Styched for the Weasel

Styched, of course, is the combination of stoked and psyched. I can't take credit for it; I first heard it from a cyclingdirt interview with Adam Snyder. And I doubt he made it up, either. If you'd like to try using made-up words, I might also suggest adding "jenvious" to your vocabulary.

Ordinarily you'd be reading the NBX GP of Cross Day 1 Race Report here, but there are bigger fish to fry -- it's Ice Weasels promoter freakout week. And besides, I sucked at Day 1 of NBX. It was a Saturday; it happens. There was no camera to record it, and thus nothing of value came out of it. Let's move on.

So yeah, if you're not going to Nationals, the place to be this Saturday is at White Barn Farm in Wrentham, MA.

We have some new stuff going on this year -- an improved, or at least different, course layout that should have fewer crazy-tight 180s and more passing opportunities. There's a new bermy-thing in the field, and oh yeah, beer sponsor. We've also doubled the payout from last year to $1000 across 3 classes ($500 elite men, $250 elite women, $250 singlespeed).

I'm really excited to see what happens when you combine some healthy cash payouts with a field of burned-out racers who want to take beer feeds. I think it's going to be the ultimate mullet race -- business at the front, party at the back.

There's only one caveat -- it's gonna be cold. Remember how last year it was 34 in the sun? This year it's gonna be 33 in the sun. I've hung out at many a 10-degree ski race, so trust me, you can definitely have fun when it's 35 degrees out, but YOU GOTTA DRESS RIGHT. Throw your ski parka, winter hat, and winter boots in the car, so you don't start shivering and spill the beer feed you're gonna give me.

I'm gonna finish the season off right, by running around all morning, doing tons of results, yelling on the PA, forgetting to eat, jumping in the last race of the day, and riding as hard as I can until I explode. Because that's what it's all about.

Baystate Cyclocross Day 2 Race Report

A wise man once said, "never admit to blogging at 10pm on a Friday."

So let's just pretend that I wrote this one up and forgot to hit publish back. Because I'm obviously out at some place cool (like Lord Hobo), not sitting at home "catching up" on something as vitally important as the blog.

So anyway. Back to last Sunday. Another double weekend, another better course on Sunday. Everyone seems to like the Sunday courses better this year, right? I can't figure out if it's because us old-timers (yes, this is my fourth season of racing Verge, believe it or not) are just excited to see something different at the classic venues, or it the Sunday courses are actually better. It seems like they're more technical on the second day, so that could be why I am so stoked about it, too.

In any case, Sterling day 2 was a quality setup, if not a picturesque one (a tight turn around a transformer box? AWESOME!). It was lots of braking and sprinting with one massive, screw-you, power-to-weight contest power section from the parking lot straight to the top of the hill. The only recovery you got during the climb was right before the stair run (ouch) and it finished with a barely rideable uphill mud bog.

WATTS!

Other than that I was looking forward to it.

I semi-botched the start, but with only 30 guys and a tight bottleneck on the first turn, it didn't really matter; I still ended up in the pain train around 20th, racing the usual suspects, on Kevin's wheel.

Obviously since Kevin and I are on the same team we should get in each other's way, so we did a little accordion, Kevin put a foot down, and I ran straight into his leg. I decided this was all his fault so I went flying by on the next straightaway while yelling "YOU'RE A FSCKING LIABILITY" at him.

TEAMMATES!

I settled into a group with David Wilcox, Al Donahue, Kevin Wolfson, Pete Smith, and a guy I didn't know. Fast company. Too fast, in fact. Being day 2, my legs hurt from the gun, and my brain was like, "uh, you're riding in Al's group, he's way better than you." So all body parts involved with closing gaps were protesting more than usual.

After two laps of yo-yo-ing on the back, I was off for good. At the time it seemed reasonable, but now (recalling that I was only going 99.9% of max) I wish I had died a few more deaths to stay on. You know how it is. In any case, it was off to TT land while I prayed that Al's pace broke someone else off soon.

