Alert! Alert!
So things have probably seemed strangely quiet for a long while now on the news front.
To be brutally honest it's because we had REALLY bad news and didn't want to let it out until we had some good news to compensate.

Long story kinda short...
     In February we submitted our proposal ,inculding our race course, to the city council. Nothing was said, in fact the whole thing was initially rejected, we were told it would be considered at a later stage. So we prodded and poked and tried to get a meeting with these people.
    After working our way to the top of the food chain we got a meeting with the events department. Seemed like lovely folk who wanted to help, they couldn't see why it wouldn't happen.
    Then, a week later a call from the roads department saying the engineer had 'a few issues' with our choice of race course. 'A few issues' turned out to be 'not in a million years lads'... quite a difference. And why were we being told this 1 month before the event was due to happen??? Because the events department never showed the map to the roads department when it was given to them in February!!!
AAAaaaaaagggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!

    So... where to from here? The council said they couldn't think of anywhere in the city we could host the race. Great. Our best chance was to go to the OPW(Office of Public Works) and see about getting a course in the Phoenix Park.
    Phone calls were made, the park was mapped, and we found a suitable venue for a race. One meeting with the guys in the Park and we knew we were on to a winner. But they only wanted to give us one day! Thankfully we had honed our negotiating skills and with a well worded safety plan and the sincerest of intentions, they just confirmed this morning that we can have 2 days of racing in the park.
Today we also confirmed our event insurance and that we will have access in the park to toilets, changing facilities and showers. Nice.

    So here is an overview of the area we have available to us for the race. the aerial shot is a bit old. There has been a wonderful cycle path highway run across some of the parkland which makes for a nice loop of the course. There WILL be offroad. not difficult, we've been riding it on our fixies and that's what we're basing the course on, if we can ride it anyone can. The trails are hard packed and pretty smooth, very fast riding. A couple of nice on road drags, and one short and steep climb. We should have the course finished by this weekend.

    This means that the timetable has changed somewhat. We can now only have one day of qualification, Saturday 4th. Main race final will take place on the morning of Sunday 5th.
    On a more positive note, this means that we have all day Monday for our side events. We are working with the police right now on a group ride that would take everyone around some of the nicest parts of the city, stopping off every now and then to circle, stand, hop etc... which will lead us nicely to the awards ceremony that evening.

    We will also now have Sunday afternoon and early evening free. We had an idea for the polo tournament that I would like to run past people. Bicycle polo was invented in Ireland and has been running strong in its original form on the polo grounds in the Phoenix Park since that day. The messengers of Dublin often go and play with these guys. They play a mean game of polo. Proper polo bikes from the 1950's amd 60's. Fixed-gear 26inch wheels. Almost one-to-one gear ratio. Real polo mallets.
    A lot of fun. They have offered us the use of their grounds, bikes, mallets etc for the weekend. Now i know that there may be a lot of purists out there who baulk at the idea of playing on grass, but could I ask people to consider it. We will provide you with everything, still playing street rules, just on grass, and everone can hang out in the park and watch a full on polo world cup. Let me know what you think, cos i think it would be sweet.

    Velodrome racing will still be happening on Tuesday as planned. One thing still happening as planned, can you believe it!!!

    That is all for now, and enough for people to digest for a couple of days. If people want to come and beat me over the head because things weren't how they thought they were going to be, so be it, I can take it. We've been running ourselves into the ground trying to get this back on track, cos as of 3 weeks ago it looked like an almighty train wreck. I'm actually really looking forward to the weekend now, and I hope that, despite last minute changes, you all will too.

See you in a couple of weeks, and talk to you soon,
Graham