Re-post from my Mechazoid report on Jumpinships
"So basically, Jumpinships set up was like this:
About 75 racers were at Betty's behind the Lifestyles. There were 8 stations throughout the city: 2 on 1st Ave (Pabst and Crank Bros), Bodega (Level Comp), one on N.4th. and Northwood (Oury Grips), B1 on Long, Tip Top on Gay, Seagull Bags on Parsons, and one on Whittier (Iro).
There were 3 different manifests, which comprised of 4 pick ups and 4 drop offs (8 stops total): the pick ups had to be done in order, but the drop offs could be done at any time so long as the corresponding pick up had been done. All that meant in this case is that you needed to get stamps from the stations. Example:
Pink Manifest:
Pick up - Drop off
Pabst - Seagull Bags
Level Comp - Tip Top
Crank Bros - B1 Bicycles
Seagull Bags - Iro
So for the pink manifest, I headed from Betty's down Neil to 1st Ave where I knocked off Pabst and then to Bodega for Level Comp, then back to 1st for Crank Bros. Then I shot downtown to hit B1 and Tip Top for the drop offs and then up Broad to Parsons to hit Seagull Bags and then from there went all the way down to Whittier to hit Iro, and finally back to Betty's to drop off the manifest.
That was the first and easiest manifest. We had to do all three of them, which means doing the various stops in various orders depending on how you decide to plan your route.
The time limit was 3 hours (and later expanded to an extra hour, I believe).
I rode with my friend and we were doing decently until we we were on the second manifest and after having already done proabbly about 15 miles, went from Seagull on Parsons down Broad to N4th and then ALLLL the way up 4th until Northwood, which is uphill. That was probably the halfway point of the race, i guess.
Anyhow, to give an idea of how fast these bike messengers are, we got back to Betty's to hand in our second manifest and someone asked if i was done, and I said no, assuming they were joking, but it turned out that 4 people had already finished at that point.
So Michael and I headed out on the third manifest, which was the hardest one because of the order of stops that prevented any single roundtrip, and required more zig zaging (and another trip up to fucking Oury Grips). We got to 1st for the second pick up and were told we had a half hour left to finish, which for us was heading downtown to Tip Top and B1 and then back down to Oury Grips, and then back to 1st to finish Pabst and whatever else was in that area, and then finally back to Betty's.
Michael decided to bail and call it a day since he didn't think we were going to make it, and since I didn't want to do it by myself (and was pretty tired too), decided to bail as well.
However, as we were sitting there, we saw at least 10 people behind us doing the same manifest, meaning that we were actually riding pretty well.
I think that had we finished, we would have placed mid-30s for sure, which is just about halfway, where we were aiming to finish. I heard only 49 people finished the race, out of 75ish racers, so that's about 2/3. it was probably around 30 miles back and forth in the crazy intense heat.
My friend Ryan finished 12th overall and 4th fixed gear; Lauren finished 2nd women's; Joe Scarborough won 1st non-messenger. I can't remember what else.
Haha, Zack finished 44th, meaning I could have beat him easily, I think.
Anyway, I don't want to go into it since it's embarrasing, but I was really angry about fucking up the track stand competition after that, because I'm pretty good at them, but screwed it up from the start and fell over immediately.
Afterwards, Ryan and I rode downtown to find some stuff to eat, and ended up at some overpriced, but tasty Indian place on Main St. about a mile and a half away from betty's, then rode over to High Beck only to realize there was a cover and we couldn't play foosball for free, so we headed back up to Livingston and down to Parsons and then Parsons back down to Carabar for the awards thing, which was pretty ridiculous in its own right: people won frames, shirts, hats, billions of Oury grips, hubs, Yanco pads, etc.
Then Ryan and I met up with his lady Laura on State and rode back up North to go home.
All this comes down to me riding a shit ton yesterday and my quads and knees are killing me today.
But fuck, it was fun, and I want to race again, and hopefully be in better shape to keep up with these damned kids.
Seriously, I have a new appreciation for those guys, because Pants and Joe and Ashley know I ride pretty fast, but i couldn't even come close to touching these kids.
Goddamn hipster trash.
Someone should race with me next year."
Not bad for my first race, really. There were people here from out of town/state to race too: messengers from Chicago, Milwauikee and Philly, at least. I think someone was originally from Portland, someone from Pittsburgh.
Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with Columbus, here's the map we got to study. Keep in mind that we didn't know what the manifest order was until the race started, so routes were made up on the fly. Sorry if the picture quality sucks.
The scale isn't included on the map, but it is roughly 7.5 miles x 4 miles. Betty's is the circled spot in the center.
