Race win!

Have a ton to say about Sea Otter and its awesomeness, but I wanted to get this pic out to moms, jeff, and danny, who check my blog 6 times a day each. I'm pretty sure thats how I managed 20k hits.

As you can clearly sea, I won this race by the smallest of margins. I took a flyer on lap 3 (of 27ish laps) and stayed off the front for about 10 laps. There were probably 50 racers and they seemed content to let me hang out at about 25-35 seconds. At one point, I was up to 45 but a team decided to bring me back. I wasnt really drilling it in the hopes that someone would try to bridge and join me. THat didnt work out so I just hung out in the peleton for the last 14 laps. On the last lap, I worked my way to the front and then decided the safest place was to be the first rider through the two crazy 180 turns right at the finish. I didnt yank it out of the last corner because it was a long straight-away. I figured that someone would come around me, I'd have time to sit in for about 10 pedal strokes, then I'd go. Well, 10 strokes came and I was still on the front. I swiftly and safely moved to the left as the wind was right to left, kicked it into the 12 and went. Miss-shifted into the eleven and caused some disruption behind me. I guess that was just enough to hold off 327 who chose the wrong side. Had he come around on the wind protected side, he would've had me.

Another interesting note is that there were two finish lines. One was painted on the road for race cars. The second (and official) finish was 20 feet further and marked via duct tape. Sweet. Yup, as you can imagine, I hit the first line, let out a victorious cry, scared everyone in the field, then realized I had to pedal 3 more rotations. The promoter said that my victory yell was loud enough to make everyone else think the first line was the end too. Lucky me.