Until the Snow Ends

While prepping for this race, I realized that I hadn't done a proper xc mountain bike race since Mount Snow back in July. What was that, six weeks ago? I didn't mean to semi-retire from the Root 66 series, but I guess I did. I even started to entertain thoughts of giving up on the mountain bike season early (since my wheel was still dead from the Darkhorse ) and just heading to Bedford to race cross. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and I eventually got myself mildly interested to race the Landmine Classic/ GT Golden Bike Series Finale/Root 66 Virtual Series Finals*. Cary and I went down Saturday for a preride, which got cut short by Cary's freehub exploding. While packing up to leave, though, Golden Bike Guy showed up to scout the course. His accent made it clear that he was "not from around here," and since it was currently pouring rain onto a very rocky and rooty New England course, two things happened: 1) I realized Kevin Hines was going to win the Go...

I am so stoked that Weeping Willow is turning into the MTB version of the Gloucester GP. We're now in year three and it SOLD! OUT! several weeks in advance, making it the only MTB race this side of the Vermont 50 to do so. That might say more about the lack of "landmark" quality MTB races we have, but in any case: the people have spoken, and the people think Willowdale is the new hotness. 29 elite dudes preregistered, and some more managed to get in with secret-race-day-even-though-the-race-is-full reg, so it was LEGIT. As such, I relegated myself to the back row, because I wanted nothing to do with legitimacy on a 85-degree, 2.5 hour race day. The race started and I got the reverse holeshot. 2 minutes into the race I started to fear I was missing something, and started freaking out trying to move up. I was somewhat stymied by the traffic situation, and kinda just bounced around like a cat on the wrong side of a door. Which I suppose is why I need to keep get...

I tried so hard not to do this race. First I tried the simple tactic of saying "after three straight weekend of racing, I'm taking one off." Didn't work. Everyone else was going. What if I miss something? Attempt #2: I think I'll replace the (totally frozen) headset bearings on my janky Top Fuel on Thursday night. Pop the old ones out, put the new ones in, five minute job... unless you "pop" the lower bearing cartridge out by giving it a gentle tap with a screwdriver that breaks its rusted outer layer off, leaving it wedged/fused in your carbon headtube. Then you would have a problem on your hands. I thought this would be enough to keep me from racing, but I had to make a small effort to fix it on Friday...so I took it to JRA... and ended up walking out of there with a 20-lb Felt 29er "just to try for the weekend" Let's not talk about how much the price was, or how I'm totally going to end up buying it. (Sidenote: Brian M...

Fresh off a ridiculous result, a great dinner, and no shower, I unstuck myself from my sleeping bag next to the race course to see a thick slime of fog and a light mist. The day was looking slippery, the course was supposed to be more technical, I had a front row callup, there were only 40 racers. That's about as good a shot at winning a Killer B race as I'll get all season. Let's do this thing. The preride showed that the course was a bit more technical, but even more painful than before. This time around the descent was straight down the fall line, so all your suffering on false-flats and log-runups was erased in a few seconds flying downhill. It was the epitome of "nowhere to rest." The combination of high aspirations and a serious bottleneck 60 seconds into the course made me decide on a plan that went against everything I stand for -- the reverse reverse-holeshot. I lined up one place uphill of yesterday's winner James Tosca on the front row, remem...

It was pretty exciting to see how many people told me to take it easy on my knee in last week's comments. It's almost like quite a few people read this thing and most of them aren't trying to actively sabotage me. Meg excepted, of course. Unfortunately for you guys, my knee was feeling super after a modest week of riding. There was even a doctor involved at one point, who jabbed my kneecap in various ways hoping to make me wince in pain, and he totally failed. So I was good to go for Coyote Hill, which is a good deal, because it's the best course on the Root 66 circuit . Also contributing to my enthusiasm was the new bike . I finally gave up my dreams of getting a Trek Top Fuel 9.9 SSL when I realized that they made exactly one of those bikes this spring (and destroyed it after taking pictures), so if I wanted to get a proper race bike before September I'd have to "compromise" with the 9.8. Woe is me, with my 24 lb XT-equipped dualie. How can I p...

I decided to head up to Mount Snow a day early to do some sweet "openers" on the cross bike. This year they were doing a short track/summer cyclocross race on Saturday, and since I needed to remember how to 'cross in time for next weekend anyway, it seemed like a good idea. Seemed. The course turned out to have 100 feet of climbing in a 3+ minute lap. I wish I was exaggerating. Turnout was low (of course) but there were some strong dudes there. I accidentally ended up with the holeshot and raced the first 90 seconds like I usually race cross. I got to the top of the huge huge huge climb and looked back, expecting to Kevin Hines and the other fast guys on my wheel. But no! I had a massive gap. Awesome? Not really. I should never be that far ahead of Kevin Hines in a bike race. If I am, it is a sign I have done something very dumb. And indeed I had! Two laps later the group caught me and I went straight out the back. Ben Coleman was nice enough to get deta...

