Race Report: 2024 Sea Otter Road Race - Men’s A
Race: Sea Otter Road Race - Men’s A
Date: April 18th, 2024
AVRT racers: Florian Costa, PA Laforcade, Grant Miller, Nico Sandi
Top Result: Nico Sandi 9th
Course: 9 laps of a 7 mile loop with a steep 3ish minute climb at the start of every lap. After lap 9 the course turns to the final 7ish minute climb.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/11213409644
Nutrition: 4 bottles of malto/sugar. One caffeinated sleeve of clif blocks, one uncaffinated sleeve of clif blocks, one GU.
Recap: This year the field at Sea Otter was fairly small, but the quality was high. Ex world tour pros Nico Roche and Ian Boswell were there as well as a couple current gravel pros. The only two teams with numbers were Project One4Nine and Red Truck Racing, both with about 5 riders.
The first two laps of the race were tame and not much happened. There were a couple of early moves with One4Nine and Red Truck that had to be closed, but other than that I was trying to focus on the bigger solo names and see what they did.
The main move of the race went on lap 3. I saw Brennan Wertz (gravel man) and Ethan Overson (gravel man) one Project One4Nine, one Red Truck and the only Mikes Bikes guy go off the front on the flatter tailwind section of the course. As the gap grew I knew we had to be in that move or else have to chase it the rest of the race only to almost catch it and then have Ian Boswell or Nico Roche say “thank you very much” and jump across.
So I burned a big match to make it across. As soon as I did I was asked to take a pull but I was dying. So the group attacked and I was trying so hard to hang on. This was by far the hardest part of the race.
Eventually a couple more people jumped across before the start of the next lap, including Nico Roche. We hit the climb and my legs went “game over dude, we just can’t anymore”. I kinda parked it and looked back to see if anyone could come save me. The pack was shattered and only a couple riders were putting a dig to jump across to the group ahead. I slowly made my way up the climb and ended up with another rider trying to to chase back.
We worked well together for a couple of laps until we got caught by PA and Flo. PA did a great job putting a big dig on the climb to try to finally close the gap to the front group. But the group looked back, Ian Boswell got to the front and drilled the climb to make sure we didn’t make it (he eventually DNFed the race but he had to make sure to kill our dreams 🙄).
And that was pretty much it. I only saw that group up 20 seconds up the road for the rest o the race. At this point it’s just me and Jason from Dolce chasing this front group of 10. We eventually caught Eamon from Mikes Bikes who dropped from the front group. The three of us worked well together just to get to the final climb.
Eamon knew the climb very well and out sprinted us to the line. We were all dead.
Happy with how I played the race this year. I just wish I stayed with that front group. But then again I may have overreached just trying to get there and stay there that my race may have been way harder. Riding my own pace with a small group was actually my best chance at a top 10.
Written by Nico Sandi