Until the Snow Ends

It's a short week so we're rolling two reports and a video into one. Hold on to your coffee. I rolled down to Southampton this weekend with Linnea and Sara . They are fast ladies, so they were hoping to take advantage of the promoters's increased women's payout to score mad bank. I am an occasionally-fast dude, so I was hoping to not get lapped by Tim Johnson. The lapping situation was grim, though, because Southampton is a shortshortshort lap with a ton of climbing, so the fast guys are only 5 minutes away from lapping you when the race starts and the course really lets them showcase how they are "professional cyclists" and you are "not." The rest of the UCI pack fodder stayed home, so I got the coveted back row lineup along with Pete Bradshaw. We joked about how lonely we were, then the whistle blew and he crushed it to a 16th place, last-guy-on-the-lead-lap race. Bastard. Oh, and spoiler alert, if Pete crushed it and was last guy on the lead ...

Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to this party purely to see what Dave does when he's not beating me on a bike... cuz, you know, I've never seen that before. I think I finally maxed out the internet in my life. I've had a half-edited picture-in-picture Northampton video sitting here for a week now. I didn't get around to seat-camming Mercer Day 2 until Thursday night because I was busy with results/shirts/blogs/fantasy nordic. This is not a "pity me and my million web projects" blog post... I just want you to understand. I wanted to make videos, really I did. Anyway. This one is pretty nice visually. No commentary this time around, but it's got two classic techno tracks, a great crash (9:00), high quality, and picture-in-picture. Fullscreen it for the full experience... maybe not if you're watching at work. I had to use IMovie for this one to do the P-in-P, and I gotta say, Apple tries really hard to make stuff simple and intuitive in ...

Despite a DNF after 25 minutes of racing on Saturday, I was loving life Sunday morning. Why? Super-nice housing, thanks to my crossresults uploader-friend Jess and her husband Vinnie. They have no internet presence, and even if they did, THEY'RE ALL MINE, so no links for you. 15 minutes from the venue, full bike shop in the basement, gas-powered pressure washer (!!), over zealous hosting. Between this and last weekend with Meg and JD , I am irreparably softened on race housing. I will never be able to get up at 6am or sleep on a floor again. Alas. But anyway! I was STOKED Sunday morning, unlike my competitors, who had poured their souls out onto the course Saturday and were but shells of men. Skipping a muddy Saturday is practically cheating... it's right up there with good start position on the "secrets to a breakout race" checklist. I sure didn't have the good start position thing going, though. We were milling around during callups, as always, when o...

I went to the Mercer Cup last year , and it turned out to be a bland, unfun mudfest with some organizational issues . So why the hell did I come back? The real answer, of course, is that Linnea wanted to go, but let's pretend for a second that I have free will. The USGP, despite all its flaws, is simply the biggest show in town, and until there's another race on the east coast of that magnitude, it's the closest I'll get to racing Nationals every year. With 80 starters, it was only a marginally larger field than Gloucester, but according to crossresults it was significantly stronger. I was predicted to beat a grand total of 6 people. Awesome. The location was different, but the conditions and course managed to serve up the same experience as last year: interminably long straights that could be ridden only slightly faster than they could be run, and a bike change every half-lap. That's REAL CROSS, remember, for all of you who complain about grass crits. And...

Sunday at Northampton I faced a new dilemma -- how to get motivated when you didn't suck on Saturday? Usually I have a crushing defeat from Saturday motivating me to KILLKILLKILL on Sunday, so there was definitely a big, empty hole where my motivation should be. I remember sitting at breakfast , thinking, "no matter what happens today you got 27th yesterday. You're a decent bike racer. It's ok, buddy" Not exactly fire and brimstone, and yes, I call myself "buddy" in my head. I think the real turnaround in my desire was due to the fact that the Northampton Day 2 course is awesome, the weather was perfect, and the spectators were out in force. Even the grinchiest curmudgeons would have fun. And if you're having fun racing your bike, everything else just works out. Funny, that. So we lined up with a palpable sense of fear in the field -- after yesterday's start issues, most of us were just hoping to make it through the first turn intact. Our...

solo caught me messing with the camera when I should have been putting out watts The world is full of terrible, horrible, misconceptions. One of the least terrible ones is that people think Northampton is a roadie course. You want evidence it's not? Look at my results there for three years running . How the heck could I have my best results of the season on a roadie course ?? I rest my case. Don't get me wrong, winning Northampton requires power, just like any other bike race, but it's more than just a festival of watts. It's just not a steady-state power course (like Gloucester, or Downeast in the mud), it's a sprinter and bikehandler's course. Put on by Adam Myerson , who is a sprinter and a bike handler... how convenient. Anyway, the deal is, you come ripping into the sexiest grass 180s the world has ever seen about 15 times a lap, lean the bike over about 45 degrees, and then gun it for all you're worth for 5 seconds coming out of the turn to ge...

Sometimes I just like overanalyzing the crap out of something . Don't mistake the following piece for a sign that I am all bent outta shape about the crash we had in the start at Northampton; I am just excited to share what I can figure out from watching multiple videos of it. Video #1 is the " epic cycle-smart cyclocross crash " from Youtube. Video #2 is my own bar cam footage, currently unreleased. Neither one provides very clear coverage in the melee of the start, but that's why this is entertaining. Check it out: The excitement starts on racer's right at the pinch in the fence. Note that riders lining up on racer's right have to go straight for just a bit before they can turn right, but riders lining up on racer's left can head straight down the starting straight. This puts pressure on racer's right as it gets pinched. Here we see a Sachs rider (Dugan, I think) and Derrick St John approaching the slight turn on the inside. Note how different th...

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!!