This Weekend’s Pick: Full Contact Mountain Biking

For the hundreds of racers participating every week in the CU Cycling Short Track Series, it is a brutal sport on a tight single track that showcases crash after crash that would make even a 300-pound football player cringe.

This is just part of life at the CU Cycling Short Track Series, a set of 10 races for both beginner and experienced riders that has quickly become Boulder’s largest race series. In a sport that measures success on how many laps you finish, survival and high-speeds are the ultimate goals of each competitor. Not only do participants have to battle through the elements, they also have to fight through narrow dirt paths, which are not conducive to passing. This sport and its participants clearly deserve more credit in the sporting world for what they go through each and every week.

All this makes for good watching. Grab a camping chair and park yourself at any vantage point on the track at CU’s Research Park, and watch the action fly by, over and over again.

The CU Cycling Short Track Series, 4:45 p.m, Wednesdays through Aug. 6, Research Park, near Foothills Parkway and Colorado Avenue, Boulder.