Earl's Trails - A Map

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 names are, and the OTHER half I probably used the wrong name for. SWEET.

If you have anything to add to this "masterpiece," especially trail names, LET ME KNOW! What I do have here is words I have heard other riders use to describe trails. Sometimes, "other riders" are LIARS.

Adventures in 0.5x Speed

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 trip to Sun Valley. Basically, you badger your friends via social media into voting for you, and if you make the top 10 overall in votes you haveget to make a 90-second video convincing the Sun Valley tourism folks that you should be the winner. It's actually a pretty ingenious promotion, because it's a proven fact that most people will spam the hell out of their friends for personal gain.

NO BUT SERIOUSLY SUN VALLEY IS A GREAT MOUNTAIN BIKE DESTINATION! I went there two years ago. It was so dope that I turned my bike into this pile of parts:

So I could ride in a place that looks like this:

And I would like to go back.

Did I mention that you should VOTE FOR ME? Because I would like to make a video. And, I suppose, get free stuff.

Weeping Willow Race Report

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 getting the reverse holeshot, since I can only contain myself using physical obstacles, not my BRAIN.

Sadly there was a lot of doubletrack in the first half of the lap so I extricated myself from my confines and started riding too-hard-even-though-it-feels-sustainable. I passed a bunch of guys and ended up on Tim Daigneault's wheel.

Willowdale is "non-technical" at riding pace, but is actually sneaky technical at race pace, because when you're DRILLING IT you better be looking 2 turns ahead in the singletrack if you actually want to go fast. Otherwise you spend equal time DRILLING IT and JACKING THE BRAKES and don't do anything except tire yourself out.

In related news, I spend most of lap one tiring myself out.

At the end of the lap, Ezra Mullen was also hanging out, and then he tried to pass Tim, and they had a "miscommunication" that left Ezra riding in the woods and both of them feeling horribly wronged. BIKE RACING!

Then they took off up the trail to continue their adrenaline-fueled feud, which I elected to not participate in since were only 25% done with the bike race and it was EFFING HOT out.

Tim's adrenaline ran out first and I caught him on the first road utilizing my new "roadie power" (seriously, I've done as many road races as MTB year!). I even gapped him with a brutal 300w attack. BRUTAL!

Then I noticed that my ordinarily semi-janky bike was starting to sound extra-janky. I spent a while trying to diagnose the rapidly developing case of Jancaitis jank-itis in my front end to no avail. I changed my brake pads recently, maybe that's it? They seemed a little loose, I dunno, maybe that screw that holds them in is loose? It's a torx head, which is basically magic, so yeah, that's probably it.

I rode along wondering what I should do about this.

Then I stopped to investigate and realized my ENTIRE FRIGGEN BRAKE CALIPER was in the process of falling off, so hey, kids, when you have to take your brake off for your buddy's old-school roof rack, MAKE SURE YOU PUT IT BACK ON TIGHT.

I hand tightened it as best I could, got passed by Tim, and resumed pedaling with a much quieter bike.

I noticed with some concern that Will "Dad Legs" Crissman was now quite close behind me, along with Greg Jancaitis, Alby King and Jacob Harris. This was annoying, as those guys are ENDURO DUDES and I am a CROSS DUDE, and I need to develop a nice cushion early to hold off their inevitable late-race surge.

I talked myself off the ledge of panic and found my singletrack-carving power animal, which is basically the only way to go fast at Willowdale. Somehow, I distanced them slightly, and caught back up to Tim. Hooray!

The only thing I remember about the 3rd lap was telling Tim that 4 dudes were chasing us and we needed to GO HAHD, and him claiming not to care, but then being very diligent about sticking to my wheel. I realized that I might be getting played.

I also realized it was still effing hot and I was getting effing tired, so yeah, those dudes who were chasing us? Two of them caught up - Jacob Harris and Alby King. We also caught Todd Bowden (?!?!?@) at this point, and suddenly we had a five-man party train going into the final lap. OH THIS IS GONNA HURT SO INTERESTINGLY!

