They were on the sidewalk, but the sidewalk was on the perimeter of a medium size park, so it's not like there was a ton of foot traffic from shops, bars, etc. Maybe they were going to patrol the park, but there were an awful lot of them. For the record, I think riding on the sidewalk is stupid dangerous and not cool to do for pedestrians' sake.
Anyway, I dropped them all. They might not have known that we were racing, though.