Until the Snow Ends

My life continues to be shockingly full-throttle so I am not getting up any weekend content today. Here's a video from last week. Not too much excitement going on, although I do WRECK FOOLS on the rideup on lap two. Eat it, Cat 3's! BRC Shedd Park Chainstay Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo .

I have been drinking significantly more than usual lately, but as a cyclist that could really just mean "a few beers." And of course as a 145-lb cyclist, a few beers is enough to get me to agree to MC with RMM at Lowell. I've had a lot going on my life (see previous post, infrequent readers -- thanks for and thanks for the emails/comments, frequent readers) so this race was already marked as a "do shitty, have fun" race. Tacking on a "get up too early, don't warm up, spend four hours on your feet" to it was no big deal. What was a big deal was trying to not be terribad at announcing. I'd say something like "I have a newfound respect for Richard Fries," but I already knew it was going to be hard, which I why RMM cornered me when I was drunk to get me to sign up for it. It went ok, which is not the same as "good," but it was a good experience. I would like to try again. Maybe at a place where I can actually see ri...

West Hill Shop Cyclocross Chainstay Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . You might've noticed that it's the end of the week, and once again I've got no race report up. This time I have a totally legit excuse -- my girlfriend of the last seven years broke up with me. YEAHHH THAT'LL STING. I love talking about myself on the internet, even when things go shitty (except usually it's just a "race report" instead of a "relationship report") so let's give this one its own paragraph. We had a good run, no doubt about it, but ultimately people change a lot in their 20s. There's no exciting scandal, no screaming matches, nothing dramatic about the end of it at all -- just the trite-yet-accurate phrase "we grew apart." But at least we both grew. I'm looking forward to seeing where my life goes now that I really know who I am -- and I'm sure Linnea 2.0 is going to make some guy very happy down the road. But we're not d...

You might think that after four years of racing cyclocross, I would have my shit dialed . That is not the case. Every year, my routine gets "refined," and by "refined" I mean warped around everything else that changes year-to-year. Last year I learned how to prep for the 3pm race when your girlfriend is racing the 2pm race; this year I'm learning how to prep for the 3pm race when your team is racing the 12:30 and 2pm race and you would rather cheer and socialize with 800 different people than warm up. Not to foreshadow, or anything. Since I bonked my face off on Day 1, the one thing I got right was adequate food consumption on Day 2. I did this while watching Beta Ryan murder the Cat 3 field . Again. It was awesome. Then I went to preride a lap and made the mistake of expecting a SRAM shifter to shift gears. Instead of the paddle snapped off, which makes total sense since I did crash on it that one time, and there's no reason to expect a cycloc...

After 2 weekends of random staging in UCI races, I gotta say, I'm totally cool with it. I mean, I want to be outraged, but when you get right down to it, stuff more or less sorts out where it should in 60 minutes of racing. And the excitement of the number draw is unparalleled. Then again I haven't drawn back row yet, so I could be a bit biased. Anyway, I snagged good ole #27 on Saturday, which was on the first row of non-UCI riders. Good deal? And also, just about where I would be if we staged by crossresults.com or Verge points. How convenient. For some awesome reason everyone wanted to be on the right (even though we turned right) so I grabbed far left of row four. Obviously everyone is going to squeeze right through the turn (obviously!) so if you're not in row 1 or 2, it might be the shortest path but it sure isn't the fastest. Thus endeth the extent of my protips for UCI cross racing. The gun went off and some clown in front of me, who rides for E...

Orchard Cross Chainstay Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . Every time I go to write this blog entry, I get caught up in the beauty of the chainstay cam and forget what I was doing. Gaaaaahd that looks good. I can't believe how stable it is. Seriously, just watch it. Yowza. Ok, so after lasting ninety seconds at Canton, I had a problem. I don't actually train at all during the week for most of cross season, and it totally works, as long as you race every weekend . But now I had a giant bruise on my knee (my bad knee!) and the prospect of racing for under 2 minutes in the whole weekend. Crisis! Obviously this meant I would be ignoring my knee issues (heard that before?) and heading up to Orchard Cross on Sunday. I was relieved to see that golf ball-sized lump I went to sleep with was mostly gone in the morning, I had decent range of motion, and the frigid breeze was sure to keep the swelling down. Despite the blasting sun it was freezing up at the Orchard, so I w...