Pittsburgh Alleycats

One of the Bike Fest races suffered from rain delay. The Bike for Book ‘Em race & funride is now happening Saturday August 2nd.

Pittsburgh, get ready!

Bikefest is coming!

Alleycats, polo, fun-rides, brevets, etc.

Urban Velo Subscriptions Now Available

And what a race it was. The good: 80+ people, 20+ people, $500+ raised for the women’s shelter, a crap-ton of food, and loads of fun. The bad: 2 injuries (thankfully both relatively resolved–and both people had health insurance, whew!). The ugly: spending all weekend making spokecards, picking up prizes, and hauling around barrels & pallets.

All in all, a good time.

You can check out results and pictures on the internets: http://pghpiratebike.com/results/

See you next year. Arrrrr!

Justin & co are running the Tour de Yinz again this year. And it’s in the summer!

If you missed it last year, it was a great ride… except for the weather. Of course last year it was in November, so this year should be better.

More info on the race page

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.

The Pittsburgh-Roubaix route is finalized! Check the race page for more info.