I Survived the Sea Otter

by Katie Kelly

My favorite quote of the weekend:

"Excuse me, but have you seen the group of people we
were riding with?" Words spoken to me as I was caught
by maybe the 20th rider in at the Sea Otter road race.

So Lynette and I did the circuit race Friday and the
roadrace with Paula on Saturday. I should let them
tell you their stories, but I am pleased to announce
that Lynette had a stellar finish in the road race,
12th over all, out of some 50 riders, and this is
after nearly getting dropped on "the wall", this
brutal, cruelly placed climb that became steeper on
each lap.

I know this, because I was with Lynette at this point.
Let me say that I have never raced in a more exhausted
state in my life, and I'd like to think that had I
been in a more recovered condition, that I could have
been a more helpful teammate.

But no, what happened was, I tried to stay on
Lynette's wheel on this climb, and I succeeded, at
least at the crest of the hill, because I then watched
Lynette pedal off into the sunset, as she grabbed the
tail end of the peloton.

The rest of the race was a painful time trial for me.
I was happy to see in the results that Paula finished
right behind me, and we were still mid-pack out of 50
riders. I learned later that Paula had suffered from a
terrible fit of "wheel wobble", a bike condition I've
only heard terrible stories about, during the first
descent at the beginning of the race. Let's say I've
heard of others encountering this, and then crashing
terribly, so I'm very thankful that Paula made it out
alive, and IMPRESSED that her tenacity pushed her back
up to a midpack finish, right behind me in the
results. She'd be up with Lynette otherwise.

The circuit race on Friday was the most painful of my
recollection. I really cannot recommend working 'til
10 o'clock the night before a big race, as well as
every night that week, on top of training hard for
three weeks straight and then honestly expecting that
you're going to win, which is kind of what I was
actually hoping. So, whatever, you improvise, you
change your goals around, and you do what you can. It
sure beats working.

But let me tell you about my big lightbulb moment.
Lynette had only been saying for a few weeks, "Really,
I'm just doing this for fun, I haven't even been
training, I just want to finish."

I ignored this until maybe the last twenty minutes
before the start when a little voice in my head said,
"Katie, wake up! That's how ALL the fast people talk!"

Sure enough, it was Lynette pulling the pack up the
hill. I can't believe I found whatever strength I had
to stay up with her. The rest of the race maybe isn't
that memorable. In fact, it's sometimes for the best
that you forget about the painful parts, or you may
never race again. But for a couple of minutes, anyway,
Lynette and I controlled the race, and I bet people
were thinking, wow, who is this Team Tam, they're
going to kill us. Either that, or they were thinking,
what are those fools doing, don't they know we have to
do this for 50 minutes?