Canton Cup Cams

Sadly I've had a ton of issues editing video from my rear cam (it's HD, MP4, Widescreen) so I gave up on picture-in-picture for this week. I was able to render it but it has no sound; anyway, I'll put it on vimeo in a bit, and you can play them at the same time in two broswers or something. The rear footage wasn't too good, anyway.

I tried to make it up to you with a commentary-laden video of lap one.

Canton Cup Lap 1 from colin reuter on Vimeo.

Canton Cup Seat Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo.

If you sync these up it might be pretty cool. The seat cam starts about a second before the bar cam, so hit play on it first.

Final note: Put the seat cam on the HD setting, and watch at the 1 min mark. Look at Wilcox's Edge wheels spinning. IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!

Canton Cup Race Report

You can only count on three things in life: death, taxes, and the Canton Cup being windy.

At least this year it was warm and windy. Instead of hypothermia, I finished the race with a pounding headache. Said headache was temporarily improved by drinking the only liquid available at the finish...beer. Said headache has returned, as I type this.

I am generally not super-excited about Canton, what with the mile of pavement and all, but this edition of Canton had me STOKED because I was running dual Flip cams for the first time. That's right, nearly a pound of camera was attached to my bike, thanks to man hands Jerry. With both forward and rear views, I was sure to capture at least one amusing incident.

Two Cameras! Sore back! [ uri ]

I got to the race four hours early (IBC co-promotes it, so I was volunteering) and of course, with that kind of buffer I was bound to be the last guy to the start line. I squeezed in ahead of Thom "hipster costume" Parsons on the third row and prepared to create gigs of video.

I started pretty decently when we were on pavement but became inexplicably skittish on the fire road soon after. I couldn't really see anything, so I was scared of hitting a rock. This makes no sense since I was riding freaking tubulars, and I managed to hit a rock so hard a few weeks ago that I knocked my bars out of my hands.... without flatting.

So dudes that wanted it kinda pushed in around me, which was fun from a video perspective. We were in tight (in both the literal and slang sense) traffic for a while, but then Peter Sullivan folded (not rolled) his back tire really hard in a turn and basically exploded. It made a cool farting noise, but I had to lock 'em up to avoid running him over. That opened a huge gap ahead of the crash and we got comfortably strung out trying to close it.



Eventually it came back together. The front guys were gone, but there was a 15-strong party train rolling around and obviously, I was on the back of it. Joining me in "accordion hell" at the back were Guenter Hofer and Greg Whitney.

I've raced enough cross to know that the back of a group that big is a baaaad place to be. And yet, I was having enough trouble just staying on that my legs made a plea bargain, and I decided to tailgun it for a while. Cuz maybe it will work this time!

First Greg was one wheel ahead; then two, then three. I watched him, thinking, gee, that's what I should be doing. So I passed Guenter (putting me behind only 13 other guys) and was like, phew, that was hard work. I let a gap open, Guenter came back around, and that was that.

In addition to the accordion effect, trying to stay on the back is extra hard when the group is that big because guys keep exploding and going off the back, trying to take you with them. It's like Donkey Kong throwing barrels at you, if you forget to jump one you'll end up 10 seconds off the group in no time. GAME OVER!

It should be noted that to win Donkey Kong you can just stand in place jumping barrels, you have to make forward progress. I did not apply this knowledge to the race. I just kept jumping guys who came off the back. Eventually my legs had had enough of this and a metaphorical barrel hit me in the face.

The barrel was actually me failing to ride the runup, which was stupid, because no one was riding the run up (including me). But I KNEW I COULD DO IT. And I wanted to make the crowd love me. So I stalled a few steps from the top; no problem, quick top-tube straddle and remount -- except I kicked my pedals backward, dropped the chain, and SHIT.

I had to get off and run a bit to gain speed so I could shift the chain back on. This left me 10 seconds off the back of the group (which was pretty ragtag at this point, anyway) and seriously bummin'. BUT I KNEW I COULD RIDE IT.

So the next lap, I was finally free from those pesky "drafting opportunities" and I nailed the ride up, just squeaking over the top while the crowd went wild. Several women in the crowd proposed to me. The heavens opened and a single ray of sunlight shone down, directly on me. It was so much faster than I instantly teleported into the lead of the race.

