well, joeball and i hosted our first .83 race this weekend. it was called “the alley rally” and a smashing success if i say so myself.

over the summer andre and i participated in a few different messenger alleycats. my first, you may recall, was the .83 poker challenge. the wonderful folks over at morrispost and re-load bags put on a few more races, but after the massive amount of internet drama in august, .83 hadn’t contributed any races to the scene beyond the monthly greenlake race. seeing an opportunity in the cold months of winter, we decided to have a north seattle race of some kind, and in the interests of trying something new we made it an informal alleycat cyclocross race.

the route was in ravenna-cowen park, taking advantage of a bit of local terrain that i knew most of my fellow cyclists wouldn’t be intimately familiar with. the race started at the 20th ave pedestrian bridge, proceeded down the alley towards the park. at the base of the alley we set up a couple logs as barriers, then a few flags along the grass led the racers down onto the main trail through the park. from the bridge above we could see and hear the racers grunting and hollering as they rode up to the top of the park, where they cut across the grass before crossing the 15th ave bridge and coming back down to the start line.

we spent saturday afternoon getting the cowbell trophies, spoke cards, and liquid prizes ready and then headed off to meet the crew at red square. temperature: ass cold. to our surprise, folks started showing up promptly at 7pm. and then kept coming. we were pretty impressed, all in all over a dozen folks had come for our cold and dark race. then, just as we were leaving, joby showed up with two others in tow. they’d flatted out on the way in from west seattle and had rushed home to get the suburban so they could drive out and meet us. it was a christmas miracle!

our huge group rolled over to the bridge to get the race started. we waited a little bit to make sure the path was relatively clear, and then with a shout the race was off. less than 45 minutes later everyone had rolled over the line for the third time, and we handed out the first and second place prizes to daniel and denny respectively. then it was down to the cip for some well-deserved nachos, beer, and celebration.

my verdict: a success! now to start planning my next race…

photos of the race and post-race tomfoolery are available here!