A great week...welcoming our second child and a Sea Otter win!

[Ryan Gibson]

 

What a week! My very pregnant wife finally popped last Thursday, April 19th, giving birth to a happy and healthy girl, Arden, weighing 6lbs 7 oz and 19". Blue eyes like her brother, 3yr old-Owen, but with lots of dark brown hair like her mother. No less moving and emotional the second time around, and we were again blessed with an easy and no-drama delivery. My mother-in-law arrived that same day in the afternoon, and has been a big help. As anyone with children knows, they don’t do much at first but eat, sleep and make diapers-and I cant help with two of the three....so, my amazing wife told me to go and have fun at Sea Otter! I really couldn’t believe my ears, but was happy to be able to go to my first SOC. What an event it was...

 

After feeling a little heavy last weekend at the Napa Dirt Classic, which I had significantly tapered for, I decided to do the opposite, and to ride hard all week save Saturday. This included road and dirt, with mostly medium intensity, a few long hard pulls, and many intervals. I think I am on to something with this formula.

 

The butterflies were strong as I lined up on the Laguna Seca racetrak in beautiful Monterrey, CA with close to 600 other Cat 2 racers, and a bunch of tandems. My age group (33-34) had 19, but started with about 40 others in the 30-32 group. It was perfect racing conditions-60 deg and a cool trippy fog. My plan was to push hard from the gate to get free of as much traffic as possible before the singletrack at about mile 4, and to generally pace at a high output the entire race, which I hoped to finish around 1:35. I got a front row position and was shocked to find myself at a moderately high output pulling the front...this made me a little nervous not having ever ridden here and fear of a big pop had me settle into 5th leading into the dirt.

 

From there it was pure FUN, and finally a clean race with no fuel issues, no mechanicals, no crashes. The course was fast and fun, with some tricky downhill sandy sections that I barely got through, but overall just a fun not-too-technical course. I methodically worked thru traffic in the singletrack and was happy to find recovery when not climbing. My only gripe that slowed me was several tandems that just would not allow a pass...work that I had put in to pass others was given back as we stacked back up behind tandems that were blocking until we got to an opening. At most I lost 1 min, and I am sure most everyone had similar traffic issues with the tandems. Once past the 10 mile mark I caught back up with a guy that I started with, James riding for Tam Bikes in the 30-32 age group. We rode together on an island, save the occasional traffic passing, for most of the remainder of the race. I was tracking mileage and vertical feet on my Garmin to pace my effort, thinking it was 22 miles and 3500' as stated on the race website...thanks to James, who had ridden the course the day before, for sharing that it was 20.5 miles and 2600', which definitely helped me. As we reached the final fire road climb I pulled away and pushed on-James fell off and I found myself alone in the surreal heavy fog on the ridge-no one really in site ahead or behind with 1 mile and 400' to go. Not thinking I had any position to gain by going all in, I soft pedaled to the finish not sure of my result.

 

I hung out at the finish for about 30 mins, talking to James, Reto (met at Napa Dirt Classic the weekend before), and several other friends. The two friends I went down to the SOC with finished well too, Rich Gassaway with a 2nd in Cat 2 38-39 and Dustin Slack with a 10th in Cat 2 43-44. Rich, Dustin and I went to the car in the paddock for a post race IPA and then headed to the results board and stage...I could not believe my eyes when I saw the win for Cat 2 33-34 at 1:29:07, which was 7th fastest over all ~600 Cat 2 racers. Wow. While this now means I should move up to Cat 1 (I was mid-pack Cat 3 last year), I cant imagine a better way to move up than with a win at Sea Otter! It was great to represent Summit on the podium, and got some cool prizes along with the SOC Yellow Jersey :) Thank to Camelbak, Clif and Kenda for the prizes.

 

Boggs two-person 8 hour is up next on Cinco de Mayo, and I get to finally build up the Highball this week :) Someone pinch me.

[Jim Hewett]

Congratulations on the great results (Arden and your win)!

[Carl Sanders]

Congrats on both Arden and the win!

See you at Boggs!

[Ryan Gibson]

Thanks guys! Really looking forward to Boggs this coming weekend.