AS many as 600 "fixie" or fixed-gear bicyclists from around China, and a champion courier from New York, will zip through traffic in an alleycat street race on April 7. Laura Imkamp pedals the story.

It's quickly become the kind of race that attracts people from all over the world.

Barely a week away, this year's April 7 Shanghai Alleycat is set to be one of the biggest bicycle races in China, if not all of Asia.

Simply put, an alleycat race is a street bicycle race. Cyclists have one start and end point, and need to hit a certain number of checkpoints throughout the city in any order, in the fastest time possible. The whole time they're riding alongside regular traffic.

While these kinds of races have been run in the United States for decades, they're just starting to catch on in China. The country's first official alleycat was right here in Shanghai in 2009. Since then, alleycats have been held in Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, Shenzhen and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province and Beijing - to name just a few - and the list keeps growing.

Outside China, alleycat races traditionally involve fixed-gear bikes, which have only one gear and don't coast; if you pedal forward you move forward, if you pedal backward you move backward. The bikes often don't have brakes, are especially popular with bicycle couriers, and have gained a strong following among urban cyclists in North America and Europe.

But in Shanghai, as in most of the Middle Kingdom, the 20km to 25km (depending on how you ride it) race is open to anyone on two wheels, as long as it's pedal-powered.

Organizers Tyler Bowa, from Canada, Drew Bates, from England and Jeff Liu, from the US, expect the number of participants this year to at last double from the last race in 2010.

The three run the bike shop, Factory 5, and Bowa says almost 300 riders have pre-registered already. He's expecting 500 to 600 racers for the event, up from 150 in 2009 and roughly 300 in 2010.

Racers from all over China - including Hangzhou, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Suzhou (Jiangsu Province) and Shenzhen - will take part. And if registration number is anything to go by, the urban biking scene is spreading throughout the country.

"It isn't just this one event," Bates points out. "It's part of a story - the reemergence of cycling in a city. Shanghai has lagged behind the rest of the world, and now it's really beginning to take off."

Three years ago, Bates says, the same five fixed-gear riders would see each other on the roads, but now he doesn't even recognize one in five. And the young, local community has rushed to embrace the trend, which has snowballed in the last two years.

What's amazing is that most of the pre-registrations are local Chinese riders, he says.

"It's pretty awesome," Bowa says, adding that it will be a good opportunity to meet new riders.

That includes world-class cyclists like Austin Horse.

The New York City-based bicycle-advocate-cum-environmentalist-cum-bike-messenger has won twice the title of North American Cycle Courier Champion, and raced in countless alleycats around the globe. Plus, he's an on-the-bike stunt double in the Hollywood film "Premier Rush."

Long story short, Horse is incredibly fast, very good at dodging traffic, and will be blasting his way through Shanghai's streets in about a week.

Horse, sponsored by Red Bull, couldn't make the first alleycat in 2010, but he's on board for this one. "I love checking out different cities and riding in them," he says.

Though he's never been to China, Horse says he's not too worried about riding in Shanghai, despite not being familiar with the city's traffic patterns.

"The No. 1 thing you learn to do, working on a bike, is to anticipate traffic movements," he says. "I think that drivers' interpretations of traffic laws are more fluid in New York City than other US cities, so I'm hoping I'll feel comfortable in Shanghai traffic."

But there's no better advantage than racing in your own city. Horse might get a real run for his money.

Although Bowa, as an organizer, isn't racing, he's confident he would have had a good shot at outshining the star biker - but "only in our city" - in New York, "he would whoop me."

That's how fellow fixed-gear rider and racer Alex Mok feels about the big increase in competitors.

There will be more out-of-town competition, "but we have the home turf advantage; we know all the checkpoints, the best crossings, and we can read the streets better," she says.

Mok, originally from Sweden, was the fastest woman to finish the race in 2010 and aims to do it again, though there's more advanced competition.

"This year's (alleycat) is much more popular and there are a lot of new riders, but we'll have to see if they can actually ride fast," she says.

Many new people have gotten into the whole fashion element of having a "fixie," she says. But it's quite different to ride hard and competitively.

To balance out that home turf advantage, the Factory 5 guys are releasing 10 of the 12 checkpoints a week ahead of the race. They'll give away the final two on a group ride the night before.

"It gives everyone enough of a chance to plan somewhat of a route, but it's enough to maybe screw up somebody's plan so that they can't practice the circuit every day of the week," Bowa says.

It's also a way to keep part of the route a mystery, while still making the race as safe as possible.

"If you just turn up in the morning and don't know where the checkpoints are, you're likely to not have thought about it and you're going to blast out and cause a mess," Bates explains.

While logistics are still being worked out, almost all Saturday's events will be based around Si'nan Mansions on Fuxing Road, with a huge after-party thrown by the alleycat's main sponsor, Boxing Cat Brewery.

"We'll certainly do our part to make sure that Boxing Cat Brewery provides the riders with a good setup for that day," says managing partner Lee Tseng.

"It's about people coming together and we are both trying to do similar things in China," Lee adds. "We're trying to offer a craft product that suits certain personalities, suits people who want more than just the general offering and I think there's a good dynamic in sharing that common goal."

Saturday's race is the highlight, but Factory 5 plans three days of action.

Events include a group night ride, gold sprints, and trick competitions throughout Friday, Saturday and Sunday, as well as lots of opportunities to eat and drink until you pop.

It's no small feat for three guys to organize an event like this in less than two months - especially a free one.

"It's been a year and a half since the last one, everyone's bikes are better, people have been riding much longer. I expect competition to be pretty steep."

But alleycats are very different from other traditional road races.

"There's a very good vibe to them," says Mok, making the event just as much about fun as it is about racing.


(Laura Imkamp is a Shanghai-based freelancer.)