I’ve been thinking about how cheap alleycats always are and how expensive real races tend to be. An alleycat is what, five bucks at the max, unless it’s one of the larger CMWC or NACCC events, right? And there’s always a decent payout for the top finishers right?

But go to any road, track, or mountain race and the fees are easily triple, and that’s without buying a one day license or the yearly cost of a USCF license, which runs 60 bucks itself. Also, until you start racing with the 3s and 2s and 1s, there’s no payout. So you show up to the track and want to race Cat 5 but don’t have a license: you need to drop 10 dollars for a license and 15 dollars for your race fees. What does that 25 dollars get you? A lot of punishment and maybe being able to say “Well, I almost placed top 3 in the omnium.” But people do it all the time. It’s fun, it makes you a stronger rider, blah blah, all that kind of thing.

So at what point does any alleycat become too expensive? This comment from Justin sort of gets to the point – “I’ve heard some complaints about the whole $10 thing, but don’t fret. I don’t expect you to have to spend all ten of your precious dollars, but want to make sure that you have enough money to complete the race objectives. Also, remember that its for charity, so suck it up, there will be free PBR at the finish damnit!”

How much is too much to pay for a race? On that note, do people prefer cash prizes or actual stuff? Why? If any alleycat cost say, 10 dollars instead of 5, should the money go towards buying actual prizes, larger purses for the winners, payouts for the top 6 riders or so?

Respond with comments.