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Showing posts from May, 2012

Earl's Trails - A Map

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If you like maps and mountain bikes and Earl's trails , throw me a freakin' bone and VOTE FOR ME in this freakin' contest. When I saw that my friend Alex mention a " new orienteering map " for Earl's trails, I got EXCITED, because I love maps and I love Earl's trails. Like many MTB trail networks, it is somewhere between hard and impossible to find a decent map of the area, although of course "everyone" knows their way around the place. I had been steadily trying to consolidate my growing pile of GPS tracks from there into something useful, because maps excite me, and disseminating information does too. But it wasn't going very well, and anyway, having some orienteers do the hard work for you is MUCH better. So, I got Alex to send me the map, traced it in Paint.NET to distill it down to the MTB-relevant data (um, orienteering maps have a lot of information on them), and discovered that I have no idea what half of these trail na

Adventures in 0.5x Speed

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I went up to Coyote Hill for the Greater Vermont Fresh-Cut Singletrack National Championships this weekend.  My race experience was quite unremarkable, because I paced myself really conservatively, which is to say, went out the back in the first 60 seconds of the race. I did eventually ride back into the middle of the pack (finishing 9th/19, although 5 dudes DNF'ed) but there was not much hanging out to be had. However, on lap two, my roommate and general life nemesis Cary Fridrich was about 15 seconds up the trail when he broke his derailleur and ended his race. Afterward, he told people "I broke my bike with, like, a giant log" and they were like, "uh huh, sure you did." Luckily his faithful videographer was there to back up his claim: Also, now I know that "drunk Colin" and "mid-race Colin on 0.5x speed" are actually the same person. RABEND-IT. In totally unrelated news, my brother nominated me in this contest to win a free tri

Weeping Willow Race Report

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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

Fat Tire Classic Race Report

After hitting Hopbrook on a grand total of two weeks of training (and getting my doors predictably blown off), I was STOKED to go to Fat Tire on FIVE WEEKS of training.  With a 150% increase in training volume, I knew I would be 150% faster and win the race by 20 or 30 minutes. Especially because it was forecast to rain, which meant that the ludicrously-fast-and-easy Fat Tire course might just require a little bit of bike driving this year.  And I am the only person on the planet who excels at technical courses, so yeah, 20 or 30 minute victory, easy. Fat Tire always pulls a good turnout and this year was no exception, despite the 50-degree rain.  28 guys in the Pro/1 race, and a holeshot that turned left into singletrack after 20 seconds -- so of course, I lined up at the back.  And then spent a lot of time in the first minute having a squeal-your-brakes party with everyone else who didn't start like Durrin. Eventually we strung out and started going fast, and guess what,