I will tell my grandkids about this. Daily. [ uri ]

Actually I saved one or two seconds and no one was especially excited, except me.

Then I TT'ed around the course for a while with Bill Kenney. Even in a group of two, I still couldn't hold a wheel to save my life. Every time he took a pull I yo-yo'ed pathetically. I rode the barriers but he passed me by running them. Glorious.

Finally Kevin's verbal abuse of me became too much, and the finish line became too close, and I attacked the shit out of myself, Bill and the last lap. Too little, too late. Kevin's final heckle was "if you had ridden this hard half an hour ago you might still have a wheel to follow." So true.

I crossed the line and Colin Murphy, already nicely recovered after finishing 7th screamed in my ear, "WHO'S THE ALPHA COLIN NOW???"

After another mediocre result I am going to do the unthinkable and take a day (!!) off. No Putney, nor Orchard Cross, for me. I will use the extra time to figure out how the heck to get some amazing picture-in-picture video edited up from Canton. Stay tuned!

A Great Face for Radio

Next time someone says to me, "I don't think you're a big deal," (this happens daily), I am going to send them to this post to correct them. Why am I a big deal, you ask? Because I was on the radio. On the internet.

You might think "oh, he means a podcast," but I assure you I don't. Podcasts are small time. Radio is big time. Do you not also gather with your family each night to listen to it? I rest my case.

(Dorky side note -- it's been exactly 61 years today since the War of the World broadcast. If you've never read about it, you should.)

So yeah, I was on a podcast, except they called it radio, because it was live, but you can listen to it later (like a podcast), which I guess a lot of people do. So if you want to hear me on the radio-cast, you can download the October 27 show from here. I make an appearance starting around the 43 minute mark. If you want to listen to the whole show in your browser, it's here, but you can't fast forward (?).

My overall impression of the experience was very mixed. Hearing it later, it's amazing to see that I was on for seven minutes; it felt like two minutes. We definitely didn't cover a lot of stuff that we could have, but on the other hand, we're mainly talking to a road cycling audience that is only dimly aware of cross. I think. I think I could have done a better job leading them with some of my responses, too. Clearly they wanted to talk about nemeses and victims, but I was unable to actually segue into it.

This talking business is hard. Hence the reason I stick to hiding behind websites. Oh, and don't get me started on the trauma of hearing your own voice played back. I don't sound like that! Do I?

To further support the idea that I am a big deal, here is current leader for "best photo of me, ever." This is the on the only fun part of the entire New Gloucester course. I'm pretty sure I had my tape-hooking incident directly after this; no surprise, look how fast I appear to be going!

It was taken by Natalia McKittrick, who has the best talent/mass ratio of any photographer in New England. If you have an important event to photograph (like, say, Thom's wedding), you should give her money to attend, the results seem quite good.

And thus endeth "the most narcissistic blog post ever, until the next one!"

Downeast Cyclocross Day 2 Race Report

When we last left off, I had just finished sucking at bike racing. This was well deserved, premeditated, sucking. Granted, I didn't know on the start line that I was going to suck, but if you'd been a socioligist, hiding behind a cow, trying to write a thesis on cyclists' prerace mannerisms, you would have jotted down "guy in gray and black is going to suck."

So we needed to fix that. I had chat with the SBZ and she pointed out that I either needed to get my act together prerace, or stop racing until I cared enough to get my act together. Ouch. I tried to argue that I had my act together, and was just a victim of neverending bad luck. She was not convinced. Neither was I.

Fine. I'll get my shit together. I don't want to suck on Sunday.

10pm Saturday -- I'm in bed, after drinking four pints of water in the last two hours. Hydration is serious business. So is getting up to pee three times.

8am Sunday -- Gotta get up to eat breakfast. Why do you need to eat breakfast at 8am for a 3pm race? So you'll be hungry at noon for a real lunch. Serious business is getting up seven hours before a 1-hour race to start fueling.

10am -- Both bikes cleaned, lubed. Valve extender located, so I can use all my wheelsets no matter what pump.

