Until the Snow Ends

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!!

You can only count on three things in life: death, taxes, and the Canton Cup being windy. At least this year it was warm and windy. Instead of hypothermia, I finished the race with a pounding headache. Said headache was temporarily improved by drinking the only liquid available at the finish...beer. Said headache has returned, as I type this. I am generally not super-excited about Canton, what with the mile of pavement and all, but this edition of Canton had me STOKED because I was running dual Flip cams for the first time. That's right, nearly a pound of camera was attached to my bike, thanks to man hands Jerry . With both forward and rear views, I was sure to capture at least one amusing incident. Two Cameras! Sore back! [ uri ] I got to the race four hours early (IBC co-promotes it, so I was volunteering) and of course, with that kind of buffer I was bound to be the last guy to the start line. I squeezed in ahead of Thom "hipster costume" Parsons on the thi...

Next time someone says to me, "I don't think you're a big deal," (this happens daily), I am going to send them to this post to correct them. Why am I a big deal, you ask? Because I was on the radio . On the internet . You might think "oh, he means a podcast," but I assure you I don't. Podcasts are small time. Radio is big time. Do you not also gather with your family each night to listen to it? I rest my case. (Dorky side note -- it's been exactly 61 years today since the War of the World broadcast. If you've never read about it, you should.) So yeah, I was on a podcast, except they called it radio, because it was live, but you can listen to it later (like a podcast), which I guess a lot of people do. So if you want to hear me on the radio-cast, you can download the October 27 show from here . I make an appearance starting around the 43 minute mark. If you want to listen to the whole show in your browser, it's here , but you can...