Sea Otter race report

So what do camping and eating at McMenamin’s have in common?

You know it’s going to suck, but you keep doing it anyway.

So I went down to Sea Otter with a buddy on my team (Ed). We left Wednesday after work and Ed convinced me to take the coast because I had never seen the Redwoods. Well that was a mistake, not the best route. Yeah, we got to see plenty of big redwood trees…in the dark. We ended up at a Motel Six in Eureka at 1am, in a newly remodeled room with fresh paint and carpet off-gassing. We got 4 hours sleep and hit the road at 6am, with headaches all morning from the fumes. At least the room was clean.

We stopped at an In-n-Out burger (highlight of Ed’s trip) and then we crossed the Golden Gate bridge (two firsts for me). We continued down through San Francisco so we could do the rest of the drive down Highway One. Denied! The road was closed south of Pacifica, so we had to back-track and lost a bunch of time. Then we got stuck on the highway over to Santa Cruz for an hour because of a slide. We finally arrived in Laguna Seca and got to our campsite. It was overflow and on a hill and muddy and the worst camp site ever. You could hardly get into the place without AWD because it was so steep and muddy. The Previa took it in stride, but not so for many others. We set up our tent and watched all the other cars slide all over ‘cause nobody down there knows how to drive in the mud.

Day two we went out and pre-rode the course, me on my new Stumpy and Ed on his fully rigid Surly 1x1. It was a nice course, a ton of climbing, like 3000 feet over 20 miles, Ed had to walk some of the climbs. I think the Romans had similar sand to the stuff around Laguna Seca when they invented cement. When you combine it with a little dirt and water, your drivetrain just quits working. I’ve never had chainsuck so bad. I had to ride the last three miles of the course in my big ring, uphill. We finished the ride in a leisurely 3 hours.

We wandered around the Expo area and got a ton of schwag. I got autographs and a pic with John Tomac and Hans Rey, and another autograph from Gunn-Rita Dahl (I’m sure I spelled her name wrong, sorry). Spent a ton of time talking wheels with the boys from Industry Nine. Nice product, I think I’m going to get some. We also got to see and play with the new XTR stuff, and the new SRAM Force road group. The new XTR shifters look pretty sweet; my bet is on the detached shifters for becoming the next shifter of choice. Also notable was a prototype brake lever mount from Formula that allows you to bolt a SRAM XO shifter onto the brake lever. Cool. Also rode the new Redline Mono-Cog 29er, complete for around $500. Don’t let the fact that I used to rep for Redline fool you, this is a pretty sweet ride and a great deal. Put some of those Industry Nine wheels on one and some disc brakes…let’s roll!

Day Three, Saturday, Mens Pro circuit race, like 35 laps around Laguna Seca Race track, 300 foot elevation gain each lap and then 50 mph on the downhill, 200 riders. Levi Leiphimer was the star, out there all alone with no teammates. Awesome race. I got some nice video of the whole pro field coming down from the corkscrew at 50. I was so close and they were going so fast it was freaky. You would not believe how much wind those riders generated. We both got massive sunburn. Ed jumped on a Cyclops Trainer in their booth and mashed out 933 Watts so over 5.0 watts per pound or Kilo or something. Come Sunday Ed was still in 4th place, after some beast got almost 9 watts per kilo, like 1800 watts. We went to a party in town put on by a LBS from Kona, The twin towers were there. Ed dropped his beer cup, plastic, cut off good night.

Northern California got 19 inches of rain in the last few weeks. There are slides everywhere, and the people are all freaked out. Dude, there’s mud all over the XC course, what are we going to do?

Race Day, my race started at 8:15 am. Ed said I was looking pretty pro, all doped up on Sport Legs. I had my special 104+ octane mix in my hydration pack: water with Accelerade, Clif Shot and something else we got at the Expo. Plus I had an Enervitene and Jelly Belly pills right before the race started. Oh baby, I was ready to go! My brand new Stumpy, complete with the Formula brakes and King headset, was just an average bike in this field. I don’t even want to know what the cumulative value of the bikes in my class was. 200+ pro-quality mountain bikes in my field alone…damn, that’s a lot of dough. We started on the road race course and it was insane speed out of the gate. Somewhere on the course I hit 44mph, I think on the first descent. I came down the corkscrew in a full tuck, hands down on my fork crown, but I was still pedaling so I don’t think that was my top speed. I did well, placing 47^th out of 214 finishers in Sport 35-39. Not too shabby, considering I was competing against California riders who have a much earlier start to their riding season (and probably trained too).

Ed raced Single Speed Sport and this was a bad single speed course, lots of walking the bike. He did well, but was wishing he had some more cogs to change out. But that’s the bain of all single speeds is you always wish you had a different gear. The 29er bikes were killing everyone and there we a ton of bikes, 200 single speeders, 100 men 100 women. Ed looked over his shoulder and who should be there but Greg Hebold, who he rode with for about half the race. He was on a geared bike and getting spanked by the single speeders on the climbs, but was flying on the downhills, GONE. Ed finished with a time of 1:55 in 48th place.

The trip home was an uneventful 12 ½ hour drive. We stopped for gas and food in Redding and hit the slowest Wendy’s in existence. Only one person in front of us in line and it took the two of us 20 minutes to get our food. That’s it. If you ever go to Sea Otter, make your camping reservations EARLY.

Looking forward to the next ride!

-Smack