Until the Snow Ends

Shedd Park is one of the best local races on the New England calendar, and like many local races, it's hard to really pinpoint WHY.  But for some reason, EVERYONE shows up, so the Cat 1/2/3 race is highly entertaining, and there's lot of cat 3 scrubs padding out the cat 2 scrub zone.   Yes!! This course is also the scene of my first cyclocross victory ever, the Cat 4 race in 2006, back when I was so fresh  to the cyclocross that I didn't blog about it!  It's also the place where I beat Chandler that time after all that trash talk.  ahhhh, memories. If you want to know about lap one, watch the video.  The quick summary is that I was going too hard to stay with the lead group (shocker) and was popped off said group along with my perpetual riding companion Charlie on lap two.   Charlie and I rode around for twenty or so minutes and picked up a backward-sliding Chandler and a forward-moving Bill Kenney during this time.  This game the...

I made this video on Tuesday and I thought I was going to blog about the race but then... I don't even know what happened.  Let's pretend I have kids and they got sick or something. West Hill Shop CX Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . ANYWAY the video is nice, you should watch it. I made the lead group on lap one, which was cool, because it had roughly half the field in it, but not cool because I was the weakest dude there and guys wanted to pedal hard (shocker).  So I made some big efforts to stay attached, and it turns out there's a price for that, especially when you have to run up a freaking wall right after the big pedaling section. Soooo eventually I got sawed off the group and rode around by myself, trying my little heart out, until I realized two dudes chasing (Eric Follen and Craig Calhoun) were steadily taking time out of me.  When they got to within 5 or 10 seconds with 3 laps to go, I decided that I would rather hang out with them than continue...

I finally did it!  After eight seasons, a double-DNF weekend.  It's exactly as fun as it sounds. The best ten minutes of racing I did are in this video: Cycle-Smart International Chainstay Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . Day 1 I drew a back row start, somehow sliced my way to thirty-sixth in a lap, broke a spoke after 15 minutes and decided that "it wasn't that bad" and "my pit bike has mud tires and janky shifting" so I should just keep riding it. Thirty minutes of being inexplicably unable to hold a wheel later, I stepped off the course thinking about what a failure of a human being I was.  Tried to roll my now-dismounted bike away and....ka-shuck.  Brake was hitting the blown wheel in a spot so bad it barely turned.  How did I not feel this riding?  Nevermind.  I'm an idiot.  Good thing there's Sunday... Day 2 I had just reached the "hey, you might be able to do this for the rest of the race" point, and Charlie Schubert ha...