The Garage Racing National Championships is a day of underground crit racing with a decade of history, just outside of the nation’s capital in Arlington County, Virginia. Andy Karr attended the return of the races to catch the fun, excitement, and chaos spinning around the short course on the bottom floors of a subterranean parking garage. Continue reading below for Andy’s recap alongside a mix of analog and digital photography.
Tight corners. High speeds. Poor traction. Low ceilings. Dim lighting. Elbows-out racing. Bloody knees. All-out sprints, brakeless fixies, gold sprints, donuts and pies, dinosaur costumes, hobby horses… Wait a minute, where is this going?
The Garage Racing National Championship is organized by CXHairs (a storied DC area cyclocross racing team), Bill Schieken’s CXHairs Media, and the National Landing Business Improvement District. It is a beautiful dichotomy; it is a national championship race that hands out custom jerseys to the winners, and it is also an unsanctioned event with no sign of USAC officials or rules. It is a party atmosphere with at least as many spectators as racers, with a full bar, a coffee bar, a non-alcoholic bar, goldsprints hosted by Richmond Cycling Corps, and raucous cheering. But it is also serious, blood-pumping racing in tight corners with podium places on the line. This year it had a fixed-gear category that banned any hint of a brake. It also had an anything goes race that featured skateboards, rolling hobby horses, children on bikes, adults on children’s bikes, and wild costumes. It was fun.
To be honest, criterium-style racing exceeds my risk tolerance for bike activities, let alone criterium racing inside an enclosed parking garage. But all of the race participants seemed to be having an absolute blast – wild, silly fun. But also nerves of steel. It’s a pavement crit for which organizers advise at least a 28mm tire with low pressures, if not a larger cyclocross tire (file treads, of course) to offer the best chance of maintaining traction in the tight, slick corners. That didn’t stop a fair number of dramatic slide-outs on corner exits, entrances, and apexes, as well as a few tangled handlebars. But it made for quite a spectacle, even before the intentionally ridiculous anything goes and relay races.
The day’s racing opened up with youth categories before offering opportunities for novice racers to circle the course in a slightly lower-stakes setting. The afternoon of racing crowned National Champions within the categories of men, women, non-binary, and fixed gear. Then it gave way to a couple fun-first parade laps and a wild, costumed relay race. There are precious few opportunities to see a highly decorated, multi-time national champion round the same corner as a rollerblader dressed as a dinosaur within a few hours of each other. Good times.
The Garage Racing National Championship 2025 has had a story arc: it started as a one-day event called the Diamond Derby from 2012 to 2014 before CXHairs stepped in to help run the event as a winter garage racing series called Wednesday Night Spins, and then the Crosshairs Garage Races. The Garage Racing National Championships moniker was adopted for the 2019 edition. Scheduled to begin March 3rd, 2020, the garage races are the first event I can recall being cancelled on account of the pandemic. It was resurrected as a one-day event for 2023, then cancelled again in 2024 before returning for this year’s event.
The National Capital Region has been through some chaos in the first few months of 2025 – far more than its fair share. I am certain I speak for more than myself in saying it was a welcome distraction to have some chaos that was, in fact, fun. We needed this.
I’ve made the case on this page before that I think the DC area has one of the most vibrant and interesting bicycle cultures in the world, and this was fully on display than in the chilly lower levels of a garage surrounded by the highway overpasses, shopping centers, retail, apartments, and office buildings of Arlington County, Virginia. The registration page for the event summed it up better than I could: “Garage Racing Nationals is not sanctioned by USA Cycling or any other governing body. First and foremost, this is for fun. But at the end of the day, you may also be a national champion.”
The Crystal City looks forward to welcoming the event back next year, in whatever form it takes.