Sea Otter!

Rewind to Sea Otter 2013: Dual Slalom qualifying. The last corner before the finish line and my shoulder comes out of the socket. The resulting effects ended my 2013 race season. Truth be told, Sea Otter and I have never gotten along. I've crashed and been injured at that race numerous times. However, I was still really excited to get back to California and put all of that behind me!

2012 Sea Otter ended with a concussion.2013 ended with shoulder surgery. What would 2014 hold?

After a delayed flight, I managed to roll into Monterrey late Thursday night and fall right asleep. I woke up Thursday morning with a lot of bike work still to finish. Diamondback was launching the new Mission 27.5 and I was going to be riding one. The only issue was that they had just arrived. Verg and I laced wheels and built the entire bike Friday morning, finally finishing about halfway through my practice. I was able to grab a few quick laps before the 2 hour practice ended.

Verg lacing up wheels early on Friday morning.

The new bike was great and after a little bit of suspension tuning, I was feeling really comfortable on the bike. That's a good thing, since practice at Sea Otter is very limited. If you're racing dual slalom on Saturday, you don't get to practice downhill, so I had my two Friday runs, and Sunday morning before my race to get used to a brand new bike!

It wasn't THAT hard to get used to the new bike.

All of that got put on hold though for the best event of the weekend, the Sea Otter Dual Slalom! Slalom at Sea Otter is very competitive. I've never qualified for the finals, so that was my goal for the year. I could have prepared a little harder, but it's the only slalom race I do all season, so I don't worry to much about it. I had ridden my slalom bike a grand total of 1 day since Sea Otter last year.

Dual slalom weapon

Practice went well though, I had one small slide out, but was having fun. It's always crazy being on course with everyone else. There were multiple World Champs, National Champs, BMX Olympians, past slalom winners, Rampage champions, all on course. It can be an intimidating place to try and ride a bike! 

Looking from the start gate over Laguna Seca

I had two decent qualifying runs and when the dust settled, I looked at the results sheet and saw that I had made the finals! I was so excited to be able to ride with everyone and put my shoulder worries behind me. I was eliminated in the first round of the finals as I expected, but I didn't care. It was an honor just to be there.

2014 Slalom finals

Fast forward to Sunday and back to the downhill course. I was really feeling good on the new bike and did a bunch of practice runs because it was so much fun. A lot of people were trying to save their legs for their race runs, but I didn't care. Sea Otter isn't a true DH race, and I was having fun on my bike. My run was pretty clean, but I was spent from the whole weekend. I felt dead across the finish line and finish in the 30's somewhere. Not bad considering how many racers there were, but nothing to write home about either.

Charlie and I stopped in Aptos on our way back to San Jose.

Are you as excited for Sea Otter to be over as Colin? Nope, didn't think so.

All in all, I had a great weekend. Diamondback had a successful bike launch, I stayed healthy, everyone had fun. I can't wait to get home and look forward to some real DH action in Port Angeles!

-KT