Race Report—Sea Otter Classic
Cat 2, 45 to 49
1:44:31
54 of 90
Perfect racing weather
Eight minutes faster than last year
As soon as I saw Paul Ellison getting dropped on the Corkscrew climb within the first mile, I knew this was going to be difficult race. He's one of the fastest local racers, and one I've yet to keep up with.
This year we had five minute intervals between starts, which relieved the bottleneck at the first single track section. I lost traction and fell on a dusty sweeping right hand turn, but got up quickly without impeding traffic. The only slowdown occurred on the first single track climb. There are very few passing opportunities, and I was kind of tapped out to make any aggressive moves through traffic.
I'm definitely improving my downhill skills, as I had no problems on the sandy sections. But, I need to work on rhythm sections and maintaining momentum.
It was still a tough grind on the exposed fire road climb, but at least the weather was better.
I wish I had fresher legs for a better race, but I went on the Bicycling Magazine ride on Friday. It was definitely worth it, as I met the editor, some of her staff, and industry heavyweights from Pinarello, Mavic, Time Speedplay, Scott, Pedros, and others.
We started from the Portola Plaza Hotel in Monterey for a social ride via 17 mile drive. It was nice and easy until the climb to Highway 1. Then it was fireworks time. I was keeping up the the lead group and maxing out my HR, but decided to back off and save something for the race.