First Alleycat

Yesterday afternoon I rode in the Halloween Alleycat, my first bike race ever. I actually thought I was going to do pretty well, and then I got my ass kicked.

For those of you not familiar with an Alleycat, they are unsanctioned underground bike races, traditionally 'messenger style' races (short sprints through downtown) which have been known to draw some bad press. Now, this ride was a little different, first it was an endurance race and second it was a costumeed ride, but given the fact that the race orginizer, Les, had a bad accident with an SUV last week, and this was my first Alleycat, I decided that if I was going to die I didn't want to be dressed up like a fool doing it, so I wore an orange shirt and street clothes.


The race started at 5:30 so I arrived at 5:10 to pay my $10 and get a manifest (map of checkpoints which fell out of my pocket during the race). At promptly 5:30pm we all laid our bikes down in the alley behind Wahoo's and on Les' call we ran down the alley to the next street over and back, hopped on our bikes and took off on our own route. It was pretty damn cool. I decided to go counter-clockwise, thinking that from the Drought House to Hula Hut to Wahoo's would be downhill, turns out it's actually pretty rolling. As I shoot out of the alley and onto 5th street it was cool to see about 10 other racers already on the road, and shooting the light none the less which provided cover for me (safety in numbers!). We all rode down to Congress, pretty safely for the most part I might add, to Riverside where I went south, by myself (I think, didn't look back). As I turned on to Riverside I saw 4-5 fixed racers go by just ahead of me who must have turned down 1st, now at this point I'm thinking that I could fly past them... I mean I'm on a geared bike! So I put the hammer down, and no sooner than when I finally caught them did they then put their hammers down and charge the final hill and blow through the I-35 intersection, I never saw them again. I think they went on to win.

I then preceded to chug up Riverside and missed my damn turn, which cost me an extra half mile! The worst part was when I got to the first checkpoint (in good time and ahead of most folks I should add!) I could not find what I was looking for... not only that, I had no idea WHAT I was looking for! After about 5 minutes of looking up and down the street, a group of racers tipped me off to where the first check point was. From there the rest of the CP's were pretty strait forward. I took Springdale up north, which sucked as it was FULL of glass, getto, and hilly, (but had nice wide streets) to the old Yellow Bike Project and found the second check point on the ground. A short jaunt down the street lead me to the third check point at the Carousel Lounge, I was lucky there were people there to tip me off to where the CP was and I didn't even have to get off my bike, just rolled by and snapped the photo. I was also lucky that I went counter-clockwise saving my two signature checkpoints for last because I then learned that I had lost my manifest somewhere along the way, luckily I had memorized my route and did't need it for reference. I got back on 51st and took it 'till it dead ended at Lamar, which I forgot about so I had to stop and scratch my head for a second, then went down Lamar to 45th to Medical Parkway. At the Drought House I told them hat I had lost my manifest but had got all my other (picture) check points, they said no problem and signed my chest instead of manifest. When I got to Hulla Hut same thing, then I was leaving there and kicked my stupid chain off and had to reset that... hence my orange shirt covered on grease. Ughh.

When I finally made it back to Wahoo's and checked in I couldn't believe how many people had already beat me there! I'm guessing I came in some where around 25th out of 40, far worse than I had hoped, but ok I guess, considering it was only my first bike race. When all was said and done my route took me 22 miles in just over an hour and a half. Best of all was that waiting at the finish line was a t-shirt and free food and BEER!

Here is the route I took:

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