Sea Otter

I'm finally back home in Golden for a while, which is nice that I can finally sleep in my own bed for once instead of living out of a hotel room, even though sadly I've gotten used to living out of a suitcase.

I am sad though that I had to leave beautiful Monterey, CA, even if it did rain most of the time that I was there.


This was my first time to the Sea Otter Classic, and I must say that the venue is awesome. It is held around the Laguna Seca Race track which is buried back in the middle of know where on top of these green hills.

The festival itself brought out thousands of spectator along with the competitors.
Thursday was just a warm up day, used to get the jet lag out of the legs. Then Friday was the circuit race which was held on the race track. It was a 2.5 mile lap with a 300 foot climb in the first half mile, followed by a wicked decent called the corkscrew then flat back to the start/finish. I spent most of this race either attacking or pulling the group, when nothing was able to break away I waited and attacked on the last climb and put a nice gap between me and everyone else. I got to thinking that I had it won....wrong. After the climb there was still 2 miles to the finish where a group of 15 riders were able to catch me within a mile of the finish. So trying to save a horrible finish I got on the back of the group and managed 10th in the sprint.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sight seeing along the coast and watching a bunch of Sea Otters playing around in the water.

Saturday brought the road race. 80 miles of nonstop killer rollers. 120 riders started and by mile 40 there were only half in the front group and by the base of the 3 mile climb to the finish there were only 20 left up front. At the 2 KM mark I made my move to which only one guy was able to hang on to, and of course he refused to do any work. So instead of sitting up and chancing more guys being able to bridge up to us I pulled him to the 200 meter mark where he got a jump on me that I wasn't able to react to fast enough. He got 10 feet ahead of me and that is how we crossed the line, him first, me second.

Sunday was supposed to be the mtb race for me but with rain and mud I decided against it and just put in a training ride on the multiple 17% climbs in the area.