One of my favorite parts about Sea Otter is getting to meet all the people and sponsors that support our Devo team. We get to see some behind the seans things and up and coming ideas and we get to ask them questions and give them feedback on their products. The best part is getting to do it with the rest of the Devo team.
The cross country course was completely different this year than the past few years. We started the race going up the climb on the actual raceway and into the Pro and E-bike courses earlier in the week then back on to the raceway and going up the other side of the track up the corkscrew. After that, we headed out on the trails going the opposite direction that we had gone for the past few years. This start was by far one of the hardest starts I have ever done at Sea Otter. Right off the gun, you went into three incredibly steep hills that were not at all short. One climb after the other, in grueling pain, trying to stay with the guys in front of me and catching my breath on the descent, realizing by the top of the last of the three pitches that I had only gone 2 or 3 miles and I still had 23 miles to go. By this time the whole field was totally split up and I didn't know how many people were in front of me or behind me I just started to make efforts to catch other riders. I caught up to a group of three guys, one of them being my teammate on the SoCal Devo team, and stayed right behind them until I was able to make my way to the front of them and work with my teammate. A few miles later we caught another one on my Devo teammates who, little did we know had just had a mechanical. Now there were three SoCal Devo riders in our group of five riders giving us all a strong advantage over the other 2 people in our group. Another rider ended up catching us from behind and attacking up a climb to get into the single track first. I attacked with him from the middle of the group and got into the decent in second position. For me going into a decent I like to be either first or second going into a decent so there is no chance on the lead guy getting away from me. when we got to the bottom of the decent me and the rider that made the attack had a little bit of a gap on the group behind us and we opened it up a bit more on the next climb. I was determined not to let him get away from me for the rest of the race. A few times he got a small gap that I quickly closed. The next section of the course we went down a gravel fire road off-camber steep descent into a steep climb to a fast almost flat, single track decent. On the climb up I wasn't able to stay with him and I couldn't catch back up to him on the descent. Another rider from the group I was in during the beginning of the race caught me and got ahead by just a little bit. I caught up to him later in the race and one of my teammates and another rider from the first group I was in caught up to us so it was the four of us. The next part of the course was probably the most grueling other than the start. It was an extremely steep, long climb that seemed to take forever. I broke away from the guys that I was with on that climb and put a decent gap on them. Only one of them, My teammate, was able to close the gap at all on the decent and he almost caught all the way up to me but I had just a few seconds on him when I hit the long fire road climb out. I could see the other rider that dropped me a while ago up the road with another rider drafting on him. I settled into a strong TT pace and my teammate wasn't able to hold on. I cough up to them and caught my breath for a second then quickly got the three of us organized in a TTT and we were going 21 miles an hour consistently up the hill. At the one point of the climb where it got a little bit steeper the three of us split up and I was in the middle. By the time we got back on the raceway, I could see the other rider a little ways up the track. I made a long-shot attempt to try to catch him and ended up coming just a little short. I took 14th place with my teammate right behind me with 15th.
Thank you to all my sponsors for the support, Kenda, Rudy, Scicon, Phyisiophix, Ellsworth, Gup, ESI, Canari and Dryve.
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