Until the Snow Ends

Back in the late fall of 2006, I started cross, started a blog, and started a website . All of these things are still alive, much to my surprise, 4.5 years later. But it was dicey for bit, there. I like to use the " transitional period in my life " excuse for pretty much everything around here, but in this case it's spot on. You want to throw everything into your life into stark relief, try breaking up with a girl you spent the last seven years of your life with. You'll question your job, your hobbies, your future, and pretty much every life decision you've ever made or plan to make. And that's kind of awesome. I'm serious. If your life doesn't hold up to scrutiny, then WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING WITH IT? You only get one, you know. You could get your teeth knocked out by a car tomorrow. Or something actually catastrophic could happen. Quit having dreams, and start making plans, because you never know when it could be too late. B...

The Birkie was not only the pinnacle of my season, it was also the ULTIMATE ROOMMATE GRUDGE MATCH. Which I won, by the way. In case you forgot. But, we made a pact that we would also do the Rangeley Lakes Loppet the following weekend, so that whomever lost the Birkie would have a shot at revenge, and whomever won it could spend the whole week worried about getting their fluke victory exposed (that would be me). However, Cary ended up torpedoing this plan on Wednesday night by getting SMOKED by an SUV riding home. He texted me from the hospital like it weren't no thang, but when he was still there 24 hours later and using phrases like "can't eat solid food for 6 weeks," I realized that I had just won by TKO. This was actually really sad, and if you see him you should not jokingly hit him in the mouth. You should also check what your car insurance covers for other people injured in an accident, because he's hitting a six-figure medical bill pretty easily ...

2011 Birkie Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . I had a GoPro poking me in the back for 50k and all I got was this 188th place finish. Ski marathons are not a fundamentally action-packed experience, but I did what I could with the edit here. For more silly nordic-cams, check out last year .

To say this has been a abnormal winter for me is an understatement. With the exception of a year in Florida, I've been XC ski racing almost every single weekend in the winter since 1996. Winter means skiing. Skiing means nordic. Nordic means racing. This time, though, things had been totally off the rails -- the only "real" ski race I did was Craftsbury , and I got blown out by the old men and college girls, and then subsequently called out for noting this on the internet. Not exactly a confidence-builder. So it was with much apprehension that I headed out to the Birkie last Thursday. Last year, I showed up with my worst legs of the season and Cary, my only real metric/nemesis, put nine minutes over 50k into me. This qualified him for wave 1 this year, and me for wave 2, which only made me more pessimistic about my chances for revenge -- he'd be surrounded by fast skiers to draft, I'd be surrounded by a bunch of people who didn't ski fast enough t...