Race Report — Bilenky Junkyard Cross 2014

After many rumors and much speculation, Bilenky Cycle Works announced the Bilenky Junkyard Cross 2014 Race, an infamous race brought back for this year’s cyclocross season. After 2013’s grand showing that served as a qualifier for and coincided with the SSCXWC, many racers and spectators had concerns that the race had grown too large. All fears were set aside as soon as the 9th Annual race was announced and Bilenky’s crew and many volunteers set to work planning the event and spending many tireless beer fueled days moving scrap and junk to create this year’s course.

Started in 2006, the race has been tucked away in the seemingly quiet and industrial farther reaches of Northeast Philadelphia’s suburbs, where Bilenky Cycle Works calls home. Celebrating the best, weirdest, and most dangerous aspects of Cyclocross in all its glory, the Junkyard CX Race has no lack of heckling, costumes, alcohol, freak bikes, and of course junk.

This year’s race was chilly, but clear, and whether you were racing or heckling, everyone was greeted warmly with kegs of Fat Tire brews next to grand heckler Simon Firth of Firth & Wilson Transport Cycles shooting off random prizes into the yard with a potato gun. Racers wound their way through see-saws, hairpins, tire piles, smashed cars, and The Stabbin’ Cabin all throughout the day in a quest to avoid a tetanus shot and for some sort of glory that no one probably cared about. Some of the Bell’s Bike Shop Crew was there heckling (and drinking) and catching all the action. Check out some more photos I shot from the 2014 race below.