Todd is way better than me (us) at pedaling, so we were f-ing flying on the fire road section, with Todd laying down the watts and 4 little ducklings following his every move. This was all going quite swimmingly until Alby decided to zone out while sitting in 3rd wheel and SMOKE the only obstacle on the whole doubletrack section, which led to a spectacular explosion about 6 inches in front of me. Check it out, photo evidence:

"Hey, this position worked for Graeme Obree"

"I guess I'll true my spokes during this crash"

Alby was kind enough to shout "I'm ok" from the ground so it was obviously still FULL GAS, now with three people, as Tim had also been slowed down in the crash. At this point I was starting to feel the cramps a-comin' so I was relieved to dispose of two dudes. All I need to do now is suffer for another half hour to the line...

Then we got to the singletrack and everything fell apart. Jacob ATTACKED, which is total bullshit, because if I have cramps, everyone should have cramps. Tim caught back up, which was somewhat plausible, but so did Alby, which was utter bull, since he had very clearly died less than ten minutes ago.

The only bright side was Todd actually pulling aside, because he had this funny idea that I wanted to chase Jacob. HA HA! In the 3rd hour, I only chase finish lines, and that was WAY FAR ahead.

I was deathly afraid of Tim or Alby leading at this point, since they were back-from-the-dead zombies with unknown leg strength and a potential hunger for brains. Fortunately Willowdale makes passing pretty hard, and they never asked, so I just droned away on the front of the group at the slowest pace I thought I could get away with. I figured, as long I could lead us all the way to the final half mile of doubletrack, I had a fighting chance with some fast-twitch shenanigans, cramps or no.

Somehow we dropped Todd (maybe he had a mechanical, and that's why he let me pass? I struggle to believe I live in a world in which I can beat Todd Bowden at anything) leaving us with a sweet 3-up sprint for 14th place. OHHH BABY. It's like cross season all over again, only with more cramping!

I led the doubletrack at a whopping 13 mph. Tim and Alby had no intention of coming around, to the point of Tim putting his hand on my back as "encouragement." Dear god it's like a track sprint!

I think Alby made a joke about "actual strategy" or something at this point. I felt briefly ashamed for having an "actual strategy," but luckily it was time to fire off said strategy, before the lack of response to his chat got any more awkward. So I did it (sprint on the last flat stretch, rest on the short downhill, sprint again on the final climb) and neither of them were particular interested in that level of sprintiness.

Meanwhile, Todd Prekaski was busy abusing the Photoshop "Clone" tool on my chest hair:

So, bikes are still fun. Did I mention I got beat by 13 guys who didn't have to reattach their front brake caliper during the race? Cheaters.

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, you can't pass anyone on singletrack in the first five minutes because we're all going warp speed!

But it's ok, because it's a mountain bike race, and you have two hours to end up where you belong.

"Where I belonged" turned out to be somewhere in the middle of pack, with Matt Green and Jacob Harris.  I spent most of the first lap drafting them, aka "getting mud and sand in my eyes for questionable benefit."  As far as 50-degree rides in the rain go, it was quite nice.

Unfortunately with the rain coming down and 100 Cat 1 racers out there, the technicality of the course was increasing fast.  Early on lap two Jacob crashed, and Matt and I set off alone.  I was running Maxxis Aspens, which you can "make work" in sloppy conditions.  Matt was running the MTB version of Dugast Rhyno tubulars (!!), so lap two was mainly me getting gapped by Matt in every corner, and then fantasizing about killing him and taking his wheels while I chased him down on the straightaways.

During this pursuit we somehow managed to overtake several dudes, and I caught a super rad crash on camera.

Luckily, before I had to resort to murder, Matt started showing signs of tiring.  Ending lap three, I gapped him and decided that it was time to go WICKED HAAAHD and finish this thing off.

So I did.  The first half of lap four went quite well, Matt disappeared, and I felt great.

Then lap four kept going, and I started to feel crappy, but it was still ok, because everyone feels crappy by then, right?

Then, two dudes whom I had passed an hour ago caught up to me and clearly did not feel as crappy as I did.  They were, in fact, racing their faces off, at a level of trying-hard that did not seem reasonable to me.  Guys, it's raining.  And I'm cold.  And tired.  Why aren't you?

The final insult was Brian Wilichoski, who broke his chain about 10 seconds into the race, passing me on the short pavement section with five minutes to go and screaming BRAAAAAAAAAAP in my ear.

