On April 2nd and 3rd, the inaugural Happy Valley Rally race weekend is coming to Western Massachusetts. This event is hosted by UMass Cycling and MIT Cycling, as part of the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference.
In addition to collegiate racing, there will be USA Cycling categories, along with an introduction to bike racing clinic.
The Northampton Cycling Club is proud to be sponsoring the Women’s 1/2/3 events during the weekend.
There is already a strong contingent of NCC riders signing up!
Register for the Happy Valley Rally
Here is the schedule for the weekend:
April 2nd – Peace Road Race
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- Starting location: Lake Wyola State Park, 94 Lakeview Rd, Shutesbury, MA 01072
- Start and finish up at Lake Wyola on a 18.2 mile hilly course with one notable dirt section. The race passes the namesake Peace Pagoda (course route)
- Come early 8am-9:30am and you can catch UMass and the college teams racing the Team Time Trial
April 3rd – Zoom Crit
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- Starting location: 400 Venture Way, Hadley, MA 01035
- The same crit circuit (course route) we use for the Twilight Training Crit. Use that to your advantage if you’ve already raced! Fast and swoopy course, great for beginners. In fact, there will be a fantastic coached intro clinic if you are a new racer.
Volunteers Needed
This weekend is going to be a lot of fun, but we don’t run on our own. We are looking for any volunteer help out there for posts such as course marshals, pace car drivers, set up/break-down, and registration. Please consider signing up to volunteer!
We are also looking for households that are willing to provide host housing for some of our college teams! This is always a fun experience. The collegiate cycling crowd is a really great group of people, but like any college students, they are on a budget, thus looking for host housing. The ECCC will be very strict with teams not respecting Covid precautions that host houses prefer. Usually housing is one or two days, and may include teams of 2-15, whatever your house may feel comfortable with. If you think that this is something you would like to participate in, don’t hesitate to let me know! You can email me at benvelo55555@gmail.com.
