By Amanda Eaken -- Sea Otter Circuit Race (4/14 or 15) (W2) -- 04/14/07

I should credit this photo as coming from the VeloNews article about Sea Otter. If you look all the way to the left you can see the blue dots.

So - when the weather forecast has consistently called for rain for your race day and it just so HAPPENS to look clear the morning of the race, my suggestion for the future is, yeah, what the heck, WEAR THE ARM WARMERS!!

Instead, feeling optimistic, I opted to leave them in the car as I rolled to the starting line of the Sea Otter Circuit Race - the most recent in a series of National Racing Calendar races. Nah, I thought, it's not going to rain. And I definitely don't want my ARMS to be too warm. Good thinking dummy! At least my arms won't be too sweaty!

This was a thrilling race for sure! The announcers always love to highlight the strongest women in the race and there was no shortage of talent on the line. Christine Thorburn, Dotsie Bauch, Brenda Lyons. Big names.

Despite the fact that something inevitably goes wrong at Sea Otter simply because there is SO much happening at the same time, deep down I love this race. The 2.2 mile circuit includes 300 feet of climbing per lap and a fast, wide, banked descent that I could happily take my own line through every time. So 22 laps of 300 feet - that's 6600 feet of climbing? Phew - glad I didn't think of that until now. I especially loved the race this year since Jen Joynt gave me the tip to ask for the Pro Teams parking in the Paddock area. It was as though "Paddock" was a magic word. The staff and volunteers would be waving all traffic in one direction - out to the fields in the middle of nowhere, and you would say, " I need the Paddock" and they'd respond "Oh, please, right this way", and send you to park in a primo spot that was very close to registration and the start/finish. I have to admit I didn't mind the rock star treatment.

The pace of the race wasn't too punishing with the exception of the Queen of the Mountain laps, special points for cresting the hill climb first, but even so, I was easily staying attached to the field for the first 8-10 laps. And then all hell broke loose. The skies opened up, it started pouring, sometimes hailing, the rain particularly stung my bare arms as we were flying down the corkscrew at 30 miles per hour. And on the flats if you tried to draft too much, you got the tasty combination of rain, mud and oil from the race track in your mouth and eyes. I was sure I was not the only one experiencing obscured vision from all of this, which was instantly NOT a comforting thought.

At some point a small gap opened up on the 11th lap or so and I was chasing the main bunch with Flavia from Tibco and Taitt from Value Act for a few laps. And then after lap 14, we cross the start/finish and start heading up the hill and hear Brenda Lyons yelling – “girls, they stopped the race, they called the race”. Everyone huddles underneath the overpass of the course for a little break from the rain and then it suddenly sets in how freezing it is. Amber is nice enough to offer me shelter under her team tent which is right on the course, but I meet up with blue lipped Jen who wisely decides we should head back to the car immediately to warm up. At this point, it seems that they might start the race again, “when the weather improves”, but it was fairly unclear how we would know when it was starting again. I thought for a minute about sticking around the course to make sure to get back in the race if it started again, but then remembered the Sea Otter Radio – 91.7 FM, and we b-lined to the car.

Fairly quickly it became clear that the race had been cancelled completely, and while Shelley Olds was declared the temporary winner, in the end, there was no winner since the race was cancelled.

Laurie summed it up well later in the day when she told me. “Yeah, some people saw the rain coming down and thought, Oh poor Amanda, she’s out there racing in this stuff! Are you kidding me? She’s having the time of her life right now!” Yup. Pretty spectacular stuff. Raining sideways, RIVERS of mud across the course, zero visibility – that’s bike racing!

Here's a link to the VeloNews article about the race:
http://www.velonews.com/race/dom/articles/12062.0.html