5 minutes!

Is the shortest amount of time I have ever spent racing. You know it's an interesting race when you spend about 50x longer warming up for the race than the race itself. The Sea Otter TT was an interesting experience to say the least. How do you prepare for something like that...you don't .
The day before the race I spent the morning pre-riding the course with my good friends Katerina Nash, Heather Irmiger, and her hubby JHK. Well at least I knew who they were, I am sure they had no clue who the heck I was, other than some girl in a Cannondale kit that was curiously following them around the course. After slamming into the fence on the back side of the course three or four times I decided that if I didn't know the course now then I was never going to learn it. On the backside of the course you come down this nice straight stretch of single track, where you can gain quite a bit of speed....However, it ends with an extremely hard left hand turn that is a bit off camber and then immediately goes uphill. On the outside of the turn is a fence, so you basically come into this turn full speed, slide sidways into the fence and then power out, at least that was the best way I could negotiate the stupid turn and I will tell you it wasn't pretty but it did attract attention. There's something about the sound of a slam into a chainlink fence that makes heads turn.

Race day...so for the TT we are sent off in 30 second intervals and the order turned out to be alphabetical! Yes, I was sent off almost last, there were a couple other lucky end of the alphabeters behind me including the one and only Shonny Vanlandingham ( she seemed to haunt me a bit over the weekend or maybe it was vice versa) For those of you not up on the MTB scene, she is one of the LUNA Chix and a BA or B-- A--, is that's easier for you to figure out? Anyways...In front of me is a little one, aka DEVO, it's a developement team for teens and they travel all around and do all the races. Blah, Blah, Blah, It's now my turn and I am ready to start 5...4...3...2...1 "VanMeter it!" my silly friends. I hit the first little climb and am just crunching down on the pedals, I feel fantastic! I come around the corner, negotiate one of the tougher sections beautifully, hit the next little climb and I can see the DEVO in front of me. I am feeling so good and know for a fact that I am putting in a good time, hitting every line perfectly! I get to the little straight away, shift down a couple clicks and am ready to fit the fence! Wham! and I power out perfectly! iT's all down hill from here. Again I am just flying and gaining on the Devo by the second, until I catch her, now to get around....NO, NO, NO she did not just crash in front of me....yes she did, now get the heck around! Finally I get around but I know precious seconds are lost. To give you an idea of how precious these seconds where, there was 30sec seperating me from the leader and I ended down in 27th...Oh well at least she apologized.