The 2024 NACCC (North American Cycle Courier Championships) took place in sunny San Diego, CA just two weeks ago. Josh was in town to photograph the week-long event’s finale and, along with co-organizers David Pintado and Luis Aguilar detail what NACCC is and what made this year’s San Diego edition truly memorable. Read on below!
NACCC Background
I’m not sure what year NACCC (North American Cycle Courier Championships) began, but it’s been around since at least the late 1990s. This race, just like others (CMWC and EMC), was designed as a messenger work simulation. It is distinct from alley cats but the same because it was created by messengers. Alley cats are all about quick stops at certain locations in a city; racers get their manifest signed and move on. NACCC’s focus on work simulations makes the races more of a constant back and forth, just like a regular work day of a courier.
These types of events are mainly held in a closed course or, like what we did, in an industrial area with very minimal vehicle traffic. The purpose, in my opinion, is so that the racers can be as quick as they can without having to worry about cars. In simple terms, it’s more of a performance race: there are heats throughout the week, qualifiers on Saturday, and then finals on Sunday. Snyone can host NACCC in their own way but the main event has to be a work simulation. Typically the whole event is about a week’s worth of fun on your bikes.
NACCC events are held in a different city throughout North America each year. To host an event, one MUST be a bicycle messenger, present or former. A courier from the prospective host city participates in a bid at the end of each year’s NACCC and pitches their hosting concept. Bids are held after the qualifier (main event) during an open forum where messengers get to talk about current events in the community. After that, people come to the mic and place their bids. Once they are all talking, organizers collect votes from the audience (only messengers, current or past, can vote). Once votes are gathered, a winner is announced Sunday evening after finals.
2024 NACCC San Diego
For us, it was a wild adventure. Last year, in November, I had to go to CDMX (Mexico City) to place the bid for San Diego. Since there are very few messengers here in SD, I had to be the one to go in person. At first, I honestly didn’t want to; I know hosting these types of events can be overwhelming( and it was for us, for sure). But our community here in San Diego is so supportive, which sparked the fire in me to go to CDMX. I was only there for three days, but it was a fukin blast! I had never experienced high altitude, so that was interesting.
I appreciate that these events bring all the messengers and bike enthusiasts together. You meet new friends, run into old ones, and create a strong bond with each other. Getting to see a different city each year is also rad!
But after I placed the bid, and no one at that time wanted to place a bid for their city, well, we automatically won the bid. I still had to say my pitch about how things would go down and answer questions. Once all the homies back in San Diego heard we got the bid, they were super pumped. On the plane back home, I started to brainstorm how the week would go down. We developed a small group of friends to help orchestrate this big shindig.
As weeks and months went by, it started to get serious. All the planning we did just felt like it wasn’t enough; certain things we had laid out didn’t go through. I couldn’t find venues for certain days, and I had difficulty finding bands. But friends were all saying don’t worry we will show them our way of living down here. After all, we have excellent hospitality and always show the community a great time.
From LA to SD
With that being put in the air, it changed the week we had planned and improvised. That’s what we couriers do.. when a plan doesn’t go through or dispatch gives us wrong info, we gotta be on our toes physically and mentally. So critical thinking comes into play. We linked up with our good homies from LA ULOCKMOB, who helped with the event kick-off . This was the pre-event ride on Sunday and they led a killer 130-mile ride all the way from Los Angeles down to San Diego!
Monday was a quiet day with nothing on the agenda. Although we had this whole event for a week, I still had to work, which I didn’t mind. It was rad seeing all these people slowly getting into SD and knowing that they came here for a good time. On Tuesday, we got together with our buddies The Awarewholfs. My homie Ricky led a big ol group of bicycle enthusiasts to the San Diego Velodrome. There was a detour to the velodrome, he showed the out of town messengers our beautiful Balboa Park.
Let the Games Begin
Packet pick-up and registration went down on Wednesday along with with an out-of-towner alley cat. Those who registered online and came out had to pick up their packet, which included a musette, an NACCC t-shirt, a race number, stickers, and a little shooter of Hornitos (the touch of or good homie and co-organizer Larry Ravioli). Once they got their packet, some hang out till it was time to race.
The OOT alley cat was designed by Martha, a local courier here in San Diego. Checkpoint layouts were nice and punchy, which showed off that our beloved city is not at all flat. Yeah, we get a lot of people thinking San Diego is flat, so this race was a wakeup call! After the race was over, we rode from Pioneer Park to Morley Field for some good ol tracklocross. This was a night race through a certain section of Theo Park. Our friends Frankie and Ricky got together and made a closed course with some sweet hairpin turns! Shout to the homies from Barf who helped out with this night as well.
Tijuana Time
Thursday’s shenanigans got split into two events. My homie Luis (aka Foouis) organized a full-day group ride to Tijuana, Mexico. Since this side quest had so much action, I asked Foois to share a little about it with us:
“This day came from the idea that the San Diego community tends to cross back and forth from Tijuana for events a couple of times a year: rides, races, parties, etc. So, we decided to let NACCC get a taste of what normally would be a 3-day event all in one.