11am -- on the road to the race, lunch in hand. My act is so together it hurts. No, wait, that's my bladder.

The one caveat to all this preparation was that we were racing on the same course as yesterday, only backwards. The same course that we rototilled into four inches of mud that was now drying in the sun. You can put the right fuel in me, you can make my bikes work, but you still can't make me get stoked to slog in mud.

I decided that I would preride the course and see if it met my standards for being fun enough, or at least interesting enough, that I would not automatically hate life if I was racing poorly. The early prognosis did not look good, since our promoting overlords had decided against restaking any part of the course, despite the fact that were in the middle of a giant field.

Grass sez: Bet you wish you could ride on me.

I went to go pit for Linnea and I was decidedly on the fence about racing. My bike was already destroyed, the hoses were in use, and the course was a disaster. What's the point? At least Linnea made my life easier by stubbornly refusing a pit bike until the last lap, so I was free of washing duties.

But wait! My day was turned around by the actions of a few cyclocross gods. First, Adam Myerson prerode the course, and went to have a little chat with the promoter. I assume the chat was basically "I'm on the UCI 'Cross Commission and you're not. You should restake these horrible mud bogs. Don't question me."* And boom, the course became 30% more rideable. Killer.

Then, I get back to my car and Jerry is so stoked to test out his bar cam contraption that he has not only installed it on my bike, but also cleaned the entire thing. Seriously, I left a bike with 2 lbs of mud on it, and I came back to a totally clean, lubed machine with a handlebar cam attached!

Well damn. I better race that bike.

I was positioned in the mid-rear of the pack for the first minute. Then we went down the first downhill in four to six inches of thick mud, and the race exploded. It was like everyone forgot that we were racing for 60 minutes on a course with zero drafting and decided they HAD TO MAKE THE FRONT GROUP, regardless of who else might be trying to steer a bike through this quagmire.

[ You can see the photographer taking this photo in my video. Whoa, meta. dmcewan ]

Through the glorious sound of metal-on-metal biketastrophies I wove my way up to a solidly midpack position. Despite the carnage and random reshuffling of the entire field, I still managed to end up directly behind Kevin with 58 minutes to go. Well at least that makes the rest of the race straightforward. Follow Kevin, beat Kevin, go home.

For awhile we hung out with some other dudes. Guys like Ricky and Nathaniel rode in our group, or even behind me, until they remembered how to not crash into stuff, and then we never saw them again. No matter. Kevin is right there.

Then a spectator said "24th" to me as I rode past, and that changed "everything."

Verge points go 25 deep. Money goes 25 deep. Guess who has two thumbs and hasn't scored at a Verge race all season? THIS GUY.

Ok, so instead of worrying about Kevin I need to worry about not dropping two places. I'm not sure how this changes my strategy, though. So I kept riding as fast as I could, which wasn't very fast.

I briefly passed Kevin and assumed that I was going to "totally own him," but before said owning could happen, he passed me back, so I started riding like an idiot.

First I communicated very poorly to Linnea when I wanted a pit bike, so she was at the wrong pit while I was looking around angrily for my pit crew. "I'll get a clean bike around this corner.... PSYCHE!" is not good for keeping you focused. Of course Kevin had no clean bikes at all. So this wasn't much of an excuse.

Now I'm flustered, so on the only fast part of the entire course I managed to jacknife into the tape on a corner because I'm riding too aggressively. Shit! It's in my bars, dismount, flail, yank the stake out of the ground... and I'm free! Only eight seconds lost!

Oh but wait, we better make up that time by getting overly aggressive on the sketchy downhill and riding off in the grass/rocks/trees.

Soon after that, I noticed I was starting to doink my rim on more stuff than usual. Now I generally consider the rim-doink to be a good sign that your pressure is justright, but when you start doinking it once every 10 seconds, when there's only a solid object in the mud every 20 seconds, that's a bad sign. I was pretty sure it was going flat, but for some reason I wasn't losing any ground to Kevin. Huh. It wasn't until I came down the hill before the stone wall, and instead of going "doink" it went SLAMSLAMSLAMSLAM that I knew I was riding a flat.

Of course the benefit of racing in that much mud is that the flat didn't really affect ride quality or handling at all. By the time I got to the pit to get a new bike, I was still only 15 seconds or so behind Kevin, not bad for a lap with a tape incident, off-course incident, and a flat incident!

Now free of incidents, with two laps to go, I put Kevin squarely in my sights and hit the afterburners. In only half a lap I had narrowed the gap to 14.5 seconds. Victory was inevitable.

But then, disaster struck. Justin Lindine lapped me, because he is the real deal on a bike, not some joker laden down with cameras and ideas about blogging. And suddenly, we had under half a lap to the finish line, and I still had to make up 14.49 seconds on Kevin.

So I rode really hard for another four minutes, and got the gap down to 10 seconds, so I was just close enough to see the f-ing smirk on his face when he turned the last corner and confirmed that I was too far back to sprint him to the line.

Bastard.

No, wait, the goal was top 25 and I finished 23rd! So I got points, money, and a good time, racing my arse off for 56 minutes. Maybe I'm not burned out... the only way to tell for sure is to do six more double weekends. Let's go!

Downeast Cyclocross Day 2 Bar Cam

Jerry has been doing good work up in his crazy Vermont enclave. As the seatcam's #1 fanboy he took it upon himself to fashion a proper handlebar mount to increase the footage that can be captured. I picked up a second flip cam with the hopes of being the king of dual-cam dorks, but it was too muddy to actually run the rear one.

Here we have lap one, in all its jerkiness. The camera mount is rock solid, make no mistake, but when you're riding in 4 inches of quagmire you tend to make a lot and handlebar movement. So the camera is all over the place, especially on the gnarly downhill that half the field crashed on.

Downeast Cyclocross Day 2 Lap 1 from colin reuter on Vimeo.

When you're done watching this, you should really check out Kirt Fitzpatrick's bar cam from the same day, since he was leading the race and whatnot. He's using a GoPro wideangle camera, which does an amazing job of reducing the bar shaking with the angle. Plus the fisheye makes him look CRAZY FAST. Which just might be because he is.

Let's be honest, his video is tiiiight. I gotta raise my game before Jerry divorces me for a faster guy with better editing!

Races That Didn't Happen

I spend a fair amount of time here bragging about how I race 53 weekends a year, year after year, and I don't burnout, because I'm totally awesome.

Now I don't want to say "I was wrong," because I'm never wrong, but let's just make a little revision here.

If you race every single damn weekend, you will have zero motivation for cold, rainy mud slogs.

It's true. You can try it yourself. I just can't get into flogging myself against unrelenting mud for 60 minutes anymore, not when I know there's another, potentially less traumatic experience racing bikes just 5 days ahead. Bike handling against mud is still cool, don't get me wrong, but the pure power fests that pit you against the course? Meh. I'm not good at them, so they aren't cool. You know how it is.

So yeah, MRC Cross was over a week ago and I never wrote about it. Race morning was 45 and pouring rain. By the time the elite race started we were down to 38 degrees, pouring rain, and windy. Yup, every racer and promoter's nightmare. I got to the start late, lined up at the back, an attempted a cross race. I think the deep puddles on the rocky fire road were what broke me -- each time through, your feet got soaked in ice water, and you were rolling the dice against hitting a hidden rock.

After nearly getting my bars knocked out my hands by a rock, hitting the rim 10 times each lap, and having completely numb feet after 12 minutes, I suddenly realized that I didn't have to do this and rode off the course.

Initially I felt like a big wuss, but when I finished changing and re-emerged the parking lot was FULL of recently dropped-out racers. Still shivering, I headed back to the course to see if I could increase the "fun factor" for those foolish enough to still be riding bikes.

I yelled at Cary "IS IT FUN???" and literally one turn later he exited the course to head to his car.

"There's your answer" he mumbled through chattering teeth.

Before I could heckle anyone else into dropping out, I realized that I was still really freaking cold, so I retreated to JD's heated truck. By the end of the race, 50% of the field had DNF'ed and it was snowing. EPIC! EPICALLY SHITTY!

I wish more people who promote cross races had come to Wrentham just to be reminded what the total worst-case scenario for running a race is. Maybe then we wouldn't have four races on the same day in October. Wait, I'm one of those people who is running a race... in December... OH MY GOD.

So dropping out of MRC Cross was no big deal, but it softened me up for Saturday at Downeast, which was a UCI/Verge/BIGDEAL kind of race. It was also high 40s, raining, and increasingly breezy.

While I was warming up with the cows/Embrocation Team in the barn, Linnea was out in the rain having the best UCI finish of her career (6th). I was certainly not pitting for her, but she knows pit bikes are a sign of weakness, so it's all good. If she writes anything about it I'll link it up because it will assuredly be more positive than how my race went.

In fact -- we had better just gloss over that bit of the report -- I rode what felt like "pretty damn hard" for three laps and had absolutely nothing to show for it in far as placing. When my stupid overinflated Fangos slipped for the 80th time on a 4% incline, I got off my bike, threw it over the tape, and walked back to the car. Because quitting is PRO.

Lest you think this is a permanent turn to EMO for the blog, remember the golden rule of midweek happiness: DO NOT SUCK ON SUNDAY. This was only Saturday. It barely even happened.

[ Borderline hypothermic,Verge-point-scoring hardmen. Not pictured: me. from robot ]

Dudes are coming to hang out!

I don't know if you've noticed it, New England, but there's been a steady influx of Cat 3's into the Verge Elite race this season. That's right... a grand total of four guys have moved up -- Kevin,Greg, Corey, and of course, the notorious "BW". You might think to yourself, how much do four guys really matter?

A lot.

You know how many guys upgraded from Verge B to Verge A mid-season in the last two years combined? Zero. Remember the Dylan McNicholas/James Tosca domination from the last year? Remember John Peterson, Josh Lipka and the ebay auction? It used to be that whatever guy won in B's in Vermont stuck around and won the series, and everyone who was fighting for 2nd stayed locked into B's right along with him. Hell, I know I did.

But this year it's different. And I think I know why. And, sadly, it's the one Verge series change Myerson pushed for that I didn't agree with.

When they dropped Cat 2's from the B race, it was a subtly powerful statement about what that field should be -- fast(er) guys who aren't dead serious about bike racing. Secretly, a large portion of the B field was dead serious about racing bikes (for example, me) and while we raced the 2/3 field, we waved our Cat 2 status at anyone who'd listen. See, you can get to be a Cat 3 just participating in a lot of Cat 4 races, but to be a Cat 2, man, you gotta beat people. If you're a Cat 2, you're either wicked talented, or you spend a lot of your time worrying about bike racing.

My tongue is firmly in cheek, but still, this is one of things you might outwardly joke about but inwardly believe. You wanna see how much people value their Cat 2 label, look at how many Cat 2's downgraded to Cat 3 this year. (Zero)

So, it used to be that you could have the glory of a Cat 2 license AND the glory of racing at the front of a race (2/3 Men). It was the best of all worlds -- no wonder no one wanted to upgrade.

But that little number on your license means so much, for such silly reasons. Dominating a Cat 3 field just doesn't have the same appeal, because it means (1) you're a Cat 3 and (2) you're beating Cat 3s. And if you eat/sleep/drink/breathe bike racing (like many of us do), having that little number on your license annoys the shit outta you. Because dammit, you're good, not like the rest of the riff-raff, amirite?

So here we are. Now, if you want a license that says "I'm serious business" you gotta line up with a field of guys who are also pretty serious business, and race longer and harder against guys who are faster and better than you. No more faking it in the B race.

These four guys won't be the last. There's plenty of U35 Cat 3's coming up who are pretty serious about bike racing, and vain enough to want you to know that they're good at riding a damn bike. So they'll come up as well.

I think this is a good thing. Sure, sometimes that means we have to race Pros. Sometimes we get lapped. But at least we aren't having a self-congratulatory group ride at the front of the B race, getting top 10s each week, and thinking about how we are the shit.

Instead, Tim Johnson shows up to point out that we are shit. Instead of racing for 1st, you're racing for 30th. But so what? It's still racing, as hard as you can, against guys you're competitive with. And that's the whole reason I started racing cross in the first place.

Corey, Kevin, Greg, and Brian: I'm glad you guys came to hang out. I will crush you now. Unless I don't.