This story first appeared in the Outdoors newsletter. Click here to learn more and sign up.
The above photo shows (1) some freshly built singletrack at River’s Edge Park in Chesterfield and (2) a mountain bike that’s not moving.
Discover your next outdoor adventure
Subscribe to the St. Louis Outdoors newsletter to get smarter about hiking, biking, paddling, climbing, and camping within the St. Louis region and beyond.
Such is the dual message of this post. The cool part is that yes, there’s a new St. Louis County mountain-bike loop that needs to be burned in for springtime criterium races, and a Strava time trial is currently underway throughout the entire month of November to encourage that. The caveat: We’ve had much rain over the past week and may see more this weekend, so to preserve the work that’s already done, the best thing to do during any soggy moments will be to wait for the soil to drain.
According to James Coudright, general manager of SBR Bike & Brews, this project arose from Chesterfield’s desire to revitalize River’s Edge, a floodplain park between The District and the Missouri River. The municipality expressed an interest in SBR using the park to put on “dirt crits”—that is, races in which mountain bikers rocket around the same loop multiple times. (SBR already does these in Valley Park.) So Chesterfield coordinated with volunteer trailbuilders at Gateway Off-Road Cyclists (GORC) to build some singletrack with that purpose in mind. Thus was born the “Phase 1” loop, which is 1.3 miles.
“This track lends itself to beginner riders because it’s very flat and very fast: not a lot of rocks, not a lot of roots,” says Coudright. “But [approached] with speed, the twists and turns will be interesting to veterans.”
Glenn Meyer of GORC says he went out there last week to put on the finishing touches with a chainsaw and leafblower. The ground is river silt, he points out. If people try to ride, run, or hike the path while it’s wet, they’ll end up creating puddles and then widen the thing out. “It’s not our property, so we’ve never told anyone, ‘You can’t ride,’” says Meyer. “But I hope nobody goes down there until next week. We’ve had to rebuild parts of Bluff View because people rode it when it was too muddy.”
But Meyer and Coudright do hope that riders bed in the track this month so that, come springtime, it’s free of vegetation and ready for dirt crits. To encourage usage, SBR has set up a Strava time trial—an asynchronous race in which competitors record their movements and location with an exercise tracker, ride the course, then publicly post their fastest time. As this edition of Outdoors was coming out, dozens of riders had made 234 attempts (see here and here).
“Let’s say it’s two weeks into the event,” Coudright says, “and someone beats your time. Do you go back out and try again? It’s ever-evolving, it’s free, and you can go on your own time as many times as you want.” (Merely making an attempt, by the way, will snag you a $10 gift card at SBR for something “on the brews side.”)
As for the upcoming crit races, which will start on Thursday nights in May, Coudright says they’re perfect for spectators because the short laps build up tension: “They create such energy because you get to see the people you’re watching every 5–10 minutes.”
If you want to help GORC build Phase 2 of the singletrack project out at River’s Edge, here’s the link for that event on Dec. 14.