Alright, let's continue this post-a-day trend by finishing up the weekend. The astute reader (yeah, both of you) will remember that all but one of my races went badly this past weekend so you should know what's coming. For the non-astute reader, this race report is not going to end with a podium... just so you know. It started raining at 5pm and kept raining off and on until morning. This is the kind of weather that makes some courses get technical (in a good way), but since Mt Snow starts out as "borderline rideable" this makes it get technical, in a bad way. Hope you like pushing your bike uphill. To compound the difficulty experts were riding four laps, even though it took me over 2 hours to ride 3 laps last year . But that's ok because they took out one short section of singletrack , so laps should be way shorter! So I have no idea why there's already 20 posts on the Root 66 Message Board talking about how the course was too hard and how Mt Snow nee...

This past weekend I did two competitive athletic events.  It was like cross season, except totally different.  Here's how it went down: Bear Brook Classic Race Report This was a new race at an old venue .  The venue is still close to Boston and Concord.  The turnout was still great.  The course was still pedaly. It was actually a very nice course, in that the singletrack was fun and fast, there was a descent that was hard enough you could make up some time, and there was enough mindless fire road pedaling that I still had something to complain about. I had recovered from the chest cold that caused me to both reverse-holeshot and not-blog about the Fat Tire Classic, so I was "excited" to actually race my bike instead of just ride it at Kenda Cup #2.  We had 17 (?) guys in the 30-39 race and in typical fashion I was the last guy to make the "selection" of eight as we motored up the climb on the lap. Team Time Trial with Charlie and Kevin. ...

After getting it handed to me at Sunapee on Saturday, the obvious next step was to take my trashed pride back to the dirt, a.k.a "the sport I actually try at." I've seen the road/mtb double done with much success by guys like Mike Rowell and Jonny Bold, and I've also seen Cary do it with... less success. Unfortunately my fitness is much closer to Cary's than Mike's and Jonny's, so I had an idea about how this might go. My legs felt like crap in the morning, and 2.5 hours in a car did not miraculously jump start them. I decided that today would be best dealt with via the "complain loudly before the start about how you raced yesterday" approach. Then I got the reverse holeshot, for good measure. The start gets narrow and technical fast, and the "luxury" of being DFL allowed me to back off from the main pack a bit on the first technical climb and wait for the predictable bottleneck when someone dabbed. Sure enough, no less than six g...

Hey!  This blog took a little break for a while.  I was busy putting on Night Weasels , getting sick, sucking at Providence  and getting married .  One of those three things I will write about later, try to guess which it is! While I haven't had time to write, I have had time to add captions and fret over music choices for some chainstay cam videos, which are deserving of a better home than just my vimeo account.  So here we go! Mansfield Cyclocross Race Report The big difference between this race and Providence was that I knew  I was under the weather going into this one.  I nearly got the reverse holeshot start, rode something like "hard tempo" all day, and eventually ended up going into the last lap with Tim Ratta and Patrick Collins.  There was a 16" single barrier (OLD SCHOOL!) that I had been hopping every lap, and a 12" - 16" set of barriers right before the finish. What, you don't measure barrier heights with your skewer on pre...

Last year, I did the Darkhorse 40. It was 90 degrees and humid. I flatted out like a chump after 15 miles, sparing myself a good 2 hours of suffering in the heat, and also allowing me to be back home in Boston by 4pm. This might be why I was convinced that the event was SO AWESOME that I HAD to come back this year, even though I could've just driven to the local Root 66 race just an hour away. This probably sounds like a segue into "so it turns out the Darkhorse isn't awesome at all" but guess what, it's not! The Darkhorse rules, which is why it registration filled up three weeks ago. My hotel companion was the lovely MegA , because Linnea has started transforming into a cyclocross killing machine and no longer has interest in 4 hour mountain bike races. It is August, after all. It was Meg's first mountain bike race of the year and first-ever 40 mile mountain bike race, so I spread as much lies and false information about what was up as possible. ...

Warning: this is long, because the Pinnacle makes me chatty. A long, long time ago I was a lost soul in Florida, carrying out a failed experiment in the video game industry. After 12 of the worst longest most character-building months of my life, I moved back to the Northeast and decided to try mountain bike racing again. The extent of my experience was a few season in the booming "Junior Beginner" class in the late 90s. The first race I ever did in New England? The Pinnacle . I had the fitness you'd expect of a man coming off a year of 70-hour weeks, but I lucked out -- halfway through the race, the heavens opened, and the course turned into one of the slimiest, slickest things you'll ever try to ride across a hill. I couldn't pedal hard to save my life, but I could still drive the bike like it was 1999. I turned in a surprisingly respectable performance, had a great time, and raced pretty much every weekend between then and now. And then, for reasons unk...