Interesting. Having never "raced" professionally or otherwise, I have nothing to compare to and probably shouldn't even be posting in this thread, but doing that type of a race in traffic in winter has to be riskier than your daily ride. That said, I know there have been times when I am out riding where I get in that "zone" where the endorphins are flowing and you are running on pure energy and you just concentrate on riding and lose track of your surroundings.

I would really like to do an alley cat race, but I know my daily bicycle commute and weekend rides do not come near to providing me with the reflexes and experience needed to dart through traffic in the middle of a city at night at an acceptable level of risk.

I think that is the key here--we all take risks and do "dangerous" things to some degree or another for the thrill or ego, or whatever reason----but the people I know who have done these types of races know the difficulty and risks before going in, and to them, given their experience and the thrill they get, it is worth the risk. I feel horribly saddened by that tragic story in the other thread. I don't blame anyone for that, but riding in that type of a race is certainly riskier than a morning spin on your local bike trail.

However, the people I feel really sorrow for/angry at are the highschool/college kids I know that are into the "hipster" scene that are trying to do these races without really appreciating the risk involved. Whether through naivette or that youthfull sense of indestructibility, it just never occurs to them what they are doing is dangerous or that they are endangering others. I have a younger cousin that was all amped to do an alley cat even though he just started riding fixed 6 mo ago and had moved into the city 1 yr ago. He won't be able to now because he broke his shoulder 3 blocks from his house the other day when he slipped on ice while trying to ride to work in the morning on his brakeless "fixie."