Until the Snow Ends

This is the first time I've ever won money racing a road bike, so I figured I should talk about it. It came a week after the Stewart 6-pack, which went like a worse version of last year :  more mechanicals, more fueling issues, and more poison ivy.  Which is why I don't feel compelled to talk about that. Yarmouth Clam Fest is billed as the "biggest little race in the world"  if not officially, at least colloquially, as I heard this phrase from multiple bike racers when describing it.  The finish line is right in the middle of a sea of tents, food booths, art booths, and janky carnival rides, so the race becomes just another sideshow at the Festival.  Do the spectators really care about bike racing?  No, but they'll look up from their fried clams once every eight minutes to see a hundred guys ride by (usually sprinting for a prime) at 30 mph.  It works. The course is effectively dead flat except for the last two minutes, which are very  inter...

The best explanation for why this post didn't get written until Friday is that when you do a fast, flat, singletrack 100-miler, instead of being burnt out on bikes the following week, you end up STOKED and have to ride every day. In related news, expect a post with the phrase "inexplicably tired" to appear here soon. After last year's hundred miler , the gravel road climbing championships of the world, Christin and I picked the Lumberjack 100  because it was the exact opposite -- 90 miles of singletrack and only 6000 feet of climbing.  The only problem with the 'jack is that it's in Michigan, and not even the close part of Michigan.  That's okay, though, because the drive is only 12 hours.  Even though I swore I'd never drive to the Midwest again after the 18-hour solo trip from Madison to Boston I did two years ago... this is different.  Somehow. We carpooled with Jesse Q, and I promptly made us half an hour late by forgetting my suitcase, only ...

After it rained most of this week in New England, I just couldn't get my head around racing the Pat's Peak 6-hour race on Saturday, knowing that it's super hard  even when it's dry.  I decided to check out the Black Fly Challenge  in upstate New York instead, a 40 mile point-to-point cross-or-mountain-bike race.  I figured, if nothing else, "it will be a unique experience and worth blogging about." On that front, I was not disappointed. While this race may be billed as "The Legendary Adirondack Mountain Bike Race" (now in it's 19th running!), saying that phrase with a straight face is at least as technical as any course feature.  Even in 1995, there's no way this was a "mountain bike race."  It's 10 miles of pavement and 30 miles of dirt road, and not even especially bad dirt road -- I could have driven the whole course at 25mph or more in my Honda Fit, slowing down for exactly one wide puddle at about 10 miles in. The nat...

So last year  we ("Weasel Enterprises, LLC"*) put on a mountain bike race and it went GREAT, which means no one got an ambulance ride and we didn't lose money.  We attempted to repeat that feat this year.  Here is a collection of semi-random notes from race promoting. In case you haven't noticed, mountain bike race scheduling is STUPID, and we're part of the problem.  There's only so many Sundays in the year, and there's not a single open Sunday in the months of May, June, or July... and maybe even August, although I'm too lazy to check right now. Oh, but Colin, why don't you just put your race on a Saturday?  It works for road racing and cyclocross! Oh, don't I wish.  Unfortunately, our #1 obstacle to successful race promotion is parking, and the motorcycle dealer who graciously lets us park at their place  only lets us do it on a Sunday.  So if other promoters with more flexible scheduling want to move to a Saturday...that would be grea...

If you want to see what you missed, here it is.  Please note that despite my kvetching, narrow fast big ring singletrack is still fun. Rocky Woods Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo .

Off to a new venue for my... hmm... 9th?  10th? season of mountain bike racing.  I guess it depends on if you count my experiments back in High School with "junior beginner" class.  In any case, I missed Hop Brook for basically the first time ever (because I'm sick of the course, honestly) in favor of racing road bikes at Myles Standish, and the lack of a Myles Standish race report should tell you all you need to know about how THAT went. A miserable outing on the road, combined with a very mediocre base period, made me decide that maybe I should just be racing the Cat 1 race until I can turn a lap time that puts me above DFL in the Pro/1 race.   So I signed up for my first age-group MTB race in years and joined 17 of my peers on the start line at Rocky Woods. The "start line" at Rocky Woods was actually a new record for "worst holeshot" in New England mountain bike history, stealing the crown from Coyote Hill.  Picture this: I'm sure we can...

Hey!  I haven't written here in a while, cuz, uh, that's what happens when one retires from nordic ski racing.  The standard February blog template of "I went to Weston on Tuesday night and got dropped by some high school girls" just doesn't apply anymore.  And I barely know how to talk about things that aren't competitive events so.... here we are. In the interest of completeness/nostalgia, I never wrote about EITHER day of NBX (because Ice Weasels, yo), and I don't intend to now, but if you miss 80 meter sand runs you might like the NBX chainstay cam videos: Day 2 has much more commentary if you're one of them reader-types.  Both have phat beats (don't argue with me) if you're one of those get-stoked types. NBX Day 1 from colin reuter on Vimeo . NBX GP of Cross Chainstay Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . After cross season I played around in the roller coaster that is winter in Massachusetts for a while.  Obviously this never...