Until the Snow Ends

So... ski racing down, rock climbing up, time to blog... down. Sometimes that's just what needs to happen . Time to rectify! After Craftsbury, I figured the best way to deal with clearly terrible ski fitness would be to bounce outta town the next weekend and go skiing in Colorado. And I don't mean nordic skiing. Thus 36 hours after being at sea level, I was at 11,000 feet at Monarch trying to stuff as much oxygen into my maw as possible while tree skiing. It made me feel like this: As is required with sports I do, a GoPro was attached to something. I used their industrial-grade adhesive mount to put it on my ski tip. It was totally sweet until it wasn't: Ski Tip Cam Failure from colin reuter on Vimeo . The next day I bumped it up another 1500 feet to Loveland where I "shredded the gnar" with my internet friend Nicole for the morning. There was a foot of new snow overnight and no pesky trees requiring me to actually control where I turned, so i...

I've done a lot of classic marathons over the years. Well, like five. 250k of skiing, I'll call it a lot. Our good buddy New England winter *usually* makes these a klister-binder affair, because there's some nice transformed ice mixed in with the powder and with hundreds of skiers going through each track, the ice has a way of overcoming the powder. USUALLY. But I still can't explain why I thought it would be a good idea to use a klister binder. It was Thursday night, I was tired and in a hurry. The tube of KR20 was right there. So I just...did it. And then only brought one pair of (klistered) skis to the race. Because I am not very good at taking ski racing seriously, anymore. When I woke up to see fresh snow, I realized I might have a problem. When the snow squalls started during the race, I knew I had a problem. Since I registered day-of (online reg closed 7 days before the race... sneaky) I ended up in wave 2, which had exactly zero fast people in...

Tennessee State Championships Chainstay Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . I am way behind my 2010 racing pace after missing an ENTIRE weekend of race potential this week. Luckily I have sweet chainstay cam action from Tennessee to give me sweet, sweet content. After the bigtime UCI race on Saturday, about half the field headed to North Carolina for a different race on Sunday. I stayed with Adam and The Wilcox in Tennessee to race again the next day -- but first, we had to have an ADAM MYERSON PERSONALITY CULT MEETING with the locals, which was awesome, mainly because my table kept buying pitchers and not letting me pay for them. And then the next morning I felt not so awesome. But! A fake-pro must rally. We had a 2pm start, so it was totally doable. This is what rallying looks like: Rallying was not helped by the fact that the course was the EXACT same as Saturday. Clearly down in Tennessee they don't know about the whole run-it-backwards trick for lazy course switc...

Now that I'm the fake-pro-est person in my life, I can -- no, I am obligated to-- wantonly blow money on chasing the bike racing dream that I've long since given up on. A UCI race in Tennessee in the middle of January, with $180 airfare and transportation/lodging already set up? Who cares that I hung up the bike and started drinking/skiing a month ago, sign me up! The Wilcox was driving the Pedro's Party Van down for three weeks, so I stashed my bike in there for extra money savings and hopped a plane with Adam Myerson to North Carolina. Dave met us at the airport, whisked us away to some host hosting (did I mention how fake pro I am? Awww yeah), and the next morning it was BIKE RACING TIME. I hadn't taken a race seriously since November, which might've actually been a good thing... Somehow the race was in a magical snowless bubble, surrounded by white hillsides, with nothing but brown grass on the race course. My disappointment was tempered by the fac...

I made my traditional jump back into ski racing before actually having any kind of fitness, just like every year, on Tuesday night. It was my 6th time on skis for the year, but more importantly, my first change to repay ROOMMATE CARY for abusing me all cross season. I strategically lined up deep in the field, to intentionally miss the front group, and thus not taste my lunch until at least the ten minute mark. And it totally worked! After a few minutes things settled out, my equipment was intact, and all the fast guys were cleanly up the trail. But not Cary. I caught onto Cary and Luke's group and pretended I wasn't winded by making a joke about it being the washed-up-college-skier group. Then I went to the FRONT because I was so STOKED to be skiing NON-TERRIBLY. I believe this dispatched Luke. However, someone was very audibly skiing close behind me... one guess who it was. Jamie Doucett was out on the course blinding people with his flash, but also taking some r...

Wrentham Bandit Cross Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . I recently made the questionable/awesome decision to fly to Tennessee next weekend for EVEN MORE UCI CROSS . Therefore I am putting off the nordic season for another two weeks (yeah, am I even a skier at this point? Not really) and trying to resurrect 60 minutes of race fitness from whatever you want to call the insanity that's been the last two months of my life. Oh, this is going to go SO. WELL. So in between riding the trainer and trying to relearn how to sleep eight hours a night, I headed to Wrentham for some bandit cross at the old MRC race venue, organized by Gewilli . It was a snowy morning, which meant that a) getting out of the house was really hard, but b) the riding was actually AWESOME. With shovels and tires we beat in a 4 minute lap into the bumpy and snowy hillside and got to some Euro-style racing in two 20-minute heats. Myerson and Jerome Townsend were there, but elected to start at the back...

NECX Champs Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . I had to support the NECX Champs on principle, because I am always in favor of things that involve more cyclocross in the world. And not just because I make ONES of dollars on a cyclocross results website! Ice Weasels holeshotter/beer-drinker Jeremy Durrin was asking me about the bar cam midweek so I ended up putting it on his bike. I appreciated the result, mainly because he talked about stuff being on camera the entire time, rode waaay to hard to try to make the front group, then exploded so bad that I caught him and ended up finally seeing myself on camera. But I get ahead of myself. For some weird reason I ended up staged on the front row (Verge points? I guess? I was seeded higher than THE WILICHOSKI so there must be some mistake) and nailed the clip-in. Four pedal strokes in I realize that there is only one person next to me, Adam Myerson. Which means I am definitely going to have to get the holeshot, if only only t...