Bookworm Alleycat Post Race Report

Last Saturday we put on Wales first ever alleycat race, it was a great success. 21 Riders from Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Bristol, London and Manchester braved the gale force winds and threat of torrential rain during the 15+ mile course.

Everyone took off from the dock area of the city centre and hit up 5 libraries where they got books that they brought with them signed, Swansea is pretty hilly so there were no easy routes, at some point you had to go up some big hills before coming back down the other side. Riders split into two parts, those that wanted to get the hills out of the way first and those that wanted the 'time trial' section over and done with asap, those that took on the hills had their wills broken by the wind pretty bloody quickly, I was in that group and within minutes was thinking that we'd made a pretty bad decision, haha. An hour after taking off the racers started trickling in, everyone was knackered, in the video you'll see how many people were so tired that they couldn't get out of their peddles fast enough and just fall flat on their faces. I took first place (whoop!) followed by Aled and then Alex from Manchester (who had gone about 2 miles out of his way by accident and would have won by a mile).

When all 21 troopers were back and had been to Sainsbury's for pop and crisps (and where I got I.D'd buying a scratchcard, I'm 28!) we cracked on with the trackstand comp, with thighs not being quite as fresh as one would like it proved to be a rather wibbly-wobbly affair, more like a trackstand jelly impression comp really. We did 3 minutes standard, 2 minutes one-handed and then no-handed until we had a winner in Aled.

The longest skid comp closed the days events. I managed to dive off my bike like a pansy and bust a rib which is killing me right at this very second, the highlight for me was David Clapp from Bristol skidding out of his clips and with only 1 foot at times, mental. Owen managed to somehow stay out of the water no matter how much his bike wanted to fling him in there. Alex flew into first place.

Just as it started to piss down we headed off to a couple of pubs for drinks and the prize giving. Prizes from Bike Food, Cantgoslo, Charlie The Bikemonger, Cyclodelic, 14 Bike Co, Halo, Hell Yeah!, Howies, Hub Jub, Hunting Lodge, JOL Straps, Knog, Prendas, Re-Cycle, Skullcandy, Solder Gal, Tokyo Fixed Gear, Urban Hunter and Velo Solo were dished out to the relevant champions and as about half the riders had gone home by this point it turned out there were enough t-shirts in the prize kitty for everyone to have one to take home, as well as shit loads of stickers and some other bits and pieces on a first grab basis. I think everyone was chuffed that they got some goodies no matter where they placed, it really was the taking part that counted. Everyone had a great day and it was really nice for us locals to get to ride with so many people from out of town, we really appreciate your effort in coming over the bridge for the day and we all look forward to riding with you again soon...

Race

1st Ty

2nd Aled

3rd Alex

4th Jason Beynon

5th Sion

6th Scott Pullins

7th JT

8th Kerry Pillai

9th Owen Pillai

10th Steven Owen

11th Osian Meilyr

12th Yohei

13th Cab

14th Dave Clapp

15th Chris Punk

16th Tim Moshi

17th Tim

18th Adam Haycroft

19th Damien

20th Grayme

DFL Jason Veall

Track Stand

1st Aled

Longest Skid

1st Alex

2nd Owen Pillai

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Photos by Jono (Blog, Flickr)

Yohei's ingenius bottle holder

Scott hit's the road

Kerry having the time of her life, bless her

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Photos by Jack (Website, Flickr)

Team Bristol arrive at the start

A last minute tyre change

Eyes on the prize...

Everyone gets their map

Busy at work finalising routes

Some final discussion

Scott WALKING up a hill, tut tut!
Grrrrrr!

Owen taking 2nd place in the skid comp

One of David's no-toe clip skids, wild!
Alex 3rd place (1st out of towner, 1st skid)
Aled 2nd place (1st trackstand)
Ty 1st place
Yohei is overwhelmed by Wales

Uhhhhhh

Bookworm Alleycat cha-mone!

Kerry, 1st and only girl

Half the gang stayed for beers
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Video by John Fisher (More)

Swansea Bookworm Alleycat 03.10.09 HD 720p from progressive media on Vimeo.

Video is also on YouTube.

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A big shout out to Jono & Jack for shooting photos and John for the awesome video. Thanks to Ev, Sion, Amy and Owen for help with the organising. Cheers to Tom, Nigel, Jack and Amy for working the checkpoints and Ev for doing the start/end duty.

The last thing for me to do is pimp our awesome sponsors, pretty pretty please click on the adverts below cause they were all very generous and deserve to be supported, thanks a lot guys and gals, we love ya!

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But wait, there's more! We have a few very limited edition Bookworm Alleycat t-shirts left, if you wanna buy one it will cost you a measly £10 (free UK postage). Just send us a message using the contact button over there>

Alleycat Video Trailer

There will be a full report and zillions of photos from yesterdays alleycat very soon, for now check out the trailer for the video:

Bookworm Alleycat, Swansea 03/10/09, video coming soon. HD 720p from progressive media on Vimeo.

Performance, baby.

SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!

Aberystwyth to Cardigan Bay

A couple of Englishmen on a trip from Aberystwyth to Cardigan Bay to visit Howies for some reason, I don't know why they were visiting them but I do know that Howies used to make this cool t-shirt.

Aberystwyth - Cardigan Bay from Jonathan Cherry on Vimeo.

Skateboarding. What a Twat.

I don't usually post video links but this one is just the funniest video ever made!

Knee Cap -vs- Bar Stem

Me getting my ass kicked (and I don't mean by 'Ginger Balls, 'Jenny' or the 'spit by me again and I'll kick your fucking teeth in' kid from the skate park today)...

Knee Cap -vs- Bar Stem from FixedGearWales on Vimeo.

Sweet Stunts down in SA1

Me and Evs blowing up the spot earlier today, booyaa! The Norwegian church really is the ultimate spot for fixie dudes in and around the Swansea area, ha!


Sweet Stunts on Fixies, Yo! from FixedGearWales on Vimeo.

Backwards Circle - Fixed Gear Steeze, HA!

This is how I be rockin' it yo.

Backwards Circle - Fixed Gear Steeze, HA! from FixedGearWales on Vimeo.

Riding in Traffic Video, Backwards Circle Success and Posing

Here we go, its a jumbo post! Tuesday I attached a video camera to my bike and filmed my ride into town, the footage came out ok but not great. I need to secure the camera a bit more rigidly to the frame next time and head out during rush hour cause the roads were quite quiet. Check out the video below, I've cut it down to the most 'exciting' bits but had to take others bits out because of the crazy shaking...

...Secondly, I FINALLY nailed some backwards circles today, after weeks and weeks of trying them, watching videos on YouTube for technique tips and even dreaming that I could do them (yes I am that sad) I got 8 in the bag. I didn't get any on video but I did get Nigel to confirm that they happened.

Lastly, just after the successful execution of 3 circles a young lady and her friend wanted to be photographed with my bike. She seemed to want me sat on the saddle with her straddling my top tube but I wasn't 100% so I just let them do whatever they wanted cause I was so chuffed with my new skillz.

Oh, and I managed my first leg over and through the frame to trackstand and back combo :-D

Trackstand skilllzzz

No-Hands Trackstands, Booyaa!

Had an awesome ride into town today, I took out the same car on 3 different red lights, bet he was gutted :-p I then learned no-hands trackstands before having a crappy skate on a curb. Later on I was killing the no-hands left right and centre, of course when I got the camera out I couldn't do one for toffee! Check out the worst video I have ever made:



And also a very nice photo of Ric on my bike and a self portrait:

Free Fixie!

We all love a fixie but we can't all afford a whole bunch of them. Yes it is cheap enough to convert a road bike but you would usually buy a fixed wheel for the back which is at least 60 bucks and often 'need' to buy a new crankset at another 60 quid or so. You also will find that trying to work on a bike without the correct tools is a bloody nightmare so you'd need to buy or try and borrow a tool kit.

Today I found a dude on YouTube that doesn't give a damn about the correct tools, the proper wheel or new cranks cause he's got a hammer, a wrench, a full sleeve and a funny accent. Check out his "Free Fixie" videos below, they are hysterical, especially when he's beating the crap out of things!

Review - Monster Track 8

"In the underground world of "alleycat" messenger street racing, one race stands tall among all: New York City's MONSTER TRACK. In the dead of winter each year, the finest city riders from around the world descend upon NYC to battle it out to determine who will be King of the streets in an outlaw bicycle race with one rule: NO BRAKES." Sounds good, right?

Ev pointed me in the direction of this video, the footage on the website was awesome, it was a video we HAD to watch. I got to acquiring it, luckily I acquired it via less than legal methods because if I had actually bought it I would be a very pissed off dude right now cause it sucks. In fact I am still a bit peeved cause it took 3 days to download slowing my connection right down.

Monster Track is an annual alleycat race in New York, riders from all over the world travel to it, it's a big deal. The competition is fierce and would make an awesome film so how could this DVD possibly be so terrible? Well, it turns out that the only race footage is the 12 minutes that is available for free on the bloody website and the rest is some dreadlocked dude just walking around talking crap to people. He just keeps going on and on about this Japanese rider called Shino or "The Fixie King" as he is also called, "do you know The Fixie King is here?", Shino comes FIFTH, HE DOESN'T EVEN WIN! So why the hell does the whole video revolve around him? I'm confused, its just so terrible I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Why didn't they just send out 5 riders with headcams to cover the whole race, have someone with a camera at each checkpoint and edit that together into an hour long video of awesome riding through NYC? Why not put all the interview stuff in the extras where you only have to watch it once? Seriously, don't bother buying this if you want to get amped up before a ride but do buy it if you like seeing the same interview footage over and over split into separate sections. Just go and watch the race footage here and be done with it.

If you wanna watch a really decent alleycat video check out "London Calling" by Lucas Brunelle...


Then go and check out all his other amazing videos here.

End Transmission