And it totally did! First "unknown rider" (let's call him Chad Wells), and then Pete Smith lost contact, and the gap to them was imminently closeable. And I was a-closin', right up until I dumped it on the new off-camber descent. I didn't dump it in the "end up with a muddy ass" sense, but I still ended up running down a hill, dragging my bike behind me by a brake hood. Not fast.

What's worse, a large, wattage-heavy group was close behind, with Kevin, John Burns and Adam Sullivan. Sweet, it's like every guy I really want to beat is working together to catch me! Kevin, being the team player that he is, dragged the group up to my wheel, and then retreated to the back of it.

Oh well, hanging out with dudes makes for better stories. We had a Quebecois dude with us and we picked up Chad Wells soon after, and I showed remarkable (in my humble opinion) fortitude by hanging out at second/third wheel instead of tailgunning as is my wont.

Kevin, ever the teammate, picked his way through the group, up to my wheel, just so he could T-bone me on the stair dismount and then never be seen again. Seriously, 100% of the contact I had with other riders in this race was with the only guy wearing the same kit as me. We're so good at this sport.

So that was the end of Kevin. Down to five. It stayed that way until three to go, when Burns (who had been doing zero, zilch, nada, aka racing smart) decided to light it up on the power section. I had made a few attempts to get away, that of course didn't stick, then he went to the front and hammered for 2 minutes straight. "Oh," I thought to myself, "you have to go hard for MORE than 10 seconds to break guys off. I see." Then I almost threw up to hold his wheel.

And oh boy, did he break guys off. Chad and "the canadian guy" were GONE. Like "lost 40 seconds in a lap gone." It was the kind of manly attack that I would like to make someday, when I am a wattage factory and not just a hide-in-your-draft-and-jump-you-at-the-line factory.

Adam Sullivan is pretty strong, too, so he hung on as well, and we were down to three. John was obviously the strongest guy in the group, because he kept dragging us around and accelerating really hard on all the straightaways. Eventually he accepted that we weren't going anywhere, but by then there was only one lap to go, and all parties involved were running on fumes.

Burns was taking some "weird" lines through the off-camber descent/woods section/horse jump, so I got past him on the off-camber and gapped both of them solidly by the time we were back to a straightaway. Oh, it's time for my favorite cx drill of them all -- "hold a 3 second gap for the last four minutes."

I've actually done it so many times now (like I said, I'm an old-timer) that it wasn't even that intimidating; just sprint out of every corner like there's a mountain lion behind you and you're good to go. The power sections were short enough that Adam couldn't crush the gap like at Mansfield and thus I rolled in with my gap intact for my second 19th place of the day.

You know what? I'm pretty glad I decided to write this post at 10pm Friday, er, 9am Tuesday, because I'm 300% more motivated for NBX than I was when I started typing. Does this keyboard have caffeine in it??

Baystate Cyclocross Day 1 Bar Cam

Baystate Cyclocross Day 1 Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo.

The only casualty from putting $10k of bikes on Cary's trunk and driving 70mph into a 40mph headwind was that I lost the nut that locks my rear camera in place. So no picture-in-picture this weekend.

Adam Snyder lamented the lack of seat cam when he lined up behind me, but then he rode two laps directly in front of me to get plenty of camera time. He rode the horse jump on camera twice, and it's so smooth/subtle you can barely see it if you don't know to look for it. Nice.

I also accidentally left some blank titles in the video, because iMovie and I had some philosophical differences about how user interfaces should work (Hint: two mouse buttons). Yeah, that's it. But that's another discussion, for another blog...

Baystate Cyclocross Day 1 Race Report

I heard that the ground beneath Chocksett School in Sterling, Massachusetts is home to the largest naturally occurring sponge in the Western Hemisphere.

I heard that Tom Stevens spent 12 hours Friday night with a Shop Vac taking water off the course.

I heard that 40mph wind can really dry out a place.

All I'm saying is, I did not expect Sterling to be dry, fast and fun on Saturday. It rained all day Friday, and the wind was "25 gusting to 40" on Saturday. I was ready for the nastiest, coldest mud fest ever. I was so sure of this that I didn't even bring a rear Fango.

Keep that in mind when you think I know what I'm talking about.

