Alleycat Results

Trae and Toria put on one hell of an AlleyCat yesterday evening, so kudos to them. I really appreciate them doing all that work, and it has inspired me to bring back Cranksgiving this year...

The race crowd was pretty decent sized for the first event in Fort Worth in a while. I'd say there were almost 20 racers.

The organizers decided not to give any "route-making" time, not even 5 minutes. I thought that was kind of a curveball... we just did a Lemans start, and then rode a block and a half to the first checkpoint, where we picked up our manifests. Not the usual alleycat M.O., but it certainly made it a little more interesting riding the first mile while trying to read a manifest and plan a route.

There were 9 stops, equally scattered around the Near South Side, Downtown, and the Cultural District.

When I started the race, I thought for sure I'd be in the running for the DFL prize, because I haven't been riding much, other than my daily 2-mile commute.

When we got going, though, I felt decent. Bryan and I teamed up, and at first I had trouble keeping up with him. As I warmed up, though, I was able to stay with him better, and even lead on occasion. It's always good, too, to have 2 heads choosing routes. You both have an idea, and then you choose the faster one.

When we had completed All but 3 of the stops, I realized that we were pretty high up in the standings. We were playing cat and mouse with another duo, Jason and Brad, who had chosen approximately the same route. They would beat us to one checkpoint, and we would beat them to the next.

I knew that Bryan had a bit better speed than I did, so we decided that I would work to help him win. Who says you can't have domestiques in an AlleyCat?

As we approached the infamous zoo hill, which led to the next to last checkpoint, I attacked with the intention of blowing up Jason and Brad as they tried to chase. It worked, sort of.

I beat them both up the hill handily, while Bryan sat comfortably on their wheels. Brad blew up, but Jason stayed close. When I got to the top, though, I couldn't find the checkpoint. Jason found it first, and took off. So we dropped Brad, but still had one more rider ahead of us (actually two, but Shaggy told us he had missed a checkpoint, so we knew he'd be DQed).

We followed Jason's taillight, and made no real attacks... I guessed that since he had never been to the last checkpoint, he would have a little trouble finding it. Sure enough, Bryan and I blasted a shortcut to 1919 Hemphill, and beat Jason there by a couple of seconds. I let Bryan take his ribbon from the checkpoint and take off, and then I took mine, taking my sweet time to do it. I grabbed two ribbons on purpose, put one back, stood there while I stuffed it into my pocket. Then I slowly and awkwardly turned my bike around and got out of the way.

It worked. I looked up and Bryan's taillight was a pretty good distance ahead of us. I knew I had done my job; I sat up and let Jason lead me to the finish, figuring we had the win.

The Damnedest thing happened, though... when we got to the finish, Atticus was already there. We had never seen him along the course. He led the entire way.

So the final official top 5 results were:

1. Atticus
2. Bryan
2*. Shaggy
3. Jason
4. Bernie
5. Brad

*Shaggy finished second, but he didn't get his ribbon at the Water Gardens stop. He did go there, so there was some debate about his placing. Hence the asterisk.

I won a $20 Spiral Diner gift certificate for my efforts... not bad for a race I thought I was going to lose badly!