Originally Posted by Tully
A pro would realize they are doing an alleycat and get on some ridiculous training regime that would allow them to learn the streets, get used to all sorts of traffic, build the propper muscles for the situation, find the right equiptment, etc. and then destroy everyone. That's why they are pros, not because they can ride bikes real fast.
Unless you mean they just magically pop up at an alleycat with no planning whatsoever, in which case they probobly would still crush. But this just wouldn't happen, or they arn't a profesional.
lots of alleycats start without a manifest, or split and multiple manifests, or give one stop at a time as you go along, or sometimes even make you figure out hints to what the next stop is, or hand you the manifest like 2 seconds before you take the start, best practice is being there and doing it all the time........having the stops ahead of time is a luxury, dont count on it being that way often
I was in one once and one of the stops was simply listed as "frogtown", unless you were local and in a small group of people that knew what that was, you were screwed. The field had been split into 3 groups with different manifests which separated all the strong riders too, so the big pack running together never happened.
an awful lot of people out there have like zero navigational skills too, even with a map
I know lots of couriers and messengers like that, they learn it by rote instead of by reason, there is a system to how addresses are created, works the same everywhere in every city, about the only difference is occasionally you see somewhere flip the odd and even numbers from one side to the other side of the streets plus the occasional odd address that doesnt fit cause the post office never fixed something or folded some addresses across some others due to development(it happens)