With Linnea off in Maine doing pro stuff like "taking a weekend off," I carpooled with the Verge Cat 3 Men's leader and Natalia G out to Sterling, with $10k of bike strapped to the rear of Cary's car, watching Cary's bike lift off with every gust. It was a little unnerving.

Of course, since Cary races at noon, I was showing up early. You know what that means... time to be a SUPERFAN!

I am improving my superfan technique. A month ago I would have given in to the temptation to ride a cross course 5 hours before my race, because it looked fun. But not now! Riding the course too early is bad. Running around cheering for people is bad. Sitting in a chair is good. Eating is good. So I took my PB & J to the top of the big hill, plopped my ass down and screamed RIDE ITTTTT at guys who had no chance of riding it (aka everyone).

Nice!

Ok, race time. Third row, behind Burns and next to Kevin. Mountain bike superstar/CX clown Adam Snyder lined up behind me hoping for seat cam time, but I lost the nut to the rear mount (if you know what I mean) that morning so it was front cam only. Don't worry, he managed to get on camera anyway.

The start was little sketchy, which Kevin claims was due to Justin Spinelli's derailleur going into his front wheel, which I claim is due to him being a wuss. Anyway, I was pinched a bit at the start and didn't make any awesome moves into the top 15.

Across the top Adam comes sprinting by me and I'm thinking, what the hell is he doing, and then he attempts to do a tabletop on a cross bike going to into the downhill. Of course it looked like nothing on camera, but it seemed pretty exciting to me at the time. Then he rode the horse jump, in traffic, for good measure.

Somehow I ended up back on his wheel despite all this, and we rolled through after one lap with Pete Smith. I am lazy and Pete is not, so he attacked us on the track. Very rude as I was expecting him to obligingly pull me instead. But I closed the gap back down by riding all but the last 5 steps of the run-up.

Coming into the barriers on lap 2 I saw Adam hit the brakes and stay on the bike, and I thought to myself, oh, sweet, I'm gonna video this! I slowed down to try to keep him in the video. These are not competitive thoughts to be having... and it didn't work anyway, I totally missed it.

And of course, after the second barrier, he's on his bike and I'm not, so he gapped me on the hill and that was that.

In case you forgot, it was gusting to 40mph, so I immediately had to start hiding behind another wheel. I can't remember how I got there, but somehow I found another -- I think it was Damian Schmitt? Anyway, big guy, nice draft, and going fast enough that I was basically flat out just to hang on. He tried to get me to come around, repeatedly, but I was a big meanie and didn't. Good jorb Colin.

I almost went down on the runup dismount on lap four because I couldn't get out of my pedal... crap, I know that "have to twist really far to release" feeling and it means a loose cleat. Why do I know it so well? Because it was happening on my *other* shoes during warmup.

Crap. I knew there was a reason I quit using the black shoes.

I had forseen that I might have shoe issues, so I had pit shoes set up. Seriously! So PRO. But you should never actually have to use pit shoes if you're PRO. Luckily, the left pit shoe was the one that was loose in warmup, and now I had a loose right shoe, so I still had one functioning set of footwear. I hated to do it, but I had to address it before it got bad enough that I stacked a dismount.

Into the pit, dump the bike, change the shoe, back on the bike! The bar cam says this only took me 15 seconds, pretty nice, but I still managed to lose Damian's wheel, and even worse, the next group went through just as I was remounting.

That group had John Burns and Adam Sullivan in it (two nemeses, I might add) and with 40 mph gusts I needed. those. wheels. And six seconds is so incredibly long in a cross race.

If you watched the Mansfield Hollow video you know how fast Adam goes on a straightaway. With him pulling on the track and road, I knew I was in trouble, but I still had to try. I put in a very solid lap chasing, one might even say I was "drilling it," but the gap stayed at a tantalizing five seconds.

More drilling it. Cary was all over the course screaming "don't ride like me," which was good material. Fine. I'm trying, really I am.

Finally Manny popped off the group and I caught him -- and here's where I screwed up. After 10 minutes of flat-out chasing I was gassed and wanted a break, and we were only 15 bike lengths behind the group. I can totally close that after I recover a bit, yeah!

