Until the Snow Ends

You've probably seen this elsewhere on the tubes , but just in case you didn't, the MM Racing Kickoff Party is at Wheelworks this Thursday night from 7pm-10pm. Like everyone else who aspires to be cool, I will be there. Luckily the bar for "cool" is pretty low in a group of cyclists, so can probably just show up, even if you have no interest in being cool. Last year this party was basically a money-raising scam, when I bought 5 or even 10 dollars worth of raffle tickets and all I got for it was a ton of food, beer and raffle prizes. What a rip off! Seriously, it was one of the most stacked raffles I've ever seen. It defied logic and reason. This post is up today to give you 24 hours notice on this killer event, and also to buy me 24 hours of time to finish the Vermont Day 1 race report!

Alrighty, so we're doing these in reverse chronological order because I have much less to say about the second race, but much more awesome seat cam footage ready to go, thanks to Jerry's ability to bang out workshopy stuff the way I bang out websites. The new extra-steady seat cam is much improved. Check it out! All credit goes to Jerry, I just whined about my "cross gut" while he welded stuff. Catamount Cyclocross Day 2 Lap 1 from colin reuter on Vimeo . As for the actual race, I had high hopes for slick carnage while listening to the rain overnight, but the course was disappointingly tacky by the time Elite Men hit the course at 3pm. The corners were kind of tricky but the defining feature was straight, bumpy false-flat climbs. Last year I complained about this and then went out and got 2nd place anyway. Yeah, well, this year I have a UCI License, and thus I'm back to whining about power sections, and unlike last year it's for good reason. I was loo...

After the deadly biological/mechanical combination failure at Waterville I realized that needed to get my act together for cross season. 3pm race starts on a bike I haven't really maintained do not go well when I eat poorly. I started by addressing the first problem, and it only took me an hour of monkeying around to get the shredded cable housing under the bar tape replaced. I am not going to be a professional mechanic any time soon, but at least I got it done. With Linnea heading to Mt Snow to race mountain bikes, and rumors of Sucker Brook being "faster than ever" I took the opportunity to steal her Edge 2.68s for my bike. It took me another half hour of fighting with the brakes to get the carbon-specific pads installed, but when I was all done I had a 17.6 lb bike with CAHBON WHEELS. Look the eff out, Sucka Brook! It should be noted that I've never ridden Sucker Brook before. Turns out there's a rocky fire road descent (sounds like a mountain bike featu...

[Carpool with Dobie , get sweet photos] A wise man once noted , "it sucks when you suck." This weekend I drove around New England with a cross bike sucking at various venues. I'll spare you the excuses for why I sucked and get right to the how I sucked. Saturday Linnea , Cary and Kris loaded up the Fit (to the brim) and headed to Waterville for a new race, put on by my 24 hour teammate Curtis and his team. The race was lightly attended for something only two hours from Boston, but we got the standard 11 starters in the 1/2/3 race, with the Corner Cycles guys there to make it legit. The course was... interesting... with 3 dismounts and a lot of bumpy power sections in a sub-four-minute lap. The best feature was a monstrously long, faster-to-run sand pit allegedly built by Jerry . 16 times through that had me questioning my "you don't need to run much for cross" training philosophy. So anyway. Race starts. I get the reverse holeshot for a second, but...

This past weekend's Landmine Classic was the finale of the GT Golden Bike series , as I'm sure you've heard. The series has been widely ridiculed for rewarding sandbaggers with an ugly bike and cheerleaders. While this is an accurate summary of what it's all about, does that make it dumb? My initial reaction was that this was totally stupid. How much does it cost to fly and accommodate four cheerleaders, a couple GT reps, and a golden bike winner and friend to six different events? How much does it cost to give every golden bike winner a bike? Oh, and your USA-centric perspective probably assumed this promotion was limited to the States. It's not . So take the cost of the US series and (more than) double it for the international series. Yeah. GT threw down a lot of money to do this. Pretty dumb, because "we" all know GT bikes are crappy and "we" buy Trek/Fisher/Specialized/Giant, whatever the shop gets us deals on, and some over-the-to...

While prepping for this race, I realized that I hadn't done a proper xc mountain bike race since Mount Snow back in July. What was that, six weeks ago? I didn't mean to semi-retire from the Root 66 series, but I guess I did. I even started to entertain thoughts of giving up on the mountain bike season early (since my wheel was still dead from the Darkhorse ) and just heading to Bedford to race cross. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and I eventually got myself mildly interested to race the Landmine Classic/ GT Golden Bike Series Finale/Root 66 Virtual Series Finals*. Cary and I went down Saturday for a preride, which got cut short by Cary's freehub exploding. While packing up to leave, though, Golden Bike Guy showed up to scout the course. His accent made it clear that he was "not from around here," and since it was currently pouring rain onto a very rocky and rooty New England course, two things happened: 1) I realized Kevin Hines was going to win the Go...

I'm pulling a Thom P and just referring you to the CX Magazine Report that I wrote. If you wanna hear me talk about me today (and why else does anyone come here??), go over there ! Oh wait. Some people are probably here for the Linnea update. A disturbingly high number of you, in fact. Well... she won. She killed it. She lapped second place. Unlike me, she was head and shoulders better than the competition. There's not much about her actual race in there because UTTER DOMINATION is boring to read about, right? I've never actually done it myself... so I dunno. I finally found a podium photo online (as I was being too emo post-race to take one), from Mel .

Yesterday's fresh snow and wind gave way to a calm morning and incredible blue skies today. Photo operations don't get any easier than this one. Extra blue kick. -2 degrees C. Almost hot sun. Friggin' perfect. Seriously, look at this place! Friggin' look at it!! If you're a dedicated North American nordic skier with some money (do those exist??), you could be here for roughly $1200 (Boston to Queenstown NZ -- 50k away). It would be the best $1200 you ever spent. Even if you're a dedicated, albeit poor and nomadic, nordic skier -- the place is full of foreigners doing seasonal work. You could be one of them...while getting the best training/vacation/non-dryland August possible. If I was a proper nordic skier, I'd be here every year. Oh, don't forget that you can connect many groomed trails via a few tele turns.

Even if you never click pictures, you should click this one: This post is for the five nordic skiers who read this in the summer. We headed up another yet another insane road to Snow Farm today. Even though it's "winter" in the valleys of New Zealand, we finally found real winter here, up at 5000 feet. Six inches of fresh powder and not a tree to be seen -- we had no choice but to shred as much gnar as can possibly be shredded on nordic skis. The only problem was that we had to earn our vertical on groomed trails. That's a problem? It is when you're accompanied by Ben Koons (probably heading to the Olympics for NZ this winter) and some Canadian Ski Team guys. First day on snow + too much pride = extreme soreness imminent. Pictures never do it justice. This was a huge f-ing cornice, I swear. Ben catches his skis in the powder, nearly lands the 360 anyway. Sampling the local snow conditions. Lots more to talk about once we stop doing stuff and driving a mill...