Sea Otter Classic 2017

[Jim Hewett]

Cathy, Simon and I left early on Friday to make it in time for me to race the Short Track at 11:15 on Friday.  The course was very short and flat, with various sections of loose and slow materials ranging from pea gravel to sand.  I guess around 85 people started the race, and I had a pretty good first lap, coming through the finish about mid-pack.  I soon felt the effects of my hard start, and I was overtaken by 20 or so racers over the next few laps.  I think I completed 5 of the 8 laps before I was deemed "out of contention" and pulled from the race, finishing 70th.  I had gotten very hot with the effort in the sun, but felt okay once I had a chance to cool down.

Not a huge success, but about the way I figured it would go.  As usual, a good leg opener for Saturday's XC race.

The Pro XC course was designed to meet UCI course standards, as used for World Cup and Olympic races.  This meant around 3 mile laps, which pretty much precluded any long climbs.  Probably 30% of the course was on pavement, with much of it the same as the short track course.  I had pre-ridden the course that morning, and the only section that I rode more than once was the contrived rock garden.  This was the same as last year, about 15 feet wide and 30 feet long, but this year there was a definite "path of least resistance" worn into the left center.  This was simple enough to ride at speed, so I focused on riding the right line through rougher rocks that were overgrown with grass.

There was a section early in the lap where we climbed an S turn through deep sand, but we would bypass this on the first lap to avoid the eminent traffic jam.  The bulk of the climbing was up a wide dirt section beside the pavement.  From here, we rode down and up over to the rock garden.  From there it was back and forth on switchbacks over past the Dual Slalom course to a fast descent to more arcing turns and down onto the race track for more flat short track sections.  Conditions were loose, in general, but there were still signs of moisture on the course.

I was racing my Top Fuel, with some lighter and faster rolling Bontrager XR1 29x2.0 tires.  It weighed 20 lbs, 12 oz.

My teammate Carson was also racing Pro, and his dad, Dave, was handling the bottle hand-ups at the start of the long climb.  Carson and I ended up in the back row of the 110 person field.  I saw many familiar faces, but also many young guys that had just moved up recently.

My fitness was coming along well, and I was in a much better place than I had been in the year before at Sea Otter.  My goal for the race was to race smart, but push myself hard.  With 8 short laps, there was a big danger of being pulled by falling 20% behind the leader as they checked the time differential each lap.

The start gun went off and we fanned out to fill the wide paved race course.  I moved up a few positions and chose the right side of the herd, just before hearing hard braking on the left side and seeing a couple racers that tangled bars and went down.  The whole pack slowed as we hit the steeper sandy climbing, and I gained a few more spots.  There was a brief stop as we made our way in traffic through a couple of sharp turns, then down and up a short climb toward the rock garden.  I saw Carson there with me as we came around a turn to the line of guys clogging the one smoother line through the rocks.  I was glad I had planned for this, and I moved right through my contingency route quickly, passing at least 10 racers.  I heard the sounds of someone unclipping from the pedals, back and to my left, which surely meant a pileup of anyone behind him.  This made me smile to myself, and I hammered up the next climbs to press my small advantage.  I had moved through the field of 110 to probably 60th or so.  I could see the race leader (World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Nino Schurter) on a climb ahead at 5:00 minutes into this first lap, and estimated his lead to already be 35 seconds.

I lost some places on the flat sections around the track, and a couple more in the sandpit climb starting the second lap.  Carson had caught me and entered the feed zone just ahead of me.  My heartrate was in the high 160s, just where it should have been, and I tried to gain a position whenever possible.  The field broke up a bit on the next few laps, with the crowds being less of a problem.  I found myself falling off the back a couple of times, thus doing more work in the wind on the flat sections.  I was never passed going down, but passed a few times on the long climb.  The laps were taking me around 12 minutes each, and I tried to muster as much kick as I could to avoid getting pulled.  On lap 5, I dropped down onto the track and saw that a Giant racer that I had been chasing seemed to be sitting up.  I called to him that I was passing on the right, but he drifted over and blocked me, saying that our race was already over.  He mocked me for caring about how I finished so far back in the field as I got around him and closed the distance to the next racer.  As we came around a corner to start the next lap, that racer and I were waved off the track as we watched a guy 15 seconds ahead of us start out on his 6th lap.

I finished 70th, not exactly satisfied, but knowing I had put out a solid effort and tried my best in the largest and most competitive field I face all year.