Until the Snow Ends

The Bearscat 50 was awesome.  Will I ever have time to write about it?  Probably not!  But Christin won so that's all you really need to know.   The reason I have no time to write about 5+ hours of slippery bike racing is that I have to make phone calls (nooooooooo) and write emails (okaaaaaaaaay) and visit businesses (!!!!!!!) to make the Greenfield Crit happen along with Lydia Hausle and the Back Bay Cycling Club. This is the grandest race promotion venture I have ever been part of.  We have been to TOWN MEETINGS!  We have passed out flyers to ABUTTERS who were either CONFUSED, SUPPORTIVE, or CRANKY!  We applied for GRANTS!  We have a CLINIC!  We have EQUAL PRIZE MONEY!  Thanks to Lydia this is WAY MORE TIGHT than [insert Weasels event here] and you don't need to worry about the venue changing or US RUNNING OUT OF TOILET PAPER!  It is going to BE SO AWESOME THAT EVAN HUFF IS COMING OUT OF RETIREMENT FOR IT. Like any fi...

There was a moment on Friday when the word "Noreaster" was getting thrown around, and I was thinking that this was going to be the raddest/most-trail-damaging race ever. But the ever-fickle New England weather changed yet again, and it dumped rain 100 miles off the coast. Willowdale State Forest? A bone dry, blazing-fast dustfest as always. But I'm not complaining. Being just 45 minutes outside Boston, and very beginner-friendly, the place was packed, just like every year. We had 25 or 30 guys in the 30-39 Expert race, and passing on fast, twisty singletrack is pretty hard when everyone is amped up -- so getting stuck behind someone who wasn't feeling the flow (or the pedaling) could be pretty bad if you had podium aspirations like this guy. So for once I lined up semi-seriously and got into the singletrack in 7th. And then we went faaaaaaast. I know we were going fast because I was immediately making deals with myself -- "it's okay to let those ...

The Eastern Grind was awesome.  After the first two Kenda Cups were blazing-fast, drafting pedal contests (note:  not a complaint), it rained the night before the Grind and turned an already somewhat technical course into a GNARFEST. But the weather was terrible (50 with intermittent rain) and the weather was terrible last year, too, and it was far from Boston (like 3 hours) so tons of people skipped it.  Because "people" don't always like the things I like.  Ugh.  People. The race was promoted by the Bicycle Express team, a bunch of wicked fast guys and girls from Vermont (note:  probably redundant) and they had built a special A/B line coming down from the high point of the course.  Lea Davison tweeted that it was "a legit World Cup A-line" and she knows about these things so the #hype was strong.  And then it rained, and I hadn't preridden said A-line, but I knew I had to ride the A-line because I have a reputation to uphold.  So I was...

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. ...

Is it possible to HYPE nationals five days after it's over?   I'm not sure.  But I started looking at these numbers and I got psyched for the 2016-17 'cross season, so it was good for something. I wrote about the crossresults vs USAC predictions last week, but now we can look at what actually happened! The problem is that you really can't judge the quality of a prediction off a single trial.  Take, for example, my latest favorite thing to hate:  Powerball.  Anyone who bought a Powerball ticket I would predict to lose.  However, some people won Powerball -- but that doesn't mean the prediction that they were going to lose Powerball was the wrong  prediction, right? Nevertheless, it's fun to look at, anyway.  Let's go. Elite Women Katie Compton collected her 12th title in a row, but Georgia Gould gave her the toughest run for her money she's gotten in a long time.  Guess whose got two thumbs and a website that predicted Georgia ...

I distinctly remember Steve Johnson telling me that if we didn't agree on a price for selling crossresults to USAC that they would copy it. And they did!  Like, all of it ...to the best of their ability, which means it's a reasonable facsimile of crossresults now, but not an exact clone, and that clone also has a "race predictor." (I like the part where they didn't change the name).   In any case, now we live in a magical world with no less than TWO competing mathematical predictions for the United States Cyclocross National Championships! Amazing times we live in.  Let's check it out. The major differences in the algorithms are: - Crossresults includes non-USAC races, most relevantly stuff that happens in California, Oregon, Washington and Europe - USAC's ranking is based on your best 5 results in the calendar year, while crossresults is based on the best 5 in the last 10, so crossresults theoretically pays more attention to recent results than US...

I've been remiss on the blogging front, because I killed my GoPro (more on that later) and blogging without videos just seems soooooo 2008.  But CSI was great, we've got a cup of coffee and an hour, let's DO THIS! CSI Day 1 The Saturday course remains one of my favorite in New England, despite the fact that there is a GOD AWFUL WINDY POWER SECTION in the lower field, because everything else is jam-packed with FUN:  sandpit, runup, rideup with stairs that you could only ride if you were insanely motivated, pro line downhill, rad woods. Stoke was high.  Random number was also high.  But it's okay!  I sliced and diced through the aforementioned power section and was deep into the core of the field heading into the fun section on lap one.   But then, as I was passing some guys on the outside of a turn, the standard UCI-lap-one-almost-crash happened where a tangle led to a chain reaction of five people barely-not-crashing.  Which was great, exc...