I limped in for 15th/28 (king of the bottom half, baby!), failed to find the hot showers (oops), cleaned up, and then watched an increasingly miserable train of riders finish over the next 30 minutes.

April MTB Racing, yeah!

Myles Standish Road Race Report

I never even meant to do this race.  After Hopbrook, I was all like "alrighty, let's get down to business and train well for 3 weeks in the hope of being less embarrassing at the Fat Tire Classic."  And I did!  You could tentatively call what I started doing a "block," if you were one of those people.

Obviously that lasted until I realized that there was a bike race I could fit into my schedule, because playing bikes is way awesomer than training bikes.

Especially when it's a mere 25 mile road race with 20 cat 3s in it.  None of this riding-in-the-pack for hours BS, this was going to be an hour of action!  Or something.  Anyway, it seemed fun.  So off I went, with Steve, RMM and geewhits as gas money.  On the way down, RMM regaled us with tales of getting Curley'ed in a past edition of this race, and filling our heads with lies like "the break will go on the first lap, so you have to cover everything."  As you might imagine, #iwasexcite.

On to the racing.

The race started and sure enough, Bill Kenney attacked.  Someone bridged.  RMM told me "that's not the break."  I sat, secure in the knowledge that RMM would never lie to me.  Not 30 seconds later, he went flying across the gap to "not the break." Well then.

Sufficiently panicked, I jump on the next bridge attempt, which turned into a string-out-the-field attempt, which turned into everyone riding together again, and me realizing that riding kinda-hard in the woods for 3 hours has shockingly little to do with going anaerobic on a road bike.

At this point (2 miles in) I would typical start hiding in the field and do nothing until the sprint.  Unfortunately, with only 20 dudes and a firm crosswind, there was nowhere to hide!  So I had to pay attention, and stuff.

Because of the small field, we all knew that a 4-5 man break would be really dangerous, so every time a move got started, EVERYONE tried to jump on it once it got 2-3 guys in it, and as a result the only thing that stuck in the first half of the race was Oscar from Ride Studio going clear solo.  We left him hanging out there for over a lap He stuck it for over a lap, but eventually we reeled him back in.

The very-predictable counterattack went right away, but everyone wanted a piece of THAT, of course, so it went nowhere.  And then, somehow, not only had Oscar hung onto the acceleration, but he rode back up to the front and attacked again.

RMM and I joked about how, if nothing else, he would get the Most Aggressive Rider jersey for tomorrow's stage.

This attack didn't work, either, nor did all the other small moves that followed it.  On lap 4 (out of 5) Steve took off, and just like Oscar's previous solo moves we all kinda looked around and said "meh."   And there he went.

Oscar hadn't been off the front for like, 5 or even 10 minutes at this point, so obviously he was the guy who rode across the gap once Steve had been out there for a while.

Apparently Oscar is in way better shape than me right now.  Luckily, road racing doesn't directly measure fitness.

So Steve and Oscar stayed off the front into the final lap, but never far enough away to be scary.  In fact, they we bridge-ably close, as two more guys proved with about 4 miles to go.

Our chase remain close but disorganized.

Steve got shelled by the break, indicating that it was becoming "business time."

We surged a little, and I counted the break at 11 seconds going into the main climb on the loop, 2.5 miles from the finish.

The break shelled Oscar on the climb, which gave me the fodder to heckle his RSC teammates about contributing to the chase.  I have learned from my sensei, RMM, that heckling other teams for not working is the most satisfying part of cat 3 racing.

The RSC guys cringed but they knew I was right.  Unfortunately, Jay decided to attack, instead of just nicely ramping up the pace, so we rocketed briefly up to 30 mph, brought the break down to 5 seconds, and started looking at each other again.

No one wanted do that last bucket of work to guarantee the catch, now that we were within 1.5 miles of the finish. I think most of us knew we only had one more big effort left (I know I did) and I had no intention of doing it so someone else could win. Thus.... break chicken.

We pick up the action with about a mile to go.   Do you know how FAR a mile is?  Because my brain sure doesn't.  I felt like the finish was just over the top of the hill at this point:


If you're not interesting in 2 minutes of video, well, Scott Glowa (CB) launched on the hill, Nevin Rallis (Bikeman) tried to go with him and I burned my entire matchbook trying to get on that wheel.  Nevin and I were rolling up on Scott as we came of of the last turn... and I was ready to make one final effort... except we were still 35 seconds from the finish line and everyone else was about to slingshot off of me.