We met at 9 a.m. and rolled out from a pier near downtown Cesar Chavez Park and down the harbor, basically on a bike trail the whole way down. We stopped before the border to group up and make a quick pit stop for snacks, drinks, and money exchange. Patio Gastronómico is our usual venue spot, so we took everyone there for food. Then, we grouped up with a critical mass ride that meets up at the Tijuana arch on the last Fridays of the month at 8:00 pm. But this time was different! It was Thursday at 4:00 pm, so the locals were mostly working. And there we were, rolling about 60 deep through the most iconic spots of Tijuana and finishing it inside the “famous” Tijuana River. No doubt everyone had a killer time at this critical mass!”
“Back at Patio Gastronómico, we got going with an alley cat race. Racers had to first line up on the street and get the address location to pick up their manifest. It was a straight-away sprint through five roundabouts which was really cool for a lot of people because they don’t have them in their cities. Full-on adrenaline! They got a manifest with about six checkpoints. We had people at each one, making them do activities to sign their manifest and prove they were at those locations. They finished back at the venue location where we received the winners and shortly after announced the podium had some raffles with tickets. After that, people stayed to party, and some rolled back out to the border together and crossed together, making their way back to San Diego.”
An Alternative
The other group took a chill beach day with rides led by homie Ramon through popular coastal towns like Pacific Beach and Mission Bay. The rides ended at our friend’s bike shop out in Pacific Beach, and, from there, Dan hosted an alley cat that took riders throughout the towns near the ocean. He spiced it up with some sick climbs, one of them being Mount Soledad. The end of this race was at a little island called Vacation Island Park, where we held a bonfire and a little cookout.
Friday was the general alley cat race, during which I hosted my alley cat. It’s called Dinkatt, and this was the 6th one. I typically host it in late August, but I thought I’d postpone until NACCC. This race is usually a minimum of fifty miles with 2k+ feet of elevation gain. This race ain’t an easy one. You gotta make sure you know how to route properly. I typically give mad props to those who do it on a pista with no brakes. It was a big turnout with 45 racers.
The race kicked off with a six-mile ride out to grab manifests. From there, racers must read it carefully and start making moves. The finish line is where we always host our events – Golden Hill Park. Our homie Adam (aka Velo Dad) came out and did the damn thang! He set up shop and started cooking up a storm, helping each racer that came out. And, a quick shout out to my mom for always making her potato salad for my race!
As the night wore on, some people went to National City to a brewery called Finnegans. At that spot, the people from Slow Squad had a lucha. Sadly, I wasn’t there because I had a lot of things to catch up on. One of those things was creating the manifest for the main event (Saturday and Sunday). I stayed up pretty late at Golden Hill Park with a good number of friends. While they partied, I had to finish my work.
Main Events!
Just like that, in the blink of an eye, it was already Saturday morning. We scrambled to set things up. People started to pile in, and for a moment, it felt chaotic – making sure people were in line to check in so they could race and answer questions – I had to step aside for a breather! I took a few shots to calm the nerves, and then I was back in the groove. Once everyone checked in, I did a group ride to show off where the clients (checkpoints) would be. I did this so they could all understand how the course is laid out and what areas were forbidden. Once I showed them, we returned to base (start/finish line).
A few of the racers came up to me saying that we should just cancel the day since people were tired, hungry, and hung over. I spoke to a few racers and said nah, let’s race! Between me, Foouis, and a few Ulock Mob members, we agreed to make them race. Though they raced, they only did one manifest of the three we originally planned. Thankfully, too, as it took them two hours to complete.
After the race was over on Saturday, we did the open forum/ bids. Next year, NACCC goes to Vancouver, Canada. Two cities wanted to place the bid for 2026 – Portland, Oregon and Guadalajara, Mexico. They both had good things to say about their city, it seemed like people were more interested in Guadalajara than the PDX. After all that we went to a venue our good homie Tommy helped us find – Asylum Outdoor Bouldering. He was also at the main event on Saturday and Sunday, wrenching on bikes with our good friend Matt. We all hung out there and had a great time; Frankie was there feeding the people with some really good food!
That’s a Wrap
As the night came to an end, well the venue closed at a 10. A handful of us rode through downtown up to our Balboa Park. On the way up to the park, we stopped to grab beers and snacks; once we got to Balboa, we all just hung out and made connections, and stayed out until 2:00 am. Waking up to it being Sunday already, I was surprised I wasn’t hungover. Rode down to the finals to start setting up again for the final race. This time around there wasn’t much people that came out, guessing people were hung over. With the finals there were only 40 that qualified to race Sunday. For the finals we used the manifest that were meant for Saturday (#2,3). With this we cut the field. The top 25 that finished the second manifest moved on to the final round manifest #3.
The Top 3 overall were from NYC
1. Toni 2. Lalo 3. Dane
Top 3 Female
1. Maddie(San Fran) 2. Nathalie (San Fran) 3. Tracey (NYC)
Top 3 Non-binary
1. Quin(Seattle) 2. Coco(NYC) 3. Quintin (NYC)
After the race was over we went back to Asylum. Once there, the people drank and ate, and then we did the podiums with the final bid. Guadalajara won it for 2026!