Until the Snow Ends

The last post contained one huge error -- I didn't mention my choice host housing courtesy of Day 1 B Men's winner and all around nice guy Brian L . Yeah, that's right, I'm calling it host housing because it's a lot more pro than "staying with a friend." We had a nice floor spot on a thick carpet, in a room with its own thermostat . You might think I'm joking, but that's the perfect set up for me to get some damn sleep. Temperature control trumps bed any day. Rested and refreshed we headed back for day two, which was a whopping 8 degrees warmer than day one. The course was the same except for one added runup and the whole thing was run backwards -- I gotta to say, this was a great way to make a course feel totally different with minimal work. The new course had anywhere from 2-4 dismounts depending on how well you could crank super-steep uphills, so it was more "crossy" (day 1 had but one dismount) and also more painful. By the l...

This weekend was the second in a row of the "big travel to big races" lifestyle. Linnea is so pro now we have to go to any UCI C1 race within 600 miles of Boston, it's the contract I signed to keep hanging out with her. After another 10+ hours in cars and a much nicer hour on a ferry, I gotta say that I am burnt out on travel. I have no idea how some of the elites go points chasing to the Mid Atlantic and further every weekend. Man, I am so ready to sleep at home and not rush out of work on a Friday. Travel aside, the event itself was pretty good, as long as you could look past the 20 degree windchill. I contemplated a nitpicky list of complaints about this one, USGP-whine style , but I'm making an attempt to grow up and not put every bad idea I have on the internet . The course was tough to decipher, plenty of climbs and straights made it power-friendly but there were some tight, twisting wooded sections and on super-sketchy off camber descent. After two days...

DAMN. IT. The history .

After a brutal day of running through deep mud at 60 degree temps, mother nature decided to up the ante for day 2. Post-race, a line of severe thunderstorms came through, re-saturating the course and destroying what little course tape hadn't already been ridden through. And then the temperature dropped twenty degrees. Sunday morning's temperature hovered around 45, with wind gusting to 30 mph -- the most significant change to the course conditions was that warm, sloppy mud had been replaced by cold, sloppy mud. The course was effectively the same, except it had been shortened further, leaving "only" four length running sections. Actually, if you ran down the hills (which was becoming more and more popular), you could join some of the running sections together... so maybe it only had two running sections! Yay! As you might imagine my motivation and core temperature were pretty low, and based on the number of people preriding (zero) I'd say my feelings were rep...

A quick heads up to all those nordic skiers who read this -- lets pretend for a second you are a proud and numerous people -- we are running Fantasy Nordic again this year. I have the teaser posted at my other blog if you need to be teased a bit prior to signing up . Auctions start Monday, so get on it!

One of the "perks" of dating a semi-pro athlete is that instead of staying local and throwing down at BRC's Shedd Park race this weekend (which was allegedly AWESOME), it was time for a road trip to New Jersey, the mall and swamp capital of the world! That's right, Linnea only races UCI races these days, so we were off to the USGP for a weekend full of cramped cars and cramped hotel rooms with Matt , Kenny and Diana, with guest appearances by Chris Bailey and the incredibly numerous Cambridge Bikes team. The initial call by Matt was "bring your mud tires," a phrase that usually excites me, conveying images of slicked up turns where you can ride a berm built from the bodies of your roadie opponents. Some rain on the way down made it all the more promising -- no grass crit here. This optimism was brutally crushed within seconds of arrival on Saturday. We rolled in to the sight of people dressed like they should be working on fishing trawlers, rubbery jacke...

My site went down two days ago and they're still working on restoring everything that was on their server that died. I can't even post a static HTML page there to tell people that crossresults.com will be back online shortly... it's just been a 404 now for two days. I can't complain because their customer service is great and the price is good. I just talked to them and they said they're hoping to get everything restored by the end of today. I'm just mentioning it here in case anyone comes along trying to find out what the deal is.

I cannot officially promote this event until the USCF paperwork is squared away, but I would suggest you keep your cross bike in working condition until at least December 13 , especially if you live near Wrentham, MA .

In the midst of 60-hour work weeks and yet another week of sickness, I went to Putney to race the 10-person elite field in this New England cross classic. Why? Because cross is awesome. If Monday-Saturday of my week sucks, there's one way to fix it -- racing Sunday. Tiredness and health be damned! Matt and Toby showed up to keep me company and ostensibly provide competition. And race we did! Well, for a lap and a half. We got gapped by the lead train of five quickly and then it was just the three of us. For reasons unknown (ok, girlfriend on the runup) I went around Toby after a lap and immediately realized that today was going to be a survival day, not an attacking day. I can survive, though... right? Maybe? Matt came past as we circled the West Hill Shop , realizing that I wasn't exactly riding away with it. I responded to this affront by crashing on the muddy corner behind the shop, nearly getting run over by Toby, and then ceasing to put up a fight for the next...

I actually can't put up the middle of the race (lap 3-5) until next week because I hit the vimeo upload limit. Whoops. Northampton Seat Cam 2/3 Men Laps 1-3 from colin reuter on Vimeo . Lap 3 contains my awesome barrier pirouette that Richard Fries severely understated as a "bobble." What happened is that I flipped the bike out to the side and hooked the front wheel on the wrong side of a stake, and had to spin 360 degrees while running to get it out. Northampton Cyclocross 2/3 Men Laps 6&7 from colin reuter on Vimeo . Lap 6 has Pat Goguen's barrier crash and Jon Bernhard's derailleur explosion (guess I was wrong about that breaking up the group!), Lap 7 has Ryan Rumsey's barrier crash and the final sprint, complete with me being a drama queen afterward. Both barrier crashes only have the audio and aftermath visible. Race report revision: I watched the full video and the group splintered when a Verge guy (Sean Mannion I think?) had to put a foot do...

ohh crap Toby just crashed on my line [ from ryank ] A lot of stuff happened between the end of my race Saturday and the start of my race Sunday. It highlighted how awesome most people on the cross scene are, you know, that thing you take for granted? So, one snapped SRAM Rival shifter. The good news was, Joe from Joe's Garage was in the pit, and he had a right shifter to sell me. The bad news was, it was SRAM Red. Get out your checkbook. Wait, good news, he sold it to me at cost (PEOPLE ARE AWESOME)! Bad news, SRAM Red at cost is still $170. Wow. So I went over to Meg and JD 's house, our awesome hosts for the night. Dinner was given to me. Breakfast was given to me. Extra brake and shift cables were given to me, which was really important after I kinked the everloving crap out of one and had to disassemble my new shifter to fix it. During my disturbingly lengthy shifter installation I discovered my derailleur hanger was bent in and hitting the spokes. A quick e...

Alex took this wicked picture of me. After living out of a suitcase for two weeks and barely riding outside races for two months, I was chock full of excuses for why Northampton was going to be ugly. And yet, one minute into the race I was leading the damn thing, panting frantically, and thinking "I guess I really don't understand how fitness and training work... no wonder people pay for coaching." Actually, I was thinking "ohshitohshitohshit" but in retrospect... I don't understand fitness! My Vermont result continued to pay off and despite a DNF at Gloucester Day 2 I was still 6th in the series and still on the front row. The whistle blew and I nailed the clip-in, it was hot, but apparently it wasn't perfect because Hunter crushed it off the line and took the lead into the first corner with me on his wheel. I immediately remembered that Hunter and I are two guys who can't work together at all, because he blows me away on straightaways and holds...