Cobb Park Criterium Preview

View Larger Map

For the last two years, The Cobb Park Criterium has coincided with a popular ToAD race in Milwaukee. This year the South Chicago Wheelmen moved it earlier in the season, so folks wouldn’t have to make the choice to do one or the other. Which is awesome, because I want to do some ToAD this year, but also really look forward to doing this race, maybe because it was home to my first podium ever last year.

Before doing this race for the first time in 2010, I had never been to Kankakee, IL. I expected to find suburban industrial desolation. I have no idea why, but I did. What I found was totally the opposite – Cobb Park and the neighborhood surrounding it are cute, quaint, and full of trees. The race start/finish is along the Kankakee River. So you have the river on one side of the race and Cobb Park, a lush green-space, on the other – a lovely setting.

The race itself winds its way through the adjoining neighborhood, but mostly goes along the periphery of the park. The race is to be run clockwise this year, as it was last. From the start along river there you head into the neighborhood. There is a chicane after one of the first corners. After that the course snakes through an intersection of on 2 roads that are parallel but don’t quite meet up. Soon you leave the neighborhood section, and head onto a wide road that abuts the park. The last corner is a very easy one (almost a corner a short straight then another corner) on the Southeast edge of the park that leads into the finishing straight – which is a pretty long straight.

Apparently on the back section somewhere there is a “hill” or what you could refer to as a false flat, but I have been there twice looking for it and have yet to find it. However I am from a part of the country with actual mountains, so these false flats Midwesterners call hills confuse me. Hill or no hill, this is a fun race and I hope to see tons of folks out there! 

More information can be found here and registration is on bikereg.