Race Report from Cliffy

Results will be up soon. Here's Cliffy's take on the event:


Most fun race since sean's last race, or my first one, whichever was more recent.


To start. pretty busy week, two 40s then 3 50s, really nice weather, great riding weather, pretty much the best week in work since 2006. so to race or not to race? no commitments, i'll help if there's not enough checkpointers, but since when has that been a problem in
dublin? eh... about 3 or 4 years maybe? so many couriers here want to checkpoint i think they (we) all harbour secret cross dressing/secretary re-enactment fantasies. so i raced as sean had
about 50 million people doing checkpoint duty, thank god, cause it meant i could drink and ride my bike. no groups causing problems with pedestrians or (god bless em) cars, we all separated soon as sean surprisingly said go (after standing in the cold for two hours),
myself on the way to dice bar from christchurch, easy as pie, real nice trip down the quays, down to a warm reception from early drinkers, not just chris and other fella doing c/p duties there, got
some roll, some points, off to somewhere else, can't remember. so the rest of the race passed in an hour and twenty minutes blur (last ten minutes = hell on wheels) with a huge amount of fun and good and bad luck. great luck with cars and pedestrians, the most welll mannered traffic i've seen in an alleycat since ever? no problems, which amazes me since i've never been up and down the quays so many times in such a short space of time at full pelt, all clear apart from the odd scraped wheel well. so on to pretty much every c/p, well distributed close enough to christchurch, i visited jail twice from the dice bar, had to ask for drink there the first time, second time they were prepared, nicely, free flowing red wine, thanks munyi!. last ten minutes hurt pretty bad, but a perfect length for a race altogether, ten minutes of pain after 1.20 of pure
effort = worth it. checkpoints = fun every single one, bars, great, distribution, great, tasks, great, cards, great...

i'm trying to think how i would have done it better but i couldn't think of even doing it half as good as this. so on to finish and everyone and their grandmother/dog is at the george bernard shaw where of course there is a grace period of an hour's drinking time before the results get announced. lucas from enniskerry shows off his newly mobile hip, nice to see him out and about, lucas from another country achieves fourth place, congratulations! i get third, yippee! mimi and lola pull off second in mimi's final appearance in dublin = fantastic! and lally out races and out classes everyone to win the christmas monopoly alleycat 2007... maith an fear!


In total: great night, super well organised, thanks to sean and each
checkpoint: hope we can repay the favour sometime, this is what it's
about folks.

see yis on the road - john/cliffy/dublin