Except, Manny had basically dropped an anchor and was about to DNF. I took a 30 second break on his wheel, and by the time I went around the gap was back out to 10 second. Oh Colin, you are such an idiot.

Time to time trial to the finish now! Nothing else exciting happened, until I caught Pete Smith with one to go, and while he seemed like he was D-O-N-E he still put up an annoying amount of resistance when I tried to drop him. Like I said, that guy is not lazy. But eventually I succeeded, and rolled in for 19th/30 and a rare payday!

Whitmore's Super Cross Cup Race Reports

It's a short week so we're rolling two reports and a video into one. Hold on to your coffee.

I rolled down to Southampton this weekend with Linnea and Sara. They are fast ladies, so they were hoping to take advantage of the promoters's increased women's payout to score mad bank. I am an occasionally-fast dude, so I was hoping to not get lapped by Tim Johnson.

The lapping situation was grim, though, because Southampton is a shortshortshort lap with a ton of climbing, so the fast guys are only 5 minutes away from lapping you when the race starts and the course really lets them showcase how they are "professional cyclists" and you are "not."

The rest of the UCI pack fodder stayed home, so I got the coveted back row lineup along with Pete Bradshaw. We joked about how lonely we were, then the whistle blew and he crushed it to a 16th place, last-guy-on-the-lead-lap race. Bastard.

Oh, and spoiler alert, if Pete crushed it and was last guy on the lead lap, guess who wasn't? THIS GUY.

I did not help myself out by running the CRABON file treads on Saturday, either. They were ok when I prerode, but with the sun going down and the ground getting moist at 3pm, I was "rallying," not railing, every corner. Maybe if I was Adam Craig I could have made that work. My wheels made exciting pinging sounds when I shifted, but I went around corners, and especially the HUGE OFF CAMBER, basically sideways. File treads are still the secret weapon... but they're not the ultimate weapon.

So anyway, there were 33 starters on Saturday and 25 of them were light years better than me. I rode a mediocre race and placed 30th, right where I should've been. Lonely day, though. At least I had Steve abusing me on the ride up each lap. I was not alone:


Tim lapped me after 40 minutes (ouch) on his way to riding 11 laps in 55 minutes (ouch), and slapped me on the ass on the way past (ouch). And my stupid seat cam didn't catch it! Ouch!

Sunday was a new day, with similar characters on a similar course. This time we went up the sharp climbs and down the more gradual ones, which was surprisingly a lot more fun. Or maybe it was just because I was running Fangos, which felt like I was velcro'ed to the ground after a day of file treads. Anyway, mojo was higher!

And it's a good thing my mojo was higher, because I put myself straight into DFL about two minutes onto the course. We went over the the methane hill bottleneck, I was on someone's right side on the downhill, overlapped wheels, and when they swung wide I had nowhere to go but into the tape. Rookie move. Worst of all I slammed on the brakes and the damn stuff stretched out a mile but didn't break, leaving me wrapped up as the race rolled away. (2:00 in the video) I had to unhook from my brake levers, bars, and seat cam (!!) and then back up before I could be free, taking over the DFL spot from Zach. He said "I'll wait for you," and I was like, cool.

So he did, I guess, anyway we rode the rideup together and looked good doing it. At least if you didn't know we were the last two guys in the race.


Soon after that he had an innocent little lay-down on the descent, but since it was on an off-camber he went sliding several miles under the tape and was never seen again. (3:55 in the video)

And now I'm alone! Again! On a short lap!

This time, though, I vowed it would be different, so I gunned it for a half lap to catch Chris Hamlin just in time for the long pavement stretch. He expertly blew the turn onto the pavement and I accidentally rolled past him... oh goddammit now I have to pull? If he did that on purpose it was one of the slicked moves ever. I pulled for 2 minutes, he jumped around just in time for the first climb. NICE.

I did cling to his wheel long enough to finally pick up some draft on the next lap, and then "attacked" on the steepest climb to open a little gap and set off alone again. At this point I assumed the "grim reaper of the elite field" role and rode around ending people's races. Ricky had a biological/mechanical thing going on, so I rolled around him. Pat Bradley rolled a tubular, bam, another victim for the reaper!

