Until the Snow Ends

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 thi...

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...

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...

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...

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, pourin...

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,...

I've realized that one downside to posting a seat cam with commentary is that I already used up half of my "humorous observations" (or whatever it is I do here) and now my race report won't be as ridiculously loopy as it could be. That's a bad thing... arguably. But, since Mansfield was the only race I finished this weekend (we'll talk about MRC in a bit), it's writin' time. So back in the day, 2006, Mansfield Hollow was the second cross race I'd ever done. This was the year I moved to Boston in August, so I'd been back to riding a bike for all of two months and thus raced C men at 9 am. I went to an MC Frontalot concert the night before and got home drunk at 2 am. On the road at 6:45, by the time I'd filled myself with coffee and breakfast sandwiches and found the venue it was 8:45. Barely had time to get a number, didn't preride, then feebly raced around getting off my bike what felt like every 10 yards (I think it was 7 dismoun...

Mansfield Hollow 1/2/3 Lap 1-2 from colin reuter on Vimeo . With Linnea out of town bagging UCI points in Toronto, and no Verge results duties, I had more time than usual on Sunday night. So I put together a seat cam with music and commentary. I'd like to think it's better than the raw ones, although it sure took a lot longer. There's also some bonus footage from me stacking it really hard on the barriers, and lapping Gewilli . Clip out fail from colin reuter on Vimeo .

So, as mentioned previously , I did not have the moxie necessary to stay on the lead lap on Saturday. That's ok. Saturday is just a warm-up for Sunday, right? Sunday is the day you have to live with for a five-day work week. If you're gonna suck, do it on Saturday. My plan to bounce back was focused around a hotel room five minutes from the venue. This cut out 2 hours of driving (or more, knowing Boston traffic), and let me control my own sleep schedule in a way that's just not possible when you're bumming someone's floorspace. Saturday night I wrangled some of the proverbial data, had dinner with Meg and JD , and was in bed by 11. Nothing special...until I didn't get up until 9:45 AM. And even then, it was only because the hotel breakfast closed at 10. SLEEPING A LOT IS PRO! You should try it. Assuming you're not in my field. Another positive indicator was that Linnea had a good race right before mine. Things were lookin' up. I went to rid...

Sometimes, being a bike racing superfan is a good thing. For example, I don't really burn out, even though I race for 11.5 months of the year, and I can entertain myself pretty much indefinitely at any race venue just because... dude, bikes. But sometimes being a superfan can burn you. It's a long story, but I ended up going down to Providence at stupid o'clock with Chip even though my race wasn't until 3 pm. I was kitted up and riding the course at 9:15, while TJ and everyone else who was going to beat beat me were probably still lying in bed. What can I say, I was at a bike race, I was excited! I got to show Chip the "pro pin" (I learned it from Josh Jamner) and a host of other "pro" tricks. I think I have a future in coaching masters on race day details. Common sense masquerading as coaching! I could totally do this. Actually, is that any different from any other coaching? I chased Chip around the course during his race telling him he lo...

Monday morning means seat cams ! Even if you never watch these, you should watch the first 30 seconds of this one. Providence Day 2 Seat Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . Bonus humor at 12:00 when Manny sees the lap cards. "SIX?!" My thoughts exactly. Pete Rubijono and Manny Goguen are the main protagonists of this one. Pete Smith makes an appearance at the end.

Let me just say that seat cams are the best way to buy time to update your other website for the first 3 days of the week. And since it's a rear-facing camera, you still don't know anything about how my race actually went, so this race report still has a chance of being interesting! As much of the internet has noted, day two was a drier, faster, and totally different course than anything most of us have seen at Gloucester. With legions of Cat 4s and masters sacrificing themselves to dry out and pack down the prior day's mudbath , the course was getting faster by the hour. Don't believe me? My lap times would have been good enough to win the Cat 3 race by over two minutes. Er, I mean, of course I could dominate Cat 3 like that. I'm a Cat 2, after all! Anyway, with the course getting fast and my file tread thirst unquenched by Saturday, I hit up Gabe again, to get my hands on some carbon fiber hotness. I think I might have a problem. [ Wheels from Gabe + Pi...

Two more laps with the seat cam. Corey Lowe, Wayne Bray, Aroussen Laflamme and Todd Wheelden are the main protagonists on our merry quest not to get lapped. I decided to add some pithy commentary to a few portions of the video... mainly making excuses for why I'm off the bike and blaming other people. It feels good, you should try it! Gloucester Day 2 Lap 2/3 Seat Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo .

Gloucester is usually a grass crit. Ryan Trebon usually shows up, and rides so fast he leaves burn marks on the grass. With this knowledge in hand, I began scheming for some extra Gloucester speed as soon as I got to the finish line in Vermont . Having just ridden (and flatted, whoops) Cary's Grifo XS file treads, I knew I wanted more o' that shit . But with carbon . Because everything goes faster if you make it out of carbon. This is why my extreme force of personality/wallet comes in. I hit up Gabe at Echappe Equipment because I figured if anyone has a wheel with about 100mm of carbon I can use, it's him. And he did -- but not with file treads. And I had my heart set on file treads. I'd like to assume this is where my charisma came into play, because he decided to glue some file treads up for me this week. Seriously! So that was a longgg prelude, just so I could say "and that's how I jinxed it into raining two inches Saturday!" Initially I was...

Way too busy to write anything about another incredible weekend of cross, but I do have some seat cam up: GP Gloucester Day 2 Lap 1 Seat Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . More to come.

Catamount Cyclocross Day 1 Lap 1 from colin reuter on Vimeo . Day 1 I staged crazy-far up the grid. So far up I was in front of Justin Lindine for a few seconds, check it out! Anyway, this is the final run of the older, shakier seat cam. If you're desperate for footage on a Friday (or Monday), it oughta do the trick.

It's only a small exaggeration to say that lining up for this race is the biggest achievement of my life. I mean, I've done other stuff , but we live in a society where sports are king. Cyclocross might be a long way from the NFL, but it's still a lot cooler than sitting at a computer typing (which is what I'm doing now, actually). Anyway, every time I reach a new level of 'cross it's pretty much the best I've ever been at sports in my life. That was a pretty dramatic opening, huh? Yeah. With thoughts like that all week you can imagine how well I was sleeping. I could've quit drinking coffee and just had someone whisper "UCI race" in my ear in the morning, the effect was the same. Since I'm working for Verge now, I got staged in the second row of the entire damn thing. This was not my idea; Alan thought that I'd "appreciate" getting the first non-UCI start spot. Of course it was good for my race, but it sure wasn...