Until the Snow Ends

Canton Cup Chainstay Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . I lasted ninety. freaking. seconds. I had a front row start, which I converted into sixth wheel off the pavement. Lindine, Keough and Goguen were CHECKING OUT after 90 seconds and for no good reason I wanted to be up there. I lapped wheels with Sam Morse, ended up on the outside of a corner that was much rougher than I realized, lost the front end and PLANTED my left knee in the grass. I bounced to a stop and was really surprised by little desire I had to jump up and grab my bike. Instead I sat there in shock while the field rode by, stood up, determined that my already-questionable knee was gonna have a massive bruise on it, and decided not see how much damage I could do to it with 60 minutes of adrenaline. Lame, but at least the footage was solid!

Downeast Cyclocross Day 1 Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . Last year's Downeast CX was traumatic . Not only was it 38 and raining, but the course was bland on a level usually reserved for Canton ( burnnnn ). I was so not looking forward to coming back here that I thought long and hard about scheduling this as my "off weekend." As Verge series staff, I might have to show up -- but you can't make me race! Then. I looked at the course map and EVERYTHING changed. It was just an MS-paint scribble on a google map, but the message was clear: we are changing everything about this course, and it's going to be twisty as hell. Combine that with everyone fast being at the Louisville USGP and suddenly, I had a longshot at UCI points in front of me. What little training plans I have were scrapped, it's time to peak, baby! Of course the first step to having a surprisingly good race is to get a good start -- and I drew big bad #68 out of the hat for s...

cyclocrossracing.com/MRC Bar Cam Lap 1 from colin reuter on Vimeo . I'll be honest with you, I completely forgot to blog about this after I made the videos. I had so much fun at the this race, and the internet was so abuzz with talk about it, I had this idea that I had contributed to the discussion as well. But then I went to write up Downeast Day 1 today and was like... wait... my last post was Mansfield? Really? So yeah! MRC overcame the 36-degree rainfest at their mediocre venue to summon up blue sky, 60 degrees, and a sweet new race location. Say it with me... CLOSE TO BOSTON = PROMOTER SUCCESS. Lancaster was a 45 minute drive for a lot of people and around 350 cross racers showed up. Awesome. Even more awesome was everyone fast driving to 6 hours to Granogue when this was in their backyard. This race became the ultimate Cat 2 redemption event after 4 straight weekends of us getting beat on by Cat 1's and pros (not that there's anything wrong with that...M...

Mansfield Hollow Cyclocross Lap 1 from colin reuter on Vimeo . Mansfield Hollow is a "classic" cyclocross course that's actually pretty legit these days. Back in the day (oh yeah, I can totally say that after 4 seasons) it had a million dismounts and an insane runup that you needed someone to belay you for, but now it's pretty "normal," except for the 3 sets of barriers and the 2 sandpits. And that's a good thing! This would actually be a pretty sweet course for a Verge race, as it's got something for everyone and some nice sandpits, er, features. ANYWAY. I keep coming back to this one even though the wind in the field is always strong and I always wilt like a daisy in the face of it. This year was no exception, 30mph gusts that were a tailwind on the finish straight and a punch in the face everywhere else. I was ready to SUCK SOME WHEELS. Like, even more than usual. We rolled out with the standard 15 starters in a local 1/2/3, right in...

After Night Weasels I was a wreck. We shot for the moon and pretty much made it, but being a first-time thing it was way stressful. Chip's blog entry about dropping out the Cat 3 race to do Cat 4 awards is a good example of how strung out we were. When I went to bed at 2am that night, I made a rare good decision: I was skipping Providence Day 1, which was just over 48 hours away. I also decided not to register for Providence Day 2 until the day of the race, just in case my legs continued to be MIA on Sunday. This was of course stupid, because after spending all of Saturday AT THE RACES my brain was 110% into racing Sunday, legs or no. So I had a back row start, but oooh boy was I excited. I did the ole "back up 10 extra feet" and hit it with a rolling start trick, and it worked pretty well. A surprisingly number of guys sat down after 10 seconds, so I also went ripping past them. It was actually a bit too good, because I got into the thick of traffic by th...

I think the bar cam is actually my own personal guardian angel. Put it on the bike and NOTHING can befall me. I want sweet footage of crashes as much as the next guy -- but I and everyone around me seems to stay upright as soon as the camera's on. On the other hand, if the battery dies and I take it off on the start line... We were back to the traditional uphill start, which is about 100x better than the sketchball downhill start. Best of all, it's nice and long so that you can pick up a ton of places by going full gas all the way to the grass and then smoking some brake pads. I started in the drops for SPRINTING POWER but didn't really make much headway until we crossed the finish line... then BAM, like clockwork everyone started backing off and I slingshotted forward into the top 30, for the second day in a row. In the biggest race on the east coast. Legs and brain were on the same page for once: LET'S DO THIS. So that's how I ended up all of six inch...

GP Gloucester Lap 1 UCI from colin reuter on Vimeo . Over here at UTSE we are running a week behind on race reports. You know how it is! In fact, this one is mainly a video report. For some reason we did a downhill start on Saturday at Gloucester which was INSANE. I actually ran out of gears (44x11) on the hill, you can see me clicking the right shifter in the video until it clicks no more. So that's a bit fast to be going in a cross race when you have a 90-degree turn coming up. Sure enough someone hit a hay bale and someone else came together with Justin Spinelli, and Spinelli got all f-ed up, and a bunch of guys got held up and BOOM, GOOD START FOR COLIN! I was definitely into the top 30, which is pretty awesome in a race with 85 starters or so. There were legitimately fast people blowing by me as they tried to rectify their poor starts, but it's all good. Man, it's so much nicer to casually slip 10 places back to 35th on lap 1 and 2 than it is to try to c...