
• Saturday: Fixed Gear Classic, 10 AM
• Sunday: Fixed Gear Classic, noon

Many racers from out of state will be here for the Friday-Sunday racing. Each day of the 2011 Fixed Gear Classic offers a TON of racing, with many different track disciplines represented. I’m going to go on a limb and assume the Snack Shack will be operational during the event, although not sure about beer early in the day Saturday. There is reasonable, if hopelessly suburban, chow nearby as well (standard issue suburban – Caribou, Chipotle, Jimmy John’s, fast fud, plus a few decent sit-down places).

Each day’s racing costs $2 for adults (over 12), free for the kids. Funds do nifty things like support youth racing programs at the NSC. Bring exact change for best results.

Track racing is a lot of fun to watch, and there are multiple good routes for getting to the Velodrome via bicycle or there is abundant parking at the NSC. Catching a few races is a highly recommended weekend activity.

As we hit the back-end of winter and look forward to the giant tire-eating potholes of spring, here are a few goodies on this week’s Minnesota Bicycle Events Calendar:

• February 28: The Minnesota Bicycle Summit with the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. Walk-up registration is available. Come and represent bikes in Saint Paul.

• March 3: The third of three Open Streets organizing events for the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition. Help them get
• March 6: Indoor Grass/Crit Racing at the NSC.

There’s also time yet today to attend a talk on one cyclist’s experiences cycling in Peru, presented at REI Bloomington at 3:00, or to hit up tonight’s episode of indoor crit racing at the NSC.

Next week brings the National Bicycle Summit, as well as several local meetings of the St. Paul Bicycle Coalition, the Bike Edina Task Force, and the Richfield Bicycle Task Force. Plenty of great policy action ahead!

Save the date(s)! The organizers of the Nature Valley Bicycle Festival have announced the 2011 schedule and race locations. This year’s event will go from June 15-19 and have similar stages to last year’s event:

• June 15: ITT in St. Paul during the morning, with a crit in Lowertown St. Paul during the evening. The Lowertown crit is highly recommended – parking is pretty easy, and there are some good places to grab a bite or a brew nearby.

• June 16: Cannon Falls road race.
• June 17: Evening crit in Uptown Minneapolis. This was new last year – the crit used to be downtown. I heard mixed reviews of the parking situation, and dining in Uptown on a Friday evening is always a challenge. Good viewing is easily accessible via the Midtown Greenway, however, which opens up more options for some people.
• June 18: Menomonie road race. This was also new last year. The roads near Menomonie are really good fun for cycling, and certainly not flat. Several circuits through downtown Menomonie offer an opportunity to watch in a civilized setting.
• June 19: The big Stillwater Crit, always a crowd pleaser. The racers end up having to do Chillkoot Hill repeatedly, which is an evil little climb. Biking into Stillwater is a good option for viewing this stage as well.

The Minnesota Fixed Gear Classic, a companion event, will take place June 10-12 at the National Sports Center Velodrome. The track racing at the Velo is a lot of fun (every Thursday all summer!) and this is another nice event to check out. Kids especially seem to love the track racing, as they can see all the action, and they sell ice cream at the concessions shack.

The NVBF web site hasn’t yet been updated with the 2011 dates, but all the information will be there eventually, I am sure. They’re also on Twitter and Facebook. They always need some volunteers (and host families for racers) as the event nears, so it’s good to keep an eye out if you’re interested in becoming more involved with this great opportunity to see quality bike racing in Minnesota.

Update 1/12/2010: As Hugh points out, it’s year 3 in Uptown. I’m still calling it a parking nightmare and not going with a toddler in tow!

Over on ze Twitter, Inside Minnesota Soccer made an excellent crack about the overlap between cyclists and soccer fans. However, the actual point of similarity isn’t in the activity (playing soccer/riding a bike) but in being a fan of the activity as done by professionals and semi-pros.

Seriously:

• In Europe, it’s mainstream. In the US, it’s fringe. Sure, soccer’s gotten a bit more play mainstream in the US due to Beckham playing in the MLS and the US team qualifying for the upcoming World Cup. The same could be said of bicycling in the Lance Armstrong era, along with a few other notable Americans (most of whom have been caught doping, oops). At the same time, racers and teams and players and sides are only easily named by a sliver of society.

• The best US athletes in both sports end up in Europe. MLS blah blah blah. Continental cycling squads blah blah blah. The best and most talented and fastest and etc. all sign with Euro sides. Who wouldn’t? There’s more money, more races, better fan support, and like it or not, a higher level of play/racing in Europe.
• Both are relegated to weird times/channels on the telly. Again, go to the UK, and the evening match featuring Chelsea is on a major channel in prime time. Here? Well, it gets back to the European thing. Soccer fans rely on TiVo and broad cable packages to pick up even MLS matches, let alone international contests. Cycling fans are stuck with the drooling stupid that is most cycling coverage on Versus. And if it’s not the Tour de France, expect to see week-long races condensed to 2 hours of coverage if you’re lucky, and one day classics squeezed into an hour with commercials.
  

• Fans of both soccer and cycling dress funny. Soccer jerseys are brightly colored and emblazoned with advertising logos. Cycling fans who also ride may wear team jerseys, which are brightly colored and emblazoned with advertising logos. Various sides and cycling teams could hold contests for most appalling color combos.
• Proximity. In Minnesota, the NSC Velodrome is next to the home of Minnesota’s only pro soccer side (name pending). Self-evident. Catch Thursday night racing one night, and a pro soccer match the next. Sleep in your car and you won’t need a new space!

From a participation viewpoint, bikes are seen as toys in the US, thereby driving a lot of the antipathy to cyclists on the roads. Soccer is seen as a sport for pee wees, and not a pro-class sport like baseball or football. Oddly, cycling is often part of the rehab for various soccer injuries among pro players, as it’s used in a lot of knee injury rehab regimens.

In summary: Soccer fans should not run over the cyclists at the NSC, and the cyclists should give a cheerful wave to the soccer hooligans. We’re all wanna-be Eurosport geeks.