Unfortunately Tim and Jeremy then lapped me before I could claim any more souls.

All in all, it was kind of a bummer weekend, because it turns out that racing no one for 28th is nowhere near as gratifying as racing 20 of my closest Cat 2 friends for it at a Verge. I can't even tell if I rode well, because there were so few guys to compare against.

Luckily, my carmates slayed it both days to come away with serious loot and yet more UCI points, and they dragged me outta there on Sunday in time to catch the 5pm ferry back home.

Hey, dudes my speed: COME TO STERLING. Please?

Whitmore's Cross Cup Day 2 from colin reuter on Vimeo.

Mercer Cup Day 2 Cams

Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to this party purely to see what Dave does when he's not beating me on a bike... cuz, you know, I've never seen that before.

I think I finally maxed out the internet in my life. I've had a half-edited picture-in-picture Northampton video sitting here for a week now. I didn't get around to seat-camming Mercer Day 2 until Thursday night because I was busy with results/shirts/blogs/fantasy nordic. This is not a "pity me and my million web projects" blog post... I just want you to understand. I wanted to make videos, really I did.

Anyway. This one is pretty nice visually. No commentary this time around, but it's got two classic techno tracks, a great crash (9:00), high quality, and picture-in-picture. Fullscreen it for the full experience... maybe not if you're watching at work.


I had to use IMovie for this one to do the P-in-P, and I gotta say, Apple tries really hard to make stuff simple and intuitive in their apps. That's great when it works, and maddening when it doesn't. WHY DOES EVERY SINGLE OPERATION HAVE TO BE CLICK/DRAG ARGHHHH WHY DOES IT AUTOPLAY ANY CLIP MY MOUSE GOES OVER ARGHHHHH.

Ok, I'm done.

USGP Mercer Cup Day 2 Race Report

Despite a DNF after 25 minutes of racing on Saturday, I was loving life Sunday morning. Why? Super-nice housing, thanks to my crossresults uploader-friend Jess and her husband Vinnie. They have no internet presence, and even if they did, THEY'RE ALL MINE, so no links for you. 15 minutes from the venue, full bike shop in the basement, gas-powered pressure washer (!!), overzealous hosting. Between this and last weekend with Meg and JD, I am irreparably softened on race housing. I will never be able to get up at 6am or sleep on a floor again. Alas.

But anyway! I was STOKED Sunday morning, unlike my competitors, who had poured their souls out onto the course Saturday and were but shells of men. Skipping a muddy Saturday is practically cheating... it's right up there with good start position on the "secrets to a breakout race" checklist.

I sure didn't have the good start position thing going, though. We were milling around during callups, as always, when out of the blue the officials decided that staging everyone correctly was too hard, so after 3 rows of UCI callups they gave us the old "everyone else line up" dismissal and all hell broke loose as 50 guys charged the line. Seriously? The biggest race on the East Coast just tried to "mob rule" stage us?

The racers took matters into their own hands and started bitching, with a ferocity ordinarily reserved for RMM's blog. At first the officials tried to ignore us. Then they tried to placate us by moving the guy with a 70 number out of the 4th row, into the 9th. They were unsuccessful! We whined pathetically (you oughta hear me whinge) and eventually they caved, backed everyone off the line and re-staged us the right way. Victory!

I ended up in the exact same place as I had been before, but it's the principle of the matter, dammit.

Go time! This time my tires stayed inflated for the entire start straight, which was pretty awesome, and I got off the pavement solidly in the top three quarters of the field. It sounds bad, but you gotta remember, the predictor told me I would only beat six people.

I had such a good start, you still can't see me in this picture! [ dave august ]

Even better, I have been hanging out with Adam "I've forgotten more about cross than you'll ever know" Myerson and he's helped me get my head around the style of cutthroat racing that is appropriate and required for something as big-time as a USGP. So every time I could beat someone to the good line on lap one, I did it. It was not a contact-free experience, and I did get the door closed on me more than once, but damned if I wasn't having the most fun of anyone out there. Riding aggressively creates adrenaline, which makes you ride aggressively! It's a vicious cycle, like blogging and coffee.

On the straightaway past the fried food tent I was going really, really fast for someone with my wattage riding through stiff mud. I remember thinking, "I have no idea why I am not in extreme pain yet." Then we got out of earshot of the crowd and I was like "oh, there it is." Pain time!

The course was basically the same experience as the day before, albeit a lot warmer and sunnier. Still covered in thick mud, still mainly a wattage contest. But I after only racing 50% of Saturday, I was actually halfway competitive in a wattage contest, for the first time ever!

They had attempted to add some technical features to the barren plain we were racing on, but the only trick in their book seemed to be the super-tight double 180. It was not fun to ride, at all, but at least it was a mandatory 5 second rest -- another thing that went a long way to keeping me competitive.

Near the end of lap one I was still riding a wave of adrenaline, in the low 50s, and surprisingly happy about that. So then I decided to fold (not roll) my rear tire in a corner, and fail to clip out in time, and bounce my face off the ground while getting stuck under my bike. The only good thing was yet another crash on camera -- look for that tomorrow.

Now that I was worried about my pedal release tension and my softish rear tire, it was time to do the PRO thing and come in for the B bike. This time I'd waiting long enough that Linnea could make it to the pit, and I let her know how seriousbusiness I was feeling by yelling "plus three rear" during the bike change.

With lap two finishing up, that could only mean one thing: Wilcox time. Right on cue, the cheers for Geekhouse picked up and Dave came storming past on a straightaway. Well, I rode that wheel to "victory" last weekend, might as well try again. I found that extra level of suffering that only exists when chasing your #1 nemesis and got down to business.

Unfortunately we were going about half the speed of Northampton so there was no "sit on his wheel and win the sprint" strategy to be had... we just rode as hard as we could in the same general vicinity to one another. The only exception was on the pavement, where I put in a couple huge efforts to close the gap for a brief draft.

After four laps it seemed like I'd gained the upper hand, as I'd established an insurmountable five-second lead.

But Dave does not feel pain like normal men. After a particularly tough uphill section in mud, I tried to back off for a mere 20 seconds before going back to KILLKILLKILL mode. Bad idea. He closed the gap and went right by, and just like that I was chasing again.

Make no mistake, the course was littered with other racers, but the only one I was paying attention to was Dave. I was dimly aware that I kept having to pass guys to stay with him, which was getting kind of annoying, because I wanted to rest on their wheels, but stupid Dave kept going around. So I'd chase after him, yet again.

The other guy in the race worth worrying about was Tim Johnson, because he was slaying it -- 50 seconds over Trebon, last I heard on the PA -- and when he's putting that kind of time into Ryan you better believe I'm getting lapped. Starting my sixth lap Linnea gave me a heads up that I was down to a 60 second lead on him -- so that's the bell, right there.

I was all over Dave's rear wheel, because hey, bike racing! And eventually I paid for it -- lapping wheels when he slowed and took a line I didn't like, foot down, off into the deepest, stiffest mud that no one was riding. And there's the gap.

We weren't alone, either, a Canadian guy was up there with Dave and they were pushing each other hard. My chase was briefly interrupted to let Tim pass (he declined the high five, of course) and I when I got back on the gas I was pretty much resigned to not catching them. They hit the loooong finish stretch a good five or more seconds ahead of me and Dave opened the sprint up.

I will assume his opponent was too PRO to try hard after being lapped, because he had zero response -- either that or he totally failed to hear them explain how it works when you're lapped each day. In any case, he pedaled like he was glad to be done, 200m from the line. I recognized an opportunity for a ninja attack.

I gassed it as hard as I dared while looking casual and staying seated until he looked back. As soon as he looked ahead, GO TIME! I got a good six seconds of full out-of-the-saddle afterburners in before he looked back again. He tried to sprint, but I had a solid 15 mph head start. It was like I was a hawk diving out of the sky on a rabbit. He never had a chance. I went smoking past and pulled off 39th place at a USGP. Holy crap!

The final sprint. [ artist's rendition ]