Combine that with Nevin and I hooking elbows a second later, and I GAVE.  UP.

And now I have to live with that for a week.  Dammit!

Hopbrook Dam Race Report

It used to be that I did better at Hopbrook every year, but now that I'm in the twilight of my career (was that a joke?  I'm not sure either) I seem to always find myself behind the fitness curve come April.  This year's mild winter was especially bad for that, as I spent most of March trying to get healthy and patch my ego back together after the Birkie.  Meanwhile, everyone else was out DRILLING IT.  So I figured I would just go ahead and avoid Hopbrook, and buy 3 more weeks of secret training before I had to face the Pro/1 music.

BUT THEN I REMEMBERED BIKES ARE TOTALLY SWEET!  Hmm.

Christin was planning on skipping Hopbrook so I was like, yo, that's cool, I don't want to go either.  But then she was like, "wanna go race Hopbrook?" and my heart did a little flip and I was like YESYESYESYESYESBIKES, so I guess I really did want to go.

No amount of wanting to ride fast will make you ride fast (well, ride fast for 2 hours...), so I knew it would be bad, but whatever.  MTB racing!  I missed you!  Reverse holeshots and jerseys full of half-eaten gels, let's do this!  It's been 5 weeks since I lined up for an Elite race I shouldn't be in, so I'm due anyway.

The course was the same as always, except drier, so it was extra pedaly, aka exact the reality check I needed.  The first three minutes I felt totally fine.  Then we went into a little mud hole, I tried to crank out of it, and WHAM my back wheel comes out of the dropout.  Ah yes, now I remember this happening about a billion times last year, because my dropout is slippery and my hand strength is feeble.  I frantically jammed my wheel back in the dropout, closed the skewer with the fury of a man watching himself slide into last place, and  rode off.

After a short while I caught a dude, and transferred the mantle of "last" onto him.  The rest of the lap was dedicated to chasing down not one but TWO more dudes, while discovering that the top half of my cassette no longer shifted.   Hmm, that's weird, it worked all winter...

At the end of lap one I was deep into the out-of-shape cave, having been passed by the leading 19-29 Cat 1s already (ugh) and totally unable to shake the two guys from my category I had earlier passed, back when I was "enthused."  The day had all the makings of a descent into sadness.  Thank God sadness is the spice of blog posts...

The lack of desire in my legs caused the blood to start flowing to my brain again.  My brain realized that if I my cassette wasn't shifting worth beans, it was probably because I jammed the wheel in the dropout crooked when I was freaking out.  And if it's crooked it in the dropout, the cassette isn't lined up right, nor is the brake.

NOR IS THE BRAKE!

For the first time ever, I can say "I rode like my brakes were dragging" and it's true.  I hopped off the bike and gave the back wheel a test spin... it made just over a revolution before stopping.  Oh, Colin.  You idiot.

Obviously a dragging brake is worth 12 minutes, so I surely would have been 2nd in the race if not for that.

But it really did feel better once I recentered the wheel.  And instead of getting SMOKED by the next 19-29 dude to pass me, I only got mildly dusted.  And then matched his pace!  And then...ever so slowly... over the next hour... clawed my way back to him.

The Coppola Photography guy/girl were there taking some really nice shots.  Am I allowed to borrow this for my blog?  And why are my wheels so big?  So many questions.

Epic battles with racers you had a 2-minute head start on?  Hey, I'll take what I can get.

So I spent most of the last lap riding my legs off 10 seconds behind some dude who knew I wasn't in his category and probably wasn't trying that hard.  But, with a mile or so to go, I closed the gap and my caremeter was shockingly high.  Oh, April racing.  So much trying!

I came around him just before the last road second and assumed he would disappear, because that's what happens to people you can't see in a bike race.  I rode hard on the road and hard on the trail and hit the final climb... only to look back and find out he was still there, now joined by Alec Petro, who was catching me from the 6-minutes-back 40+ field.

This development gave me PRIDE LEGS and I rode ludicrously hard to hold them off until the final descent, at which point all shenanigans were paused so we did not kill the expert woman we were lapping.  No places actually hung in the balance, so it was all good.

