Sea Otter Pro XCT #2

[Jim Hewett]

Sea Otter has never been very good to me, but it's the biggest pro race in the country and only two and a half hours from home. It is one of the first races I ever raced, way way back in 2004. A few years racing singlespeed, a year in semi-pro and year in pro, all with less than stellar finishes. This year the pro course made a break from the classic 2 lap 38 mile format. The pro-only 5k course was almost completely in the immediate Laguna Seca Raceway area. I think the idea was to make the racing more spectator-friendly as well as more like the World Cup races. The officials figured it would take the fastest men 18+ minutes to do each lap, and they like the winners to finish in around 1:40, so it would be 5 laps. Despite the large amount of pavement (40%?), the pace would be slowed by the loose dirt corners and the steep, punchy climbing.
127 or so pro men lined up on Sunday afternoon. The call up was organized by UCI points first, and then alphabetically by preregistration. I registered the day before the race, so they put me in the very back.
It was the usual hammerfest from the start for 5 minutes to a bottleneck. We all did our best to jockey for position, as we knew the front group was quickly moving away from us, and that would turn into them quickly getting close to us (from behind). They enforce an 80% rule: if you are not within 80% of the leader's time, you are deemed out of contention and pulled from the race. Usually happens to 1/3 to 1/2 of the pro field. No one wants it to happen to them.
The first lap took me about 19 minutes (same as the fastest pro women), and I must have been in about 75th place.
We came off the pavement and into the dirt for the second lap and things were much more spread out than on the first lap. Some people around me were turning it on, some were already fading. I felt okay and moved up a couple of spots on the first climb. As we started the tight corners of the first descent, I got anxious to get around the racer in front of me. I tried to go inside on an off camber corner and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with a flat tire. Somehow I had blown a hole in the side of my Racing Ralph!
I was passed by the whole field as I fixed the flat. Of course the tube pushed out of the hole in the sidewall and popped about 4 turns later. Out of the race!
Not a great result. My first DNF of the year, hopefully my last.
I'll be putting some new tires on for The Shasta Lemurian next weekend.