Bike Page > Bike Races > '03 Sea Otter Classic

Pictures from the 2003 Sea Otter Classic
Monterey, CA

Who's your muddy buddy?

This year, it was the mile and a quarter "Slip & Slide" that took us down from the campground area to the low valley in the first part of the course. After a few weeks of wonderful warming weather in Northern California, the area was sucker punched with strong showers on Saturday and night. That changed everything.

In fact, on a Friday pre-ride, as I slid out on sandy corners and loose climbs, a niave thought formed, "boy, it wouldn't hurt to have a little rain before the race..."

Yep. Thanks. Good idea.

Rain and strong winds lashed the whole area for the better part of Saturday, and everytime I awoke and looked out the window that night, rain continued. By Sunday and the 8:20 am start, it was damp and wet, but wasn't actually raining at the race site. We all started on wet pavement and headed towards the crest of the corkscrew on Laguna Seca Raceway. On the first bits of the trails, good traction was the order of the day, and the pack strung out as we reached the top of the first peak. From there things decayed rapidly.

  
  
Clockwise from upper left - A smile before the descent, Still pedaling to warm up,40-44 Sport Men head up into the fog, Base of "hurl hill" trail panorama. You can click on these shots to see a larger version - Note: Larger versions may take a second or two longer to load - I've exceeded the "free" storage and had to store them on a different site.

The first bit of the down hill swoop-de-doos was quite fun - the organizers had created a nice berm for the first hard left-hand switchback, eliminating the off-camber trail which had been there through recent years. The top part of the descent was nicely packed sand, and traction remained high. After the first drop, a big-ringable rise led us into the next part of the downhill.

The first indication that something was wrong came when my bike simply slid a foot to the right during the first very steep drop. Hmmmm, must be muddy. Still, conditions remained fairly controllable, if a little squirrely.

After the swoops, a hard left-hand turn begins the contouring descent to the gully crossing. That bit is a slightly off-camber trail that normally runs fast and a bit bumpy to the bottom. With the rains, it had become the aforementioned "Slip & Slide". I don't think I've ever ridden as far with my bike at a 30-45 degree angle to the direction of travel. Thank goodness for CX! Dabbed, wiggled and nursed the bike through the worst of it, fighting to keep upright and on trail. A number of riders passed me, then flew off different tangents as though we were on a merry-go-round. Greased pigs watched us go by and observed, "Man, that's some slippery shit!"

Somehow made it down without losing balance or the trail, and started limping upwards through the goo - climbing on packed Velociraptors and minus my small chainring - something about a pound of mud in the mechanism that makes it not like to drop down...

Took advantage of a traffic jam to hop off and pull the big bits out of the chainstays and the derailleur, so by the time we came to hurl hill, gears functioned properly again. Just that danged engine to fix - man it was running rough.
      
Tracy took these shots from the crest of "Hurl Hill" Yep, it's steep.

Traction-wise, that was about the worst of it. The rest of the course is mostly sand and sand derivatives, so that just packed down and traction improved. Still, a few folks had some problems - on the first part of the drop before the first feed station, paramedics were working on someone who must've misjudged the water bars - they definitely had a few more this year than last. Enjoyed the continually improving singletrack bits to the course - nice contouring lines with the odd berm added here and there to improve things. A nice fast ending after a pretty sloppy start.

Of course, gravity runs mean paying the toll - and as always, the long climb home did its best to undermine determination and effort. Singlespeeders began nipping past me, and a tandem chugged upwards. My tooth-cracked Cateye2 crapped out sometime during the previous descent, so I had the mental anguish of moving at 0 mph the whole climb. (Turned out to be the magnet which popped off the spoke.)

The letdown this year was the "simple" ending to the XC race course - last year they took us up another small climb, dropped us through the Mountain Cross/BMX area before leading us to the tarmac. It was fun to get harrassed by the shin guard and full-face helmet crowd as I tried to turn over the lowest gear I could find. This season's route just plopped you down onto the race course

Still, the Sea Otter Classic remains quite an event - there's something eternally reinvigorating about seeing thousands of people on bikes - everything from the downhillers and their engineless motorcycle-like rigs to the the newest lightest road hardware, not to mention the assortment of hoopty Schwinn StingRays and other paddock rigs. A grand gathering of the whole clan.

Full Men's 40-44 XC Results here - Full Otter Results Page here

    
Couple of Post-Race Parking Lot Shots

- it was the first race for the new frame and fork, both of which seemed to perform admirably.

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