The results showed me five seconds behind the next Pro/1 guy, which was not as good.  But worrying about placing 17th instead of 18th is not pro, right?  What if I mention it on my blog?  Would that be ok?  Hope so.

Here I am being totally not upset at how badly I did.  Like I said, my brakes were rubbing.

Watch more video of Root 66 #1 Hop Brook Dam on cyclingdirt.org

American Birkebeiner Race Report

Want more factual, less-seizure-prone Birkie vids?  Check out 2010 and 2011.

So, last year, I showed up to the Birkie with super-questionable fitness having barely ski raced all year.  I ended up having the best race of my life and qualifying for the elite wave in 2012, reminding me for the hundredth time that predicting and controlling one's fitness is way, way harder than it seems.

The obvious next step was to ski EVEN LESS and race EVEN LESS this year.  I got back from 'cross nationals in mid-january, looked at the calendar, and realized that I had 6 weeks to the Birkie.  Five years ago, I would've said there was no hope to get 50k fitness in 40 days, but now I know that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.  Let's do this!

...and six weeks later, I was in line at the airport with 10 ski days under my belt, with Cary and Lauren, who were on similar training plans -- and we suddenly had a problem even bigger than limited time on snow.

Our plane tickets were booked for the wrong day.

"Tickets for the wrong day," it turns out, is actually just "not having tickets at all," but with the added excitement of a sunk cost skewing your judgement.   The Delta lady said we could put our initial ticket price toward the cost of buying a ticket one hour before the plane took off... so it was "only" $500 to go to Wisconsin in an hour!

Between entry fee, lodging, transport and ticket I was already committed to $700 for the weekend... so I could pay $700 to sit at home get drunk wonder what I was missing, or $1200 to go race the biggest ski race in America.

Dammit.

You'd have done the same thing.

Fast forward to the finish line, where I've just had a totally abysmal 50k, finishing 401st overall (I was 200th last year).  You know what makes that really hurt?  Knowing you could've taken $500 to stay home.

Oh, elite wave, why can't I quit you?  Oh wait, I just did.

When a ski race goes badly, and it's a 2.5 hour one, you get a lot of time to think about what went wrong.  I have a thrillingly lengthy of list excuses in my head, and if there's anything people love reading, it's a blog full of excuses!  Right??

Let me just give you good one.

I had to poop.

It all started as soon as I paid $500 for a plane ticket.  I realized that if I was dropping that coin for a race, then I needed to make it count.  And to make it count, you need fuel.

You ever try to FUEL UP in an airport?  YEAH.

So that's why I ate at Sbarro, your honor.

Unbeknownst to me, that was also roughly the last time I would be moving my bowels until many hours after the race.

Friday afternoon, I thought to myself, "that's odd, I haven't needed to use the bathroom yet today."  Ordinarily, thoughts like this never cross my mind, but it was THE BIRKIE and it NEEDED TO COUNT.  So a little extra weight loss is worth fretting over, right?

Protip:  the #1 way to "not poop" is "fretting about pooping."

Which takes us to race morning, where I was now up to 36 hours without a poop, and kinda had a tummy ache.  NOT OPTIMAL.

Promise I will stop typing "poop" soon.  Don't let your kids read this.  No, wait, kids love pooping.  Don't let your adults read this.

Back to the race.  At the 40k mark, my stomach ache increased a bit... and suddenly, for the first time in several days, I had a strong urge to visit the men's room.  Unfortunately, at this moment I was ahead of a grand total of four other skiers from the elite wave (which was roughly 200 people), and the one last shred of dignity I was clinging to was "not last in the elite wave!"

And you know what they say -- poopin' guys finish last.

So, a pit stop was not made, and my body protested this decision by sealing things back off for six more hours.  Fair enough.

After the race, I was in "never again" mode about the Birkie.  It's been a week, and I've upgraded to "we'll see."  Such is the lure of the potential of a non-constipated Birkie.

One final note:  Last year, I won the ultimate roommate grudge match by getting into the elite wave, while Cary languished in wave one.  This year, he made up the ten minute gap between those waves in 36k of skiing and eventually beat me by over 200 places, to crushingly avenge last year's defeat.  I would be remiss to sweep this fact entirely under the table in my race report, but I can at least try to hide it in a final paragraph that maybe no one will read.