Smaish's Suffercat Recap!

Smaish from Team Nonstop in Arizona recaps her longest alleycat ever.

Road tripping out to the Heavy Pedal Suffercat felt like an excuse good as any to do hoodrat shit while being somewhat healthy via racing bikes. Racing keeps me in check with my 0 to 100 smash attitude. This trip with the new team fulfilled my fixie-foo dreams of being with strong women who are first and foremost friends. Usually the women are solo yolo on a men’s team making alliances and friendships organically outside of their team bubble and this trip felt more like a team camp, a college road trip, and less like a scary serious race.

That said it wasn’t easy. It is called Suffercat afterall. We woke up after a night racing the GLK Heritage fixed crit on one hour of sleep and rode into the sunrise to Arizona. Flying down the freeway like a brakeless foo we made it to the start of the alleycat just in time. My teammate and crit slayer Melissa decided to save her legs and teammate Mei had to get her seatpost cut again to dial in her Aventon Mataro for her shawty 4’11” shawty self. So Jenni (Team Cretins) and I scrambled to the start line where we met LA locals Jackie and Jeanette from She Wolf Attack Team (SWAT) making a truce to get lost in Phoenix racing together.

The sun was setting as we rode off course on gravel, hopped a private gate for mansions, and called the race organizer to find out we were on the opposite side of the canyon pushing us back 45 minutes! Jesse from Heavy Pedal was super nice and did a neutral restart for us upon return for the final checkpoints. I got dropped while looking at directions but luckily saw the checkpoint worker and booked it to the last stops. That day I took home 2nd and was so proud of us bombing through the streets together fast yet safely like responsible fixie goons. After several accidents in 2018 I was hesitant to jump into an alleycat but racing with teammates and friends made this feel like a hustle ride for grown up kids on track bikes.