Sea Otter- From Dust to Mud, to wrecks!

Pan Am champion, Gould, commented that she was pleased with holding the fastest time on the brief duration of the event, then getting a tie with her teammate. "You warm up for an hour and then you're done so fast. The course was short and fast and even dusty. Too short to know what the legs are doing. But it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I remembered it a lot worse."

Last year's short track and time trial courses were littered with hub-deep mud holes.
It seemed to be the norm after yet another wet, muddy, cold race.

Saturday was not dusty, but it rained so hard that some of the races came to a stop.
Many pre-rode routes to warm up and the storms caught them. They became so wet and cold that they didn't even attend the first short track races. After few hours of rain and mud delay, short tract saw racers racing in 1/4 deep mud.

The girls started the race in 10 inches of wet grass "slow". Georgia had the lead, then Compton came around. I heard them say of Compton as she shot by Georgia, "Who is that in the black?" When I was able to catch sight, Georgia was only a few yards back from Katie Compton. As I looked for a spot to watch, they came around again.

Compton is well know for her "all or nothing" and she goes all out from the gun. She has played this game on Georgia's mind in many events last fall. You know that Georgia had that on her mind. They both where pulling away from the field until Georgia took a inside line on the steep, slick, off-camber right hand downhill and then her front end went out. She then hit the center of a medal post holding up the inside course tape. Not good! The post won! Ouch!!!

As I watched her lay, she had her head downhill about two feet below below her feet. All this, while facing uphill, her face covered with mud, watching racers fight their bikes as they just missed her in the six inches of mud, watching 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc..., shoot by! She took quite a while to review her bike and gather herself. I'm so glad that she wasn't hurt! After the race she remarked that it took her a while to get back into her groove. That wreck hurt! You could see the inside of her upper leg was bleeding under the mud. We will see how this affects her on Sunday.

Katie Compton really knows how to stand up and sprint, getting back up to speed on the flats, something she learned from her track racing. Compton has the power standing, and until the other girls learn to stand and make a better sprint, she will always make distance on them.

Shonny Vanlandingham had a good race, but something happened at the start, and she had to pass something like 20 plus racers to get to 6th. She was happy to get those results.

Did I say rain? Stand in your shower with your kit on and turn it up to full blast!
Then stand there for an hour. That will give you an idea of how wet it was!