A handful of New Yorkers traveled up to the Elm City yesterday for Grand Theft Velo II. I had talked a bit big before the race, saying that I was there to do better than I did last year (2nd overall, 1st out of town).

Last year's race was full of short sprints - 3 manifests with closely grouped checkpoints, many just given by location name, favoring the locals. It hurt me a few times, and with no time to plan the best route, a lot of on the fly decisions and hope-for-the-bests came into play. I thought I was doing worse than I actually was, seeing other riders leave checkpoints, but the hectic nature of the race was such that riders were flying by all over downtown, in all directions, and you couldn't really know who was where.

In the middle of the second manifest, we had to pick up a package and carry it with us the rest of the race. I had the misfortune of getting a long, triangular Fehttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=36842784
Blogger: tri state vagabond - Create PostdEx box that kept trying to fall out of the way I had it crammed between my bag and my back. Others were lucky enough to get flat packages. Buggery!

And, knowing full well that I was pretty sure I was wrong, I tried to quickly find a CP that was much further away, during the last manifest, and lost time and places. I finished 8th - well, sort of. 2nd place actually only did 2 manifests because of an organizer error, and rumor had it that the winner cheated something fierce (wtf?!) - so it's still a strong finish either way you cut it. But I wasn't thrilled. However, it was nice to race an alleycat again - it's been a while. Valentine Alleycat (in NYC, 4th place), and Battle for Brooklyn back in October, were the last two that I've done.

New Haven does know how to throw a good bike party, and it was nice to see some of the heads up there, including Matt from Ghostship, who's sponsoring Tracklocross pretty nicely.