Yoinked from Bill's FlickrFirst off, sorry for the late start, we were expecting about half of the 65 who turned up so I had to go off and do some extra photocopying and potato buying which took fucking ages.
I decided to make this a manifest race instead of the more popular and easier point-to-point races which are all the rage these days because I was expecting a lot of first timers and Fakengers* to turn up and wanted to give them a race that properly reflects couriering.
It was a deliberately old school set up, a bit of cash for the winners and none of this £800 prize fund bullshit, if you come to an Al**ycat for the prizes then you have no business being there. So 13 checkpoints over 13 miles with as much variety as I could accidentally include. So ( unless you got hopelessly lost ) there were cobbles, tunnels, Euston rd. and Picadilly for those who learned about al**ycats from YouTube, an important package with a deadline delivery and a couple of hard to find places. Sending riders down a tiny alley packed with tables was going to piss someone off but that was just to represent just how unwelcome couriers are in some buildings. The drop-off checkpoint in EC4 was sub-contracted out to Team Awesome so everything that went on there was down to Nhatt and her cronies, apparently it was "interesting".
Overall winner was Brazilian Pedro after Ricky's DQ. It's always controversial when a winner gets disqualified but Ricky was DQed for exactly the same reason as 14 other riders: part his manifest was wrong. End of story. Overall girl was Papillon, proving that the Shitty Sprint office hasn't softened her and first Fakenger Girl was Sara Skull who has a better record for turning up to Al**ycats than most of the courier girls ( she also got awarded the Team Awesome merit point which you'll have to ask Nhatt about ).
Following couriers in a manifest race is a risky tactic cos if they drop you, you can end up completely lost, but Yorgo has done enough al**ycats to know this and stuck to them like glue. From what I've heard he also destroyed the field going up the only steep hill in central London ( although what you were all doing going up Percy Circus is a mystery to me ) and got himself third overall and first Fakenger.
One thing we're all really happy about here is, that after making a big deal over Juliet's near miss in the Kamasutracat, Addison rocked up from NY and nailed the Unholy Alliance: first out of towner** AND DFL he got a Buckfast cap and a DFL patch for his troubles and the admiration of all the people who like to win at losing.
This is the tee Pedro won. It rocks! ( As Hell Yeah are technically a rival company I have to overrule this and say this shirt blows ...big time - Obergruppenpistard )
Apologies to anyone who got hit by a potato thrown by The Demon Lynch ( it was his own idea ). If it's any consolation I got hit by one at the prize giving.
The Fakengers won these tees.Don't email about these yet we're building up stock to start a proper online shop soon-ish.
Special mention should go to the people who were still racing at 1am and the kid who lost his manifest but tried to hand in the back cover of his AtoZ with the answers on it, unfortunately the whole point of a manifest race is to have your manifest at the end, but full marks for effort. For future reference most Al**ycats start from a pub so the race usually gets called off when the bar shuts.
Also, despite the fact that we started a full 2 hours late there seemed to be very little mingling going on between the Courier/Fakenger camps, hopefully that'll come later. My excuse was I was far too busy. I mean, the Messenger of Doom came down from Birmingham and I think the only things I had time to say to him were " Hello " and " You were shite ".
Thanks to everyone who turned up to race or help. Special thanks to Juliet from Hell Yeah for prizes.
I don't know if 60 racers is going to be common from now on, but what'll probably happen is next time 70 spoke cards will get made and 15 people will turn up. Sod's Law Innit?
I think this is our first race report that actually stays on topic for longer than the first paragraph.
( Watch out Moving Target we can do boring too )
*Well it could've gone two ways: either the open invitation would be taken up or the use of the word Fakenger would've upset all the non-couriers and they'd have gone off in the huff to practice those skids with one leg over the bars ( Are they called 'Hello Sailors'? If they're not, they should be ).
**There were three out of town couriers Addison(NY), Joaquin(Paris) and Lee(Brum). Thanks for coming guys. I don't know if there were any out of town Fakengers but if there were, thanks for coming too.
