SBR Series #2 By Mike Urbina

I had Saturday slated for a long road ride but instead I made a spur of the moment decision to do this race (South Bay Racing series #2).
I looked outside and saw that it was only 42 degrees and asked myself "do you want to spend 3 hours in the cold or go and race and possibly have some fun. The latter won out. Standing in the garage looking at all the bikes my head was going "eenie, meenie, minee moe" and I stopped on ....the single speed! Yea, let's change things up this week.

Warming up at Fort Ord I could tell that I was a little under geared but whatever. The course was a mix of the old and new Sea Otter course.

Off the start we had about a mile of flat, then slightly downhill fire road. I quickly spun out and watched as most of the pack pulled away. I only saw one other single speed rider at that point. After the fire road we turned back onto pavement and started a short, steep climb. Now the pack is coming back to me as I pass those who sprinted out too quickly. Here I started to lose the other single speeder I saw on the fire road. Now we're into some twisty, sandy uphill terrain and I'm stuck behind slower riders. They lose traction on some of the steep sections and have to dismount. Since I'm at their mercy I end up doing the same. As we're pushing our bikes I see a spot to get around so I sprint around 3 guys, more importantly getting around the one that's causing most of the bottleneck. I then took off after the main pack. Around the middle of the race we hit the long fire road climb that is the end of the Sea Otter course. Now I'm passing lot's of people including another single speeder. When we get to the top we take a left (as opposed to right and to the track like the Sea Otter). More twistys and down to a straight single track valley then back up to the Three Sisters. I'm running with a pack of about 5 geared bikes and I must admit it was fun giving them fits. They'd pass me on the flats and downhills and I'd get 'em back when we hit the hills. I would l latch onto their wheel and draft wherever I could, saving precious energy. It took my a while but I finally managed to gap them before the last, long twisty berm section. Man, that was fun! I had a photo finish with a guy on a geared bike but didn't quite get around him.
Didn't know exactly where I finished but I found out later that I'd won. Not bad for what started out as a casual just-get-out-there-and-ride day.


Mike U. 1/5 @1:25'44