The Milk Race
capt_slog
Posts: 3,974
On Sunday I went into Nottingham to watch a bit of the Milk Race.
http://www.themilkrace.com/
To those who don't know and can't be arsed to open the above link, this is a race around a closed street circuit (1.2km) and the individual women's and men's races take 50 minutes and 1 hour respectively, plus 5 laps. I didn't get to see a lot of the racing as I couldn't get there until late afternoon, so I saw the warm-up laps and then the start of the men's, but a nasty crash on the first or second lap stopped the race for about 30 mins.
But it was interesting to walk passed the 'pits' though and see the various teams warming up and look at the bikes etc.
Also interesting (as usual) was the reactions and attitudes of the Sunday Shoppers, who have the race track plonked across their usual routes about town and haven't a clue where they are going or what it will mean to them. What happens is that certain places open in the barriers to allow pedestrian to cross, the times are marked but are only approximate and quite short.
This means that it is easy to get onto the 'infield' but if you don't understand that you are in there, you might not realise that you only have a short time to get to the other side and re-cross the track to continue your journey! Others just can't bear to make a 500m detour and walk around the outside of the track.
Of course, the proportion of knuckle draggers, drunks and eejits who get themselves stuck is high, and belligerence ensues between them and the marshals. I was lucky enough to see one such exchange. The loud-mouth yobbo was complaining that he couldn't cross the track, and when it was explained to him that it would be at least an hour, he claimed that it was "false imprisonment".
The marshal answered "Well it might be sir, if you were on the inside but you're not, you're on the outside and you're free to go home whenever you want".
http://www.themilkrace.com/
To those who don't know and can't be arsed to open the above link, this is a race around a closed street circuit (1.2km) and the individual women's and men's races take 50 minutes and 1 hour respectively, plus 5 laps. I didn't get to see a lot of the racing as I couldn't get there until late afternoon, so I saw the warm-up laps and then the start of the men's, but a nasty crash on the first or second lap stopped the race for about 30 mins.
But it was interesting to walk passed the 'pits' though and see the various teams warming up and look at the bikes etc.
Also interesting (as usual) was the reactions and attitudes of the Sunday Shoppers, who have the race track plonked across their usual routes about town and haven't a clue where they are going or what it will mean to them. What happens is that certain places open in the barriers to allow pedestrian to cross, the times are marked but are only approximate and quite short.
This means that it is easy to get onto the 'infield' but if you don't understand that you are in there, you might not realise that you only have a short time to get to the other side and re-cross the track to continue your journey! Others just can't bear to make a 500m detour and walk around the outside of the track.
Of course, the proportion of knuckle draggers, drunks and eejits who get themselves stuck is high, and belligerence ensues between them and the marshals. I was lucky enough to see one such exchange. The loud-mouth yobbo was complaining that he couldn't cross the track, and when it was explained to him that it would be at least an hour, he claimed that it was "false imprisonment".
The marshal answered "Well it might be sir, if you were on the inside but you're not, you're on the outside and you're free to go home whenever you want".
The older I get, the better I was.
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