The day is sunny, still and rainless. It’s just the kind of Saturday someone planning a day at Emigrant Lake would hope for. But for Ashland cyclocross rider Gina Hall, it’s completely wrong.

She had been hoping for rain.

"If it’s slippery there are more chances of falling, but I love that kind of racing," said Hall.

Hall, who in 2003 became the No. 2-rated U.S. woman in cyclocross, has made a career of that kind of racing. And it’s not the kind of sport that gets rained out.

Cyclocross races send riders across uneven terrain, up sharp inclines, around abrupt turns and over obstructions in a series of short laps around a course created for the event. On sections of the course, cyclocross riders must become runners, dismounting and shouldering their bikes as they hurdle a barrier, then getting back on and continuing down the trail in one, unbroken motion. It’s Hall’s particular ability to mount and dismount without losing time that’s given her success in professional cyclocross.

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Hall is at the forefront of a sport experiencing a swell in interest. USA Cycling, the national organization that oversees cycling sports, reports that the number of riders entering cyclocross competitions quadrupled between 1995 and 2003, going from 3,849 to 17,255 cyclists.

Between its infamously wet weather and the bicycle-friendly social climate, the Northwest in particular has seen the popularity of cyclocross surge. Around 400 riders are expected to head to Oregon next weekend when Portland hosts the National Cyclocross Championships for the second year in a row.

The Rogue Valley recently wrapped up its own series of cyclocross races. The Southern Oregon Outlaw Cyclocross Series featured five competitions this fall, including an in-costume race on Halloween at Emigrant Lake. Everyone was covered in mud by the end, and organizers considered it one of the most successful races of the season.

Riders who do cyclocross, once dubbed an extreme sport, describe it as one of the most family-friendly and social forms of cycling. Hall says that’s part of what has helped it grow locally, nationally and worldwide.

Hall, 37, traces her introduction to cycling back to college, when she entered a Weaverville, Calif., mountain bike race just for fun.

Then, she won it.

"That was my first addiction to racing," Hall said.

Her "addiction" steered the English major away from plans to be a foreign correspondent and toward the finish line. But a decade after going pro, Hall’s cycling career took her overseas anyway. Last year she went with the Clif Bar team to Belgium for the Cyclocross World Championship.

Hall found cyclocross in much the same way the sport originally evolved: as training in the off-season. Cyclocross emerged in Europe in the 1940s when road cyclists developed the technique of mounting and dismounting. The idea was that spurts of running would keep the cyclist’s feet warm in the cold weather. Yet soon this grew into a popular European sport.

Cyclocross did not catch on as quickly in the United States, where it stayed on the fringe until the late ’80s. However, as once-alternative mountain biking moved into the mainstream, many cyclists, including Hall, thought it became too competitive and were attracted to the camaraderie cyclocross offered.

"That’s one thing about cyclocross — it still has that social atmosphere that I think a lot of the other cycling disciplines have lost," she said.

It’s also more accessible — both to participants and spectators. In a road or mountain bike race, spectators may see a rider only twice: at the beginning and at the end. Cyclocross participants ride laps that are rarely much longer than a mile, so friends and family see them go by multiple times.Within an hour, the race is over, the rider with the greatest number of laps wins, and the participants rejoin their families.

Thom Kneeland, a Medford cyclocross rider, says he thinks that’s part of why the sport has taken off in the last few years. That, and the fact that you can have a race anywhere.

"You don’t need to have a national forest or 80 miles of road blocked off," he said. "It can be held in a park or a school or a farmer’s field."

In the Rogue Valley, cyclocross has gone from a gathering of friends to full-on events for fanatics. Jana Jensen, who organizes the Southern Oregon Outlaw Cyclocross Series, said about 40 riders now turn out for each race. These races also frequently draw riders from Northern California.

Ashland bicycle frame builder Mike DeSalvo has watched his requests for cyclocross bikes rise with the local interest in it.

"I think it’s because it’s so different from a lot of racing," DeSalvo said.

Cyclocross calls for its ownvariety of bicycle. It’s literally a "cross" between the lightness of a road bike and the sturdiness of a mountain bike. DeSalvo, who sponsors a cyclocross team, said cyclocross bikes have gone from making up about 10 percent of his sales to 25 percent in the last five years.

So, it’s no coincidence that a heavyweight like Hall moved to the Rogue Valley in May.

She wanted to have access to good recreational riding, even as she retires from professional cyclocross.

Hall — still ranked in the top three women — says she has spent enough time making a living off her own physical exertion and the salary the Clif Bar company paid its cyclocross team.

As much as she loves the sport, she says it’s time for a change.

"It seems really glamorous. Everyone always says, ‘Oh, that’s the greatest job.’ And it was ... But it’s time to find a new career."

Of course, she’s heading to the national cyclocross championships next weekend.

That career change can wait until next season.

Jessica Robinson is a free-lance writer living in Medford. E-mail her at jessicayrobinson@yahoo.com.