Erik D. Jones’s Blog

Ride: Sea Otter Classic Road Tour
Cat: Unrestricted/Unlicensed
Field size: 250+ (20, 40, 100 mile options), 90+ (100 mile option only)

I was feeling pretty jazzed about my first official century ride. I pulled up to about 100 yards shy of the starting line on the Laguna Seca raceway about 15 minutes before the soft-start. It took about +4 minutes for them to announce the start and we started rolling at 07:04. Around the first turn, I pulled up towards the front but stayed back to see how the other riders were going to behave.

A group of three broke away in the front and I decided to pull up and join them. As we left the track and started down the hill at Barloy Canyon Rd, the pace quickened. There was a Webcor guy and two other unattached riders. As we pulled up to the first hill, I maintained a hard pace and ended up in front. As we passed through Gate 1, I kept the pace up with my heart rate hitting 181 coming off the first small climb.

After Gate 2, I couldn’t maintain the pace to stay in front so I eventually dropped to fourth and settled in to a 21 mph pace and was feeling really good at that point. About 20 miles into it, I was still in fourth and started riding alongside another guy wearing a USA Cycling coaches jersey. Just after I turned onto G17/River road, I had a flat (boooo) on my back wheel. I watched a bunch of people go by. It took me 8 minutes to change the tube and get to the first rest stop (RS1/+575 ft/24.2 miles/1:21:53/hravg 155/spd 19.6).

I waited in line for the restroom (had to go since I left the raceway unfortunately) and cleared out the CO2 in my back wheel to replace it with air. Got underway in 13 minutes and off to Rest stop 2. I rode with a pack of 4 including Murat from Zack’s team, Squadra. The pace was good and the terrain was mostly flat. Arrived at rest stop 2 43.0 miles in without any problems. (RS2/+485 ft/43.0 miles/2:39:43/hravg 137/spd 17.3).

I stayed at RS2 for about 17:30 minutes and the sun was starting to come out. I was still pretty cold starting out. I didn’t remove any of my arm or knee warmers or my gloves the whole ride. I left RS2 alone and pretty much stayed by myself the whole way to RS3. The ride between RS2 and RS3 was the toughest in terms of climbing. RS3 sits atop the summit of Cahoon Peak at +66.6 miles in. I passed a lot of folks along the way including the USA Cycling coach guy from earlier in the day. I settled into a really good pace up the peak and by the time the sun was blazing down. I pulled down my arm warmers and was consuming fluids at a really good rate. I was happy I had refilled my bottles at RS2.
Overall I was pleased with my climbing performance. Up to RS3, I climbed 2505 feet from RS2! I arrived at RS3 without any problems and decided to do a quick refill of the bottles and split. No dilly-dallying. I was jazzed and feeling really good about finishing the rest of the ride (RS3/+2505 ft/66.6 miles/4:42:40/hravg 146/spd 13.1).

I only stayed at RS3 for 6 minutes and wanted to start on the downhill which was in a really wooded section compared to the climbing side of Cahoon before my body got too cold. I blazed on down the switchbacks which was CRAZY fun. I was rounding the corners in excess of 25mph on avg up to 44mph. There was little to no traffic and I passed two guys on the way down. At the base of Cahoon, it was pretty much a short flat ride to RS4 which marked the last big climb back to Laguna Seca. I arrived at RS4 without any incidents. (RS4/+325 ft/85.7miles/5:46:41/hravg 135/spd 20.6).

It was high time to pay a visit to the bathroom at RS4 and shed myself of any and all weight I could (cough) before the last climb. It was just starting to lightly rain and decided to make haste and get out of there as quickly as I could. I departed RS4 in 8 minutes without eating anything.

Now the guy at RS3 had described the final climb. And it was pretty big, but fortunately not as big as he had made it sound. About a mile after leaving RS4, I started the climb up Laurels Grade. It’s about a 4 mile climb at 10% grade according to the road signs (the guy at RS3 said 5 miles at 11% and I’m happy he was wrong). It was definitely a tough climb. I passed a pair of riders as I started the climb and another two riders before I reached the summit.

The whole climb up and all the way back to the race track, it was raining. It was still light rain and I kept my glasses on so that I could see well enough down the backside. Even though it was wet, it was pretty much straight down, so I eased off the brakes and hit 45.1 mph on the way down in the rain (crazy I know, but there was little to no traffic). I made it back to the entrance at 92.8 miles in and just about fell over when I saw the climb up over the hill to get back to the racetrack. Mister RS3 didn’t say anything about that.

I was pretty annoyed at this point since I was mentally unprepared, but I settled in for a very slow pull up an even steeper grade (11.5%) over 1 mile. I got to the top and the finish line was just around the corner at 94.4 miles. I finished the last leg and the race at +6:44:45. (Finish/+1430ft/94.4 miles/6:44:45/hravg 114/spd 10.7). I finished 19th place out of an estimated 90 century riders. Damn good for my first official century!

Overall I was pleased with my performance and look forward to improvement!!!

Special thanks to Damien for coming with me to the Sea Otter Classic and really being there to help me out emotionally. Thanks for all the picture taking (except for the ones where I look hella beat up and I’m trying to change into dry clothes, you bastard!) Thanks to Mike and Teri Sober for dinner the night before (mmmmm pizza for carb-loading). Thanks to Zack, Omar and Oralia for